ASTU 100 M01 1st Year CAP Seminar: UBC Blogs

Surrounded by ceremonial masks and clothing, relics of time long ago, and entire collections from certain Indigenous groups, Her First Day of School and His First Day of School by Dionne Paul (2013) are a shocking reminder of a dark part of Canada’s history. Two large prints of photographs hang there, one of a girl and one of a boy, both age four and Indigenous, supposedly on their first day of school. They are mostly in colour, except for a square of black and white photo depicting a residential school uniform, clearly from an older photograph, each photoshopped over the torso of the children. The artist’s statement educates the viewer on the subject in case they are ignorant to it, and clearly states its purpose as a reminder of what the first day of school used to mean to Indigenous schoolchildren: being separated from their families, and being punished for practicing their culture.

After growing up in the 2000’s and being taught about the travesty of the residential schools in Canada, I understood the pieces without reading the artist’s statement, and it chilled me to the bone. It took me longer, however, to decide why the curation staff had placed this piece among the traditional dress and historical objects of various Indigenous groups. I believe it was placed among history and culture because it is a representation of this dark place in Indigenous history. The trauma of the residential schools has permanently affected Indigenous culture in Canada, because it devastated almost every Indigenous family in the country and destroyed cultures. It hangs among other historical artifacts in the museum, because in a way, it is also a representation of Indigenous history.

This piece of art hangs to the left of an artwork entitled To Wash Away the Tears, a canoe filled with memorabilia of family members passed. Over 3,000 families are connected by the items in the canoe, which include books, photographs, and figurines owned by the family member honoured. The other objects in the room are historical and culturally significant, including masks and traditional dress. Though Her/His First Day of School and To Wash Away the Tears are both more modern and contemporary works of art, they both represent history and culture the way that the artifacts do. The two works of art, especially His/Her First Day of School, demonstrate the theory of figurative repatriation because though different in execution than the other artifacts displayed, they all capture Indigenous culture in art.

In entering the Museum of Anthropology’s Multiversity Gallery, a piece by Heiltsuk artist, ’Nusí, Ian Reid, is displayed prominently as a centerpiece of the hallway. This artwork is called One Mind, One Heart (2012). The focus of the piece is a mask of ’Yágis, an ancestral guardian, holding an oil tanker in his mouth (1). The mask itself is carved out of red cedar, with details added using acrylic paint, horse hair, and metal. ’Yágis reflects the duty the Heiltsuk people feel towards protecting their land and water (1). The piece itself was made as a reaction to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines project. A position made clear by the texts surrounding the mask, as well as two photos of Heiltsuk marching and protesting, united in their opposition towards the project. One of the texts explains the artwork’s name in saying, “As Heiltsuk people, we are of one mind and one heart in opposing [the project] and oil tanker traffic in our territories.”

Within the Multiversity Gallery One Mind, One Heart does stand out a bit, and that may be the intent of the curators. In immediate proximity, specifically right behind the artwork, pieces closer resemble what I would call artifacts rather than art; as at least from a quick glance they all seem to have been made for practical reasons. When I first looked at ’Nusí’s piece I thought it belonged with all these artifacts; until I saw the boat and read the texts I understood the artistic value in it as it brings forward new meanings within the traditional art. Similarly to what Robert Houle refers to as artist-warriors, ’Nusí is taking back his culture’s art to dispute the preconceived ideas people had about what indigenous art really is and means. He breaks the conventional way people view indigenous art as he brings forward a more contemporary meaning. The curation of this piece within the gallery further shows this as this contemporary artwork is amidst the artifacts most people think of when considering indigenous art.

As for myself, being a foreigner to the artist’s culture, I still picked up on the references made towards the disputes over the pipeline, as the issue has often been covered in the news. However the perspective of the indigenous peoples’ was new to me, which the artwork helped to inform me on; additionally the texts, images, and tablet to the side helped a lot to understand the position of the Heiltsuk people. Admittedly, I did not at first have any context for what the mask was depicting and who ’Yágis was, which it assumes you already know. However, although these details are crucial, I still felt as though I had enough information to understand what it was trying to convey.

Works Cited:

(1) Bonar, Thane. “One Mind, One Heart Exhibit at MOA.” Aboriginal Portal, UBC, 2 Jan. 2013, aboriginal.ubc.ca/2013/01/02/one-mind-one-heart-exhibit-at-moa/. Accessed 20 January 2019.

Peter Morin’s ‘This Song is a Museum’ (1977) is exhibited in a glass case with top light in Multiversity Gallery in the Museum of Anthropology. This artwork consists of five drums and a drumstick, which are placed in picturesque disorder. The drumstick is heavily decorated by shiny beads on its shaft and covered with a white fur on the top.  It is noticeable that the fur at the top is dipped in black paint. The drums are made of elk-skin with different shapes include round and octagonal. Various patterns are painted on them. Apparently, Morin turns the drumstick into a brush and the drums into the canvas. The splash patterns of the black paint show the strength of playing the drums. Meanwhile, it tells the artist’s emotion. I saw peaceful, excitement, brightness and mild in his work through various shapes of the paint.  He reflects the pattern of life of Tahltan, which is a First Nations people group inhabiting British Columbia.

There’s a dagger of Tahltan which was strictly used for war is exhibited on the right side of the glass case. Meanwhile, clothing is also exhibited. These elements of defense, costumes and so forth constitute a more comprehensive culture of Tahltan. Artifacts which are made of black or white marble with exquisite craftsmanship are found on the left side of Morin’s work. They are labeled as representations of Inuit culture. While they share similarities with Morin’s ‘This Song is a Museum’ which is an artwork of Tahltan culture. Most of these artifacts are figures or sculptures of entertainment, such as sculptures of musical bands and chessboards. Both Inuit and Tahltan culture shows the awareness of aesthetic as well as entertainment of indigenous people. The museum curators claim that Morin’s artwork is a symbol of rich culture and a strong economic foundation. To provide evidence for it, the curators display other Tahltan exhibitions around ‘This Song is a Museum’ and shows their indigenous identity.

As a viewer, I was wondering how to formalize intangible things. A song is intangible, what makes a song? Morin gives me the idea that musical instruments are typical representations of a song. “The drums are a record of indigenous knowledge” explains by Morin. He mixes the indigenous elements into his artwork which is an outstanding example of indigenous identity. Most viewers don’t have the knowledge about the aboriginal people—Tahltan. Not everybody is familiar with the history or anthropology. However, we are familiar with the mundane musical instruments displayed in Morin’s artwork. He turns something abstract into something we familiar with.

The piece ‘One Mind, One Heart’ currently displayed in the ‘Anthropology Museum’ at UBC is one such that is bringing up one of the many underlying problems between the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada and the Canadian government for all to see.

Within a seemingly ordinary exhibit in the museum where heaps of little baskets made of fibers are featured next to one another, little artifacts that these people had used are encased behind giant glass walls. And merely a few feet from these pieces, a rather odd-looking mask encased behind a glass frame that covers it on all four sides sits staring.

The whereabouts of the piece did not make a great impression on displaying the importance of this mask since it was sort of in the middle of small and insignificant every-day usage artifacts, but then I realized that perhaps this was the point. Despite my thoughts on the location impairing the artifact’s importance, the fact that it was out of place did in fact make me think it stood out and drew my attention to it even more. This appears to be a great tactic to draw more attention to the mask without shoving its importance down people’s throats.

At first glance, the piece appears to be just another one of the countless aboriginal-made masks portrayed in the museum, it has the traditional blue/red paint covering around its eyes, deep black eyes, a broad nose and long brown hair that falls from either side of the mask. At closer inspection however, it becomes clear that some kind of boat is placed between the lips of the mask, the angry facial expression and the angle of its facial expression gives off the feeling that it is perhaps biting down on the boat, as though trying to snap it in two. This was a direct reference by the Heiltsuk Nation to the relevant Canadian government officials that they did not approve of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and to the oil tanker traffic that would pass through their territory and their waters. This piece is perhaps the perfect example that showcases the ancient teachings of the Heiltsuk peoples, those of protecting their land and waters against such perils. The creator of the mask Nusi delivers “I created ’Yágis for One Mind, One Heart, an installation at the Museum of Anthropology to show my support in opposing the Enbridge Pipeline Project. He hunts down oil tankers and protects our territories and coast.”.

Citations:

Bonar, Thane. “One Mind, One Heart Exhibit at MOA.” Aboriginal Portal, aboriginal.ubc.ca/2013/01/02/one-mind-one-heart-exhibit-at-moa/.

The social media have been exerting a tremendous influence on our lives

Maintaining a conscious approach is not always easy when discussing something as colossal as social media. It feels as though every claim made about its ability to contribute to society can be countered by ways in which it is seen working against society. Indeed my perspective on both Castell’s and Dean’s chapters, as well as the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change, has changed.

In preparation for our debate, I was assigned Castell’s chapter on The Egyptian Revolution. What stood out most to me was Castell’s argument that social media, mostly Twitter and Facebook, provided the event space to host planned protests and give voice to otherwise silenced individuals during the Egyptian Revolution (60). Thus, my belief in social media as a positive tool that benefits sociopolitical challenges through their increased attention, was satisfied. However, following the debate and specifically my role as an assessor, I gravitated more towards the potential that the same promotional capacity of social media can be a negative attribute. Naturally, as a reader I was captivated by the structure of Castell’s argument, highlighting the importance more than the danger of social media’s role in the Egyptian Revolution. Conclusively, the debate allowed me to move in a liberated mental space and visualize multiple perspectives and contexts.

Being actively involved in a debate allowed me to obtain a relatively balanced outlook on the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change given the context of the Egyptian Revolution. However, not being an active participator in the debate on Dean’s chapter led me to an even more developed intellectual stance. There is a certain benefit in listening, but not being able to contribute to an argument, which enhanced my sense of awareness and critical capacity. Furthermore, only having read one of the chapters – Castell’s – made me feel a certain foreignness that was comforting.

A notable difference between Castell and Dean’s perspectives is the audience that Dean’s text targets. Perhaps this effect derives from the fact that his text has a broader focus on “Technology and Communicative Capital” using many examples to support his thesis, as opposed to Castell’s focus a particular occurrence – The Egyptian Revolution – which is equally, if not more, important. This gives Dean’s argument more flexibility and the opportunity for reader to draw on their own personal experiences on Social Media. While both texts assume a certain cultural context of their readers, they both dominate a certain perspective – Dean looking predominantly at how social media can hinder sociopolitical change and Castell at how it helps. Ultimately, my lack of positional bias throughout the duration of this activity shaped my ultimate conscious outlook. It is true – Social Media can be an asset and a barrier to Sociopolitical change.

For the debate, I was a part of the “against” side for Dean’s resolution, “be it resolved that social media inhibits sociopolitical change.” Prior to the debate, upon hearing the resolution, I disagreed immensely because I strongly believed that social media enables sociopolitical change, because I have seen first-hand the discourse online when there is a political crisis, or when certain groups are trying to make a change. Social media certainly, in my view, does not inhibit sociopolitical change. Whether it enables it is, as Dean suggested, merely up to the environment and time period.

When, however, my team began to do research for the debate, I was able to understand how the opposing side may have a valid argument. Dean explains in their article that social media has a very high volume of content always circulating, and because of this voices do not always get heard. I still stand by my position, which is that social media does not inhibit sociopolitical change, but I was more willing, after doing some research, to understand how it is all dependant on the setting. For example, an online movement in the USA, where the majority of the population have mobile devices and social media accounts, may cause a larger impact than somewhere where the general population does not have access to such resources.

Castell’s argument, as I understood it, was mainly about how the media enables sociopolitical change by creating a new way of communication that does not rely on spoken language. This definitely changed my perspective of the topic, because I had only looked into that effect of social media (the use of images and videos) very slightly for my own debate. Castell comparing this phenomena to animal communication helped me understand it even more. Castell’s and Dean’s major difference was just the way they thought about social media; Dean looked at it as some giant pool of content that we have to sift through to find meaning, whereas Castell, from what I gathered, sees social media as an extension of our own senses, a new way to communicate and gather information.

Overall, my general position on the resolutions has not changed, but instead my understanding has grown deeper. The other side of the debates have valid points, but their argument only helped me understand my own more clearly.

Knowing about the debate definitely caused me to engage with Dean’s article differently. Since I knew I would be arguing against Dean’s claim, my goal was to identify the missing evidence and unsupported assumptions in her case, in addition to understanding her perspective. As I read and reflected on the article, it was very clear that Dean viewed social media’s role in sociopolitical change as having a settled conclusion.

However, it became evident through the debate that there is not only one, or even two, angles from which to view the issue. My role as a presenter of our group’s rebuttal required me to look at social media’s affect on change from as many perspectives as I could come up with. As the opposition to the idea that social media inhibits sociopolitical change, my group had to first learn Dean’s side of the argument before we could formulate our side of it. Even after all the preparation, there were still points brought up during the debates that I had not considered beforehand.

Observation of both debates reinforced the multi-faceted nature of our subject. Although both debates centered around the same general topic, each one focused on slightly different aspects of the controversy. For example, those of us discussing Dean’s claim focused specifically on the impact of media messages and online activism. Whereas the dialogue on Dean’s perspective focused on the reasons for social media’s effectiveness (or lack thereof), the group debating Castells’ case looked at social media as a tool. The side upholding Castells’ argument chose to emphasize how communication platforms can be a helpful tool, particularly in revolutions, while the opposition pointed out how such platforms could be taken control of to suppress people. The examples used in both debates ranged from more recent news to historical events – like the Arab Spring uprisings and the massacre at Tiananmen Square – and from political events to cultural trends – such as the 2016 US Presidential Election and the ALS ice bucket challenge.

As social media has evolved, so has its usage and society’s behaviors along with it. Inevitably, the continual rise of social media will have implications, both good and bad, for our governments as well as society at large. Whether social media inhibits or enables sociopolitical change is a question that’s far from resolved. However, by examining the issue from every angle, perhaps we can find the key to making social media indisputably conducive to change.

Sources:

Dean, Jodi. “Ch. 1. Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism .” Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 19–48.

Castells, Manuel. “The Egyptian Revolution.” Networks of Outrage and Hope , Polity, 2012, pp. 54–94.

Dean’s article focuses primarily on how the presence of social media and how its excessive use is, effectively not an efficient platform for promoting sociopolitical changes in societies. Throughout my preparation for the in-class debate on the topic of whether or not social media inhibits sociopolitical change, I knowingly read Dean’s article with the idea that I would be arguing for this prompt. While I do agree with some aspects of Dean’s article, I still have some opposing ideas. As a result of the debate and being able to hear the opposing role as well as the debate about Castell’s article, my opinion has stagnated in between the two arguments simply because I see how there are different outcomes in every situation.

While on one hand, I argued in the debate that social media is a circulation of information that no individual takes seriously and only contributes to that circulation to be a part of the majority, I have also come to realize that in opposition, there are many different scenarios where social media has made a positive impact on certain sociopolitical changes. Before hearing the other side of my debate as well as the other group’s, I had read the chapter of the article with one mindset. However, in doing this, I also began to question it afterwards. One example of this would be when I questioned how important social media is for communication and furthermore how all of this was done before the presence of social media and the internet existed.

While both debates gave me insight into the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change, there were a lot of points that unveiled different perspectives on the topic. Seeing as how Dean and Castell have very different views with respect to social media and its impact, I was able to notably identify and consider all sides before I could finalize my opinion. I was able to consider how on one hand, according to Castell, social media connected all individuals, bringing societies closer together versus how according to Dean, those connections made through online platforms were merely strategies for people to share their possibly ungenuine ideas and boost their egos while ultimately creating a pool of information that was not taken seriously.

Overall, I think that the debate gave me a great amount of insight on the topic and while neither debate prompted me to choose one specific side, I have come to a conclusion that it simply depends on the timing, situation and people to establish whether or not social media is an effective way of creating sociopolitical change.

Jodi Dean in the first chapter of his book Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism makes an interesting, however, questionable appeal on how communicative capitalism and political activism through social media fail to succeed. My group, in the class debate, was designated to contradict his beliefs by arguing against Dean’s resolution “be it resolved that social media inhibits social-political change.” During our preparation, my group and investigated what would be the possible counterarguments of the other group, therefore, we would be able to provide the best rebutting. The more I researched about the topic, the more I was sure that social media is, in fact, an essential part of for a political change. We are currently living the technology revolution, a social media era, in which social platforms are not only places where one can communicate with friends and family or create networks of people, but it is also a place where people are free to start a movement, have the liberty to speak their minds, manifest their opinions to the world, be heard and debate.

Some of Dean’s arguments, however, were also very convincing and hard to argue against. He used a variety of examples to support his claims, and utilized quotes and citations from other authors to make his point persuasive. After reading his text, it is not fair to say that I entirely disagree with his arguments, however, my opinion that social media and social platforms helps democracy and political activism remain the same, even after hearing all the arguments of the other groups. Moreover, Castell’s text was helpful to my group as it provided a lot of counterarguments to Dean’s text. What’s a better example of a successful revolution that started online if not the Arab Spring? Listening to the other groups debating, as well as analyzing their reasoning and defences, lead me to think about additional explanations I didn’t think previously. For example, the assessment group for Castell’s debate stated that riots and protest online fail to provide variety, due to the fact that technology is usually restricted to those who have access to it. Nevertheless, not everyone has access to this technology, one a more specific group of economically privileged people. To sum up, the debate was very helpful and instructive on helping me mould my ideas around Dean’s and Castell’s resolutions. In the end, I stick and believe even more that technology and political changed are related and can make an effective change in the real world.