Summery
- Historical conceptions of identity
- Foucauts discourse methodology
- Place critique on practice
- Consider post modernism theories of identity as fluid and constructed
- Identity in the digital domain
To begin with we started by looking at intelligence diagrams from earlier years, as it was once theorised that the line that runs from your forehead down to your mouth, when looking at someone from the side, should be a vertical line, like it is with most typical men that are blonde hair with blue eyes and this then goes through to most black people who's faces do not run in a vertical line and it becomes more diagonal. So what was theorised, the more vertical the line, the more intelligent you were, this of course is now seen as racism but back then, it was seen to be true.
We then had a brief look into the theory of how your brain is split into different sections, but mainly how the moral part of brain appears to be a lot smaller than the animalistic side. Going back to the Freudian lecture from last week, this could have been influenced on what he studied do to how similar the theories are; that people are sometimes drived by there animalistic qualities instead of looking for a moral solution to problems. This can also be linked to Hieronymus Bosch's (1450-1516) painting entitled Christ carrying the Cross, 1515, as the characters depicted in it all look very animalistic and strangely out of proportion.
Historical Phases of Identity
We then started to look more into different historical times to pin point how identity has been used throughout history to distinguish certain people.
Pre-Modern Identity
During the pre-modernism age a lot of personal identity was very stable and institutions determined your identity for you. People were also more asphyxiated with the church as they had 'secure' identities with them.
Modern Identity
During the modern age people began to be more worried about there identities and during this time painting became more involved with identity; with artists focusing on certain aspects of it and painting modern life more.
Baudelaire: Introduced the concept of 'flaneur', which is the gentleman stroller, a term used for upper class gentleman as they began to dress up and go out into public more. This was merely a way of saying 'Hey look at me, I have a lot of money and you can see this by how I dress'.
Vebien: He stated that 'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure'. Again this was a nice way of saying you have a lot of money.
Georg Simmel: Simmel had a different theory when it came to this subject area but in a way it does link in with the others. He believed in the 'trickle down theory', in which wealthy men and women would wear expensive clothing and flaunt it off by going out into public, then the middle and then eventually working class would attempt to copy these fashion choices by purchasing cheaper materials to recreate them or getting cheaper versions made; but this was all part of the 'mask of fashion'.
Post-Modern Identity
'Identity is constructed out of the different discourses that are currently available to us.' Michael Foucault.
The discourses that were present during the post-modernism were in there plenty and below are a few of them, which were considered to be the most important:
- Age
- Class
- Gender
- Nationality
- Race/Ethnicity
- Sexual Orientation
- Education
- Income
- Etc etc etc...
We then went on to discus, in much detail, a few of them to finish off the lecture.
Class
We first asked ourselves what kind of class do you think you fit into?
This was a very tough question to ask a lecture hall, as no one wants to be the one to instantly stand up and show that they are of the upper class, and no one wanted to be the one that was from the working class to admit it either, though this was probably going to be the majority of us anyway.
We then looked at a number of different photographers who were all trying to say something about classes when they took them.
Humphrey Spender/Mass Observation, Worktown Project, 1937
During 1937 they completed a project entitled the Worktown Project in which a group of them and Humphrey Spender went out and observed the general public in their day to day lives, documenting everything that they did in photographs. They wanted to study the different classes and see how they differ, but they were being very stereotypical about who is in which class.
Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside, The Last Resort, 1983-86
He says, yes people do go to the beach but they will sunbathe under the shade of a JCB or being surrounded by rubbish that has littered the streets. The people who will have bought his book to see these images will be the ones who are middle or upper class, and want something to laugh at, especially if they have just spent the day sunbathing on the sand.
Las Vegas
The whole idea of Las Vegas, in America, is to take the best things from each place around the world, such as the Pyramid's of Egypt, and bring them to one place. It is describe as something like Disney Land, having all the main attractions in one place, but not having to worry about speaking in a foreign language.
Chris Ofilli
This painter used to read DC and Marvel comic s and found that there weren't enough black superheroes so he create the crude Captain Shit, which then refereed back to how he used elephant dung in his work.
Gender and Sexuality
A lot of the time your gender and sexuality is representation by fashion and how you dress, but the photographer Cindy Sherman wanted to start to change this opinion. She created a number of photographs, about 80 altogether during 1977-80 and wanted to use the idea of masquerading and using the mask of femininity in her work. She wanted to recreate the the very fragile look that women are portrayed in films and use this to make herself look pretty.
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