Displacement from Home

Displacement from Home

Displacement from Home: What to Leave, What to Take —
Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases and Closets

Responding to the issue of migration, which has defined the 20th and 21st centuries with prolonged global flight on a massive scale, Displacement is a natural progression of Stein’s artistic projects since 9/11, in which she focused on themes of protection and victimization, power and vulnerability. Stein responds visually and viscerally with work that echoes heartbreak and hope. Anxiety and affirmation can exist simultaneously or separately: these sculptures contain metaphoric fragments left in the flight from a threatened household, and/or remnants which have been carefully, methodically, and patiently re-contextualized into new surroundings: the safe home. These varied items, significant and quotidian, adored and abandoned, are recalled as moments from daily life: neighborhood, culture – identity. Within each sculpture, there is a paradoxical combination of menace and serenity. One shelf or drawer holds haunting reminders of life, materials worn and rusted or brand new, lying around in unexpected couplings after one might have been forced to rush out the door.

Click here to see the art in this series: http://www.lindastein.com/series/displacement/

Click here for a 5-min video in which the artist discusses her Displacement series.

ENCOUNTERS with Displacement from Home

Narrative

Art teachers can guide students to investigate stories that are conveyed through visual culture, especially stories that are repeated over and over again in a culture. There is never a single story about any place or people. In this encounter, select one of the Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases, and Closets sculptures to imagine a life story situated in a community of people. With collage, drawing, and painting, create a series of artworks of people in action that includes an element of the selected art in their action. Display the series together and discuss the work with others. Return to looking at the selected sculpture and reinterpret the piece from the perspectives gained from the process of this encounter. 

Community

Collaboratively create an interactive story game using Twine, Inklewriter, or Storyboardthat, which are open-source tools for sharing, nonlinear stories, to show the possibility of becoming an upstander. Examples include: Bea the Upstander game by John Rapaccioli & Elissa Kapp (2016) and an interactive story for teachers on why it is important to address LGBT bullying by Kevin Jenkins (2016). --Learn more

Community Encounter with DC4: 

Displacement

The sculptures in Displacement from Home contain metaphoric fragments left in the flight from a threatened household, and/or remnants which have been carefully, methodically, and patiently re-contextualized into new surroundings: the safe home. These sculptures explore the state of being displaced with the sensibility of interconnectivity, accessibility, resistance.

Displacement Encounter with DC4:

 

Reflections & Examples:

Learn more

ARTifacts

artifact-encounter

Each type of power utilizes different types of images and different strategies to impact human behavior and societal practices. Our deep-seated understanding of power affects how we relate to images, objects, and people.
Each type of power utilizes different types of images and different strategies to impact human behavior and societal practices.
Our deep-seated understanding of power affects how we relate to images, objects, and people.

artifact-encounter-3The Identity Exploration with Cultural Artifacts encounter, with the Spoon to Shell Series, begins with a discussion, while looking at the art, with others whose social class, age, gender, sexuality, and ethnic background differs from one’s own. To join the discussion click here. Look again at each work in the Spoon to Shell Series. What does the spoon signify in relation to the shells and text fragments and other items in the box assemblages? Stein uses spoons and shells in the box sculptures as metaphors for power and vulnerability.

 

PURPOSE & LEARNING GOALS

(1) To investigate visual culture as a means of communicating and perpetuating cultural values, including the ways in which visual culture affects perception of self and the world. (2) To explore issues of power and privilege and its various forms in visual culture. (3) To analyze media, advertisements, photographs, alternative media, objects, spaces, places, signs and codes as sources of power. (4) To “decode” and “encode” the symbols that dominate society.

PROCESS: Start with the familiar, and identify a significant cultural artifact. Take a photograph of the object, or select an image from a magazine or an online source. Consider: “What are some contemporary meanings encoded in the cultural artifact that you selected?”

PALIMPSEST TRACES: To explode commonly held beliefs from a broad range of viewpoints, research and discussion are important. The following questions facilitate dialogue about different cultural meaning systems and the sources of the meanings that we assume others perceive, and they also help to expose oppressive meanings or damaging stereotypes. Consider these questions:

  1. Where do the meanings you associate with these images come from?
  2. Are they from knowledge you have gained from your own observations of life, are they from associations, or are they from society’s ideas of the “true nature” of the objects?

COLLABORATION: Next, show your image of a selected cultural artifact and invite three others—whose social class, age, gender, sexual orientation, and/or ethnic background differ from your background—to provide a response to the question: What meanings do you associate with this image of an object, and from what experiences have you learned that meaning? Record the responses from a minimum of three other people, and then research to discover other cultural meanings ascribed to the object.

ALTERNATIVE MEANINGS: To interpret a cultural artifact, it is important to look at conditions for its production as they relate to socioeconomic class structures, gender-role expectations, and specific visual codes of the time, as well as how those codes have changed over time. Research by doing a Google image search to see how the object/artifact is used in a variety of visual media, and Google websites to discover references to the artifact. Take one website that refers to the object frequently and put the URL to that website in the http://regender.com/index.html and read the revised regendered story to discern if and how the meaning has changed. Consider feminist or critical race interpretations of your selected cultural artifact.

(re)CONTEXTUALIZE: Visually present the various meanings of the artifact paying particular attention to issues of social class, gender, race, and sexual identity in relation to the privileging or devaluing of the artifact you have selected.

RESOURCES

Download Cultural Artifact Encounter lesson plan

Agency: Creating Interactive Stories on Becoming a Brave Upstander

Agency is a foundational concept of interactivity and the currency of game design. Create an interactive story game of the 4 Bs with the possibility of becoming a brave upstander. Making choices in the story reveals how there is never a single story about any place or people. Create an interactive story game using Twine or Inklewriter, or other open-source apps for creating and sharing nonlinear stories. The stories should include possibilities for becoming a brave upstander.

ACTIVITY OVERVIEW:

      1. Critique the storyboards.
      2. Play the Upstander game, and the Twine and Inklewriter examples.
      3. Storyboard with collages, drawings, or paintings.
      4. Share stories of the 4Bs and brainstorm characters, plots, scenes, and narratives for interactive story games.
      5. Individually or collaboratively create an interactive story.

Definitions of the 4 Bs:
(4Bs coined by Linda Stein. Learn more about the 4Bs from Stein’s Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females Film, 2015)

    • Bully: A person who targets another, often supported by a group, to intimidate (such as with hurtful rumors using social media) or act aggressively toward another with threats or violent actions.
    • Bullied: A person who is the victim of bullying and may suffer depression, social withdrawal, physical injury, addiction, self-harm, and even suicide.
    • Bystander: A person who is knowledgeable about unjust acts, such as bullying, and does nothing to prevent the injustice.
    • Brave Upstander: A brave upstander joins with others, or stands alone, to protect others from violent circumstances in everyday experiences, such as bullying, or actively engages in promoting the wellbeing of others to balance inequalities or oppression.

RESOURCES: 

    • Bea the Upstander game by John Rapaccioli, 2016.

ARTifact

The Identity Exploration with Cultural Artifacts encounter, with the Spoon to Shell Series, begins with a discussion, while looking at the art, with others whose social class, age, gender, sexuality, and ethnic background differs from one’s own. To join the discussion click here. To interpret a cultural artifact, it is important to look at conditions for its production as they relate to socioeconomic class structures, gender-role expectations, and specific visual codes of the time, as well as how those codes have changed over time. Using Regender (Yee, 2005), read articles that are regendered–about the cultural artifacts–to discern whether and how the meaning has changed. Look again at each work in the Spoon to Shell Series. What does the spoon signify in relation to the shells and text fragments and other items in the box assemblages? The uniformity of the 20 black, wooden, box sculptures brings order and calm to the chaos, fragments, and tensions that are visible from the window of each box. Stein uses spoons and shells in the box sculptures as metaphors for power and vulnerability.

Spoon to Shell 817 2015 spoon, shell and mixed media 11”x2”x14”

Spoon to Shell #817
2015
spoon, shell and mixed media
11”x2”x14”

Click here to see image detail

Click here to interact with Spoon to Shell #817

ENVIRONMENT

Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases and Closets 855
2015
fabric, found objects, metal, wood
9”x3”x9”

The Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases, and Closets sculpture in the H2F2 exhibition are are wood, metal, and mixed media environments that Stein revisions into life stories. They are filled and overflowing with complex life narratives, through interwoven cultural artifacts. These works spark encounters about hiding, leaving things behind, fleeing, diaspora, losing and finding identity, and more. For example, an encounter with one of the Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases, and Closets sculptures might begin by learning about the social, environmental, and health issues regarding elements in the work, next creating a visual map of the connections from and between the elements, followed by illustrating a story of future trajectories at one of the knots of entanglements of people and place.

Click here to interact with Cupboards

COMMUNITY

There is never a single story about any place or people. In this encounter, select one of the Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases, and Closets sculptures to imagine a life story situated in a community of people. With collage, drawing, and painting, create a series of artworks of people in action that includes an element of the selected art in their action. Display the series together and discuss the work with others. Or collaboratively create an interactive story game using Twine, Inklewriter, or Storyboardthat, which are open-source tools for sharing, nonlinear stories, to show the possibility of becoming an upstander. Examples include: Bea the Upstander game by John Rapaccioli & Elissa Kapp (2016) and an interactive story for teachers on why it is important to address LGBT bullying by Kevin Jenkins (2016).

Below is a visualization to start brainstorming with a group of students, or with oneself or another individual.

EMPOWERMENT VISUALIZATION

Relax, find a comfortable position, close your eyes if comfortable doing so as you begin to explore the past, present, and future. Nothing you think about now needs to be shared with anyone else.

  1. FOCUS ON SPECIFIC EVENT:

Focus on a specific disempowering place, image, text, action, or sound that you experience almost everyday. Search your memory for the mundane, your typical everyday way of being to locate a vivid everyday experience that may seem small and inconsequential but in some way instigates or perpetuates stereotypes, misunderstanding, intolerance, oppression, distrust in learning with others about each other. Is there a loss, a displacement, an absence, or did someone or something appear that changed the situation in a way that you did not want changed. Keep searching through your daily experiences starting from today and travel back in time until one place, image, text, action, or sound that you hear or see or experience almost everyday stands out to you as particularly disempowering.

  1. SPECIFIC QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE EXPERIENCE

Where are you in this situation?

What is going on around you?

Who else is there?

Are you doing something? What is it?

How are you feeling?

Are others sharing your feelings, or are you alone with them?

What are you feeling in this very specific disempowering experience?

  1. TRANSITION TO MAKING CHANGE

Now re-envision that experience changing everything that made it uncomfortable, belittling, sad, or awful into comfort, strength, a sharing amongst others, even if not in the particular setting, who are benefiting from your vision. See the disempowering experience and transform every inch of its negative reach to an empowered space, an empowered situation. If you were to communicate the transformed event, what would you do? How could you create an experience for others that would both reveal this act of disempowerment and empower others on how to change this form of disempowerment for themselves and others?

  1. PREPARING TO CREATE:

When you start your work where will you begin? Will you begin by searching for some images or information? Will you talk to others? Will you draw what you saw, or your thoughts, or feelings? Reflect and make visual your reflections in some way, whether text, drawing, images, or gathering data.

Return to looking at the selected sculpture and reinterpret the piece from the perspectives gained from the process of this encounter.

Interact with Spoon to Shell #821

Spoon to Shell #821
2015
spoon, shell and mixed media
11”x2”x14”

Click here to see image detail

Click here to interact with Spoon to Shell #821