Identity

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:

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Body

A Collaborative, Interactive Sound/Light Sculptural Story Wall:
BODY SCULPTURE NARRATIVES through Linda Stein’s The Fluidity of Gender

Adaptable for MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL

Overview

In this encounter, students, using The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein (FoG) as a departure point to explore identity and protection through the creation of a body sculpture and incorporate sound and light interactivity as well as an accompanying voice narrative.This encounter provides a way to visually represent an answer to the question, “What story do I want to share about protection?

Central Focus

This encounter captures the universal experience of all people who have used their own “armor” to hide something or to protect themselves. Sometimes the protection may only a façade used to survive and get ahead; sometimes it may be a cover used to hide pain and resentment at being treated unfairly.

Through making their own body sculpture and telling their own story, students will have the opportunity to define aspects of their identities to highlight as well as aspects of their identity to conceal. Sharing their body sculpture provides a way for students to express themselves in their own way as well as a way to counter the labels or stereotypes others may have placed on them.

STE(ARTS)M learning is incorporated into empowering, social justice themes. STEM learning tends to foster left-brain convergent thinking – one best answer. The Arts disciplines tend to foster right-brain divergent thinking – many ‘right’ answers. In this lesson we combine these ways of thinking.

Learning Goals

  1. Students will learn about artist Linda Stein’s art and her exhibition The Fluidity of Gender
  2. Students will apply the idea of protection to the self and interpret aspects of their complex identities– what they want to present to others and what aspects they want to conceal. 2A. Each Student or in Pairs with create a Visual Collaged Reference Board for Brainstorming-including cut outs of favorite super heroes, favorite song lyrics they listened to during moments when then needed to feel protected or song lyrics that helped motivate them to protect/stand up for themselves, brave role models, pics of people that are important in their life- to help validate their emotions.
  3. Students will create visual symbols that represent aspects of their self with or without text.
  4. Students will create a body sculpture by casting a part of their own body.
  5. Students will create and record their own sounds, a series of short 10 sec sounds/noise/body movement choosing either a) what it sounds like when you have to protect yourself (like an alarm/ fast heartbeat/intensifying breathing) or b) what it sounds like when you are unable to protect yourself or someone you care about- These sounds can be layered into a final narrative in which students tell their own story by recording it, editing it, and transferring it to be used as an interactive part of their artwork as a touch point to animate sound.
  6. Students will learn about interactivity and the role of sound and light in enhancing experiences with art through discussion and visual examples.
  7. Students will learn basic circuitry and conductivity using LED lights and tiny lily microprocessors as well as touchboard for incorporating sound to their artwork.

Mode of Assessment and Communicating Feedback

Students will keep a Journal that will allow facilitators and students to read and write comments to journals/ start additional written conversations to help validate the students authentic and honest aspects of any personal narratives they are willing to share/ bring to this project– each worksheet / art work viewed/ discussed will be glued into the journals

Materials for body sculpture making, including (but not limited to):

  • Journal
  • packing tape (lots),
  • vinyl adhesive (assorted colors) printer shops usually have scraps to give,
  • student-generated text, images, and symbols,
  • scissors and/or exacto knives
  • bare conductive touchboard: https://www.bareconductive.com/shop/touch-board/
  • twisty wire
  • coin cell batteries and holders
  • LED lights
  • switches
  • tiny lilies for light function available at https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10899
  • Speakers
  • USB Plug (for connecting touchboard to an electrical outlet)
View “Body Sculpture Narrative” lesson plan

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

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