So, I made the mistake of picking a performing arts degree, so I spend most of my days pondering how pointless of a degree it is. I did manage to pick a module about performance protest, and while some of it gets a bit bullshitty, there’s been other parts like looking at native American performance/protest at the Dakota pipeline and stuff, which have been interesting and useful.
Yesterday there was some group work. It was a bit of a brainstorming exercise but as a group we settled on the idea of spamming the illegal immigrant report line/letterbox with shit so that new reports wont go through. Ok, it’s nothing amazing, but it served the purpose of the exercise we were given.
Then this girl speaks up. Previously her contribution to class has been telling everyone about how she culturally enriched herself by going on holiday in places where poor people exist.
On our idea, she says that it might be illegal to do, so we should create a fake website and have people fill that in as a symbolic message.
A FAKE WEBSITE FILLED IN AS A SYMBOLIC MESSAGE
At that moment I realised why the arts seem so useless at changing things. It’s jam packed with trust fund kiddies.
that is complete insanity. what could possibly drive someone to have that thought at my young age? To remove all potency from the tiniest little act. Seriously ghoulish.
I got suspended once for an art project in high school that involved portraying nazis as literal demons that were burning in hellfire. After my art teacher (who gave me the assignment to portray the most evil I could think of) defended me, I could return on the condition I would change my artwork to remove references to nazis. Meanwhile, I had literal white power necklace wearing skinheads in my class. I remember that one of the main demons had a swastika on its forehead, and I changed it to a dollar sign after. (okay remember I was a 14-year-old edge lord at the time that wasn’t very subtle). A week later, the art piece got ‘lost’ and I got a passing grade.
Looking back, it was a pretty successful art piece. It made me aware of how people like to put evil things under the rug/ignore it for comfort rather than to expose it and fight it.
One time in high school I wrote an essay about how it would be cool to track down and burn every confederate flag in the country. I requested this essay be read aloud in the class, but was told it was too extreme. The teacher had a whole litany of notes in red ink on my essay, criticizing my hatred of the confederacy and southern reactionaries. At one point he even wrote “Think about the heritage the flag represents, not the hatred you say it represents”
My essay was returned to me, I was told to pick a different topic, and I had to go to the school counselor for three days for “violent thoughts.” A few days later someone carved a homophobic slur into my locker.
Yes I grew up in the south
“Think about the heritage the flag represents, not the hatred you say it represents”
ah I see, YOU are the problem here, not the people who fought a war to own slaves. Lovely stuff.
I got sent to the counselor after writing an essay with the prompt “what can students like you do to stop climate change?”
Luckily, the counselor was a lefty, and just said “It’s my professional duty to ask the following: you gonna hurt anyone?” Then we chatted about radical Hip-Hop for the remaining 25 minutes.
Getting sent to the counselor for violent thoughts isn’t the worst.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zNbiopIAARQ Same, kinda
