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Posts Tagged: politics

THE HISTORY HOUSE

the-history-house

The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.

-Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

I created this piece as part of a racial justice poster project. When coming up with ideas for the design, I knew that I wanted to create something that speaks to and pays tribute to the personal, internal growth from which movements for justice are born.

In the 23 years of my little life, I’ve been blessed to have walked alongside crazy cool people with wild, contradictory, profound stories. What I’ve gathered is that we’ve all come to understand and work for racial justice in different ways. Sometimes they mesh, other times they clash. At the same time, activism is changing. In this age of information, good PR is reality, something that every powerful institution is utilizing with deadening precision. Glossy commodified justice is circulated and consumed, while everyday struggles are left unreported, ridiculed, or tokenized.

For me at this point in time, this means taking it back to basics. Even as an artist, it would be stupid to think that one poster I make or even a lifetime of work could herald a movement or a better world. There are too many creative and dedicated people out there for it to be that easy. What I can do is share the things that have affected and inspired me: to learn, to be a better person, to do more for the people I know and would like to know.

I really like this quote by José Rizal cos it sums up something so simple yet easy to forget:

He who does not know how to look back at the place from which he came will never arrive at his destination.

Or in everyday speak:

No history, no self. Know history, know self.

This has been a root and guiding principle in my own life. It’s also been a sort of restorative when shit gets complicated or overwhelming. I like to think that racial justice isn’t a fight but a part of who I am. This piece is an effort to visualize the natural and restorative core of racial justice: a retreat into the elements, the mind, and one’s own trek through life.

But enough with the cheese! To show my appreciation for the zombies stoners good people who visit my bloggy, I am giving away a few prints. Yes yes… free stuff!! They are full-color digital prints (17 x 11″) via Autumn Express in San Francisco. Just email me at dnm.choi (at) gmail (dot) com and mention the blog, we’ll talk.

But you can wake up younger under the knife

haitian-girl-davidchoe

Haitian Girl by David Choe. A limited number of prints are for sale online, with all proceeds going to Yele Haiti, Wyclef Jean’s foundation.

I have a hard time writing in here about things that are truly important… or tragic and incomprehensible to me. I feel like unless my talk is backed up by substantive action, it trivializes the very cause it supposedly stands by. Hence the disproportionate amount of tongue-in-cheekery and not much of anything else.

So this is why I really appreciate writers who take the time to thoughtfully analyze difficult subjects and attempt to bridge that gap between theory and reality. Catherine Traywick of Hyphen has a great blog series called Idealize This!, which discusses practical issues encountered by people working for change. The latest is on photography and relief, specifically in Haiti — something that I’ve (less articulately) pondered.

She writes:

In the aftermath of the earthquake that decimated Port-au-Prince weeks ago, journalists have worked ’round the clock to keep the flickering screens and hungry eyes of their eager public perpetually engaged. And we, in turn, have consumed, without pause, photo essay upon photo essay of devastated Haitians climbing bloody out from under piles of debris, desperate Haitians knocking over little boys, and homeless Haitians sleeping without shelter, among many other startling images captured by news photographers with Pulitzer-sized dreams (after all, Haiti’s last disaster earned this guy one!).

And we are so moved by these terrible, suspended fragments of another’s life that it may not occur to us that the bloody woman we saw rising from beneath blocks of concrete probably saw a photographer’s lens before she saw the faces of her rescuers. Nor do we wonder whether she’ll get a dime if her photo wins him any awards.

But that’s nothing new. Photojournalism has always been an ethically shady enterprise. Whether Steve McCurry’s portrait of the reluctantly compliant “Afghan Girl” or Kevin Carter’s voyeuristic photo of a starving Sudanese baby, the trade has long borne a paradoxical reputation; while widely regarded as a public service, it nevertheless entails a level of detachment that is antithetical to most conventional conceptions of “service.” It’s a topic I’ve written about before, and one that I continually revisit, particularly as I get to know more photographers and especially as I strive to critique the ethical implications of my own journalistic projects.

She goes on to detail the work of orgs like PhotoPhilanthropy, which positions ethical photojournalism as a process rather than just an outcome.

And in the end, there’s no perfect formula for photographers or artists to both serve others and receive recognition for their work. It’s a personal, situational issue that requires, at the very least, a whole lot of self-reflection. Just finding out that the answer is that there is no answer is a struggle in itself.

As Eliza Gregory of PhotoPhilanthropy writes, “I think great art surprises us—it can come from anywhere, and be about anything. So I don’t think you have to be from a community to chronicle it with beauty and subtlety. But, it’s also very easy to become a hapless messiah, a benevolent imperialist, or simply someone who is not actually helping anyone. “

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28
Jan 10

Not your textbook history.

howard_zinn
Artwork by Robert Shetterly. From the painting:

The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such complicated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.

Howard_Zinn_1945 Howard Zinn passed on Wednesday. Well-known as the author of some little book called A People’s History of the United States, he’s an air force bombardier turned shipyard worker turned college kid turned prolific historian and activist.

He was born in 1922 and lived for 87 years. 87 YEARS. Somewhere along the way, a 16-year-old twat picked up A People’s History, was creeped by how tragic and complicated history actually was, and had to put it down. And so began the unraveling of everything I once believed to be true… and it continues today. Truth stings (but feels so damn good), ya know?

Check out Democracy Now!’s tribute with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove. Rest in peace Howard Zinn.

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7
Dec 09

Lets go to Copenhagen

Today’s a special day, dammit. It’s the first day of the 2-week Copenhagen Climate Summit– an international convening of delegates from over 190 countries to discuss global climate solutions. The photo, by isafrancesca, is from the WTO protests in Seattle 10 years ago. Then as now, activists from around the world are converging upon the city in the hopes of influencing what goes down behind closed doors. Stay posted on live happenings from Copenhagen via Democracy Now, Climate Connections, and Indigenous Environmental Network.

In my quest to understand the ins and outs of this biz, I’ve come across this lovely video by Annie Leonard that effectively summarizes cap and trade, which is the climate change solution that our prez is cheerleading for. Basically, cap and trade = protecting business as usual. I would give you a better summary… but that’s what the video is for!

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25
Nov 09

[Linkage] The weekend is here and its only Wednesday.

This video is TIGHT! Makes me love Oakland (more than I already do, that is). Lifted from Oakland Local, a community news source that is fast becoming one of my personal faves.

I HATE STUPID SHITS

As for the photo, I was coming across way too many of these to ignore it any longer! See the ugly original (or don’t). For more on dumb shits pretending to make art off of the backs tits of their superiors: here, here, and here.

The fight for public education in CA is heating up. With strikes/occupations on campuses up and down the state– UCLA, CCSF, SF State, UCSC, UC Davis, CSU Fresno, Berkeley, and the UCOP office– plus a massive letter-writing campaign, statewide action planned for March 4, and a broad coalition of workers, students and faculty…. well, I’d be a little nervous if I was an administrator. There is some hope in the world!

Did you know it could be easy (maybe even fun) to track policy and government spending? I sure didn’t, until I came across this listing of government transparency projects that work to make data accessible to us.

Radical queer activists team up to fight hate crime legislation. Yasmin Nair details the work against “enhanced sentencing” and asks: “Is jailing people for their prejudice really going to curtail bigotry and prejudice? Or will it just end up policing thought and filling the coffers of the prison industrial complex?”

There was an Asian American blogger convening in LA last weekend, and apparently it was packed with drama. I feel sad that I missed out on the excitement… but in all seriousness, it sounds like a lot of good people interested in seeing change. Gotta start somewhere. Plus honesty goes a long way.

OH SHITS it’s a four-day weekend!!!! For the occasion, words of wisdom shared by my sister-from-another-mother :)

“eta Thanksgiving nah, ora nesay” – it’s not Thanksgiving when they took everything.”