Concerned Citizen

Addison Jenkins, USGA President

In her essay “Human Rights and Culture: From Datastan to Storyland” Arlene Goldbard analyses the intimate relationship between stories, culture, and inherent human rights. Through her work, Goldbard explores ideas of societal recalibration, the efficacies of cultural roots, and the strong people who forward their causes.  She insightfully states, “...we understand that the resilience that sustains communities in times of crisis is rooted in culture, in the stories of survival and social imagination that inspire people to a sense of hope and possibility even in dark times.”

Our society is not without its crises and dark times; luckily, people like Addison Jenkins--an impressively mustacheoid man in charge of former-BYU support group USGA (Understanding Same Gender Attraction)-- are willing to actively involve themselves in providing Goldbard’s hope and possibility in their community.

As a student at BYU and a queer male, Addison understands how hard it can be to strike a healthy balance between personal tendencies and institutional expectations. Because queer tendencies are so vehemently discouraged around the BYU campus, it is often difficult for the LGBTQIA+ community to find the positive support they need to cope with the social backlash and controversy that surrounds their sexuality and gender identities. Addison himself struggled to admit his own homosexuality. Now, however, he is actively working to provide a safe and supportive community for other queer BYU students.

Our video reflects Addison’s careful attention to the needs of his USGA members. Since a queer identity can be difficult to admit-- especially at a place like BYU-- Addison respectfully requested that we leave faces and identities out of our video. Faced with this challenge, we shot plenty of b-roll footage at the library where they were having their meeting and superimposed Addison’s interview over the top.

For Keith, this assignment was an eye-opening excursion. Finding a person at BYU with different viewpoints and a different lifestyle was striking. We discovered a new diversity in our culture-- our concerned citizen lives in a balancing act between religion, school, and sexuality, and he is actively working to help other queer people strike their own balance.

Role Assignment Chamber

World Building

Different Bodies, Different World

        In his essay on design fiction, Julian Bleecker explores the relationship between science, fiction, and design. Essentially, Blecker concludes that the three are invariably connected when it comes to how we perceive, understand, and create the world around us. If we look at today’s artifact culture as an example, we are surrounded by items that help us function smoothly in society. Cars allow us to get around, beauty products make people look younger and more attractive, psychological and social sciences inform us how other people work, textbooks teach doctors how to fix bodies, etc. One of the most fitting representations of our culture is, perhaps, the magazines such as Time or Cosmopolitan that synthesize our advertisements, trends, theories, and sexual attractions into one concise representation of our world.
        So what if our world were different than it is now? What if we changed something fundamentally and watched a new culture, a new design, a new magazine develop from the results? Our group decided to develop this new design culture in a world where people woke up in different bodies every day.
        The first cultural design element that would change is our experience of human aesthetic. Suddenly, we wouldn’t have the constancy of our bodies to rely on every day. Our group figured that body shape, size, color, etc. would lose most of their significance. Makeup as an enhancer of physical features would, therefore, be useless. People would, however, be looking for ways to distinguish themselves every day. A name tag, of sorts, constructed with cosmetics. Instead of relying on faces for recognition, people might depend on individual makeup branding.
        With our ever changing aesthetic and cosmetic insignias, we would need a different convention for defining attractiveness. Perfume fits the bill. Scent is a non-visual element, yet it plays a major role in human magnetism and sexuality. We decided that if all visual cues for allure were gone, scent alone would define youth, fertility, and beauty.
        Since we would not be able to control our changing bodies or their internal health, health care in our hypothetical world is based on the idea that body transitions aren’t all that comfortable. If we lived in a world where everyone’s body was constantly being altered, it would be logical that the healthcare system would try to make those transitions as painless as possible. Most health would be devoted to giving sedatives to people who experience painful transitions.
        Psychology introduces another interesting aspect of a changing society. How do people rationalize individual identity with such a liquid physical representation of self? How, more specifically, can parents teach their children self esteem when the idea of ‘self’ is so abstractly disconnected from anything concrete? At least for this issue of our magazine, we decided to focus on the development of a consistent sense of self as a spotlight issue in psychology.

Webspinna Battle

Open-Interpretation, Cyborg Makeup, and Shameless Thievery

When we were talking about the Webspinna project in class the week before we were to do It I was honestly very confused. I looked forward to dressing up, being creative and performing but I just did not understand what we were actually doing. I was kind of frustrated for a bit about having such little direction. Now that all is said and done I am really grateful for the lack of direction because it helped to foster creativity and get my mind going. It kind of reminds me of the difference between 2001 a Space Odyssey the book and 2001 A Space Odyssey the film.

The book gives specific descriptions and explanations of most of the concepts and ideas and even goes as far as to explain the purpose of the monoliths. The film on the other hand gives little to no explanation of anything happening at any point. While I don't think one way is better than the other ( I honestly prefer the book) it's hard to deny that the film is more successful in getting your mind turning and thinking in ways that it has rarely had to think before. This push was what made the experience such a fun event for the class. We were all in the same boat of confusion and it made it easy to share ideas and interpretations.

Our internet pirate vs. FBI warning battle started, oddly enough, with a costume idea. Kyler knew he wanted to dress up as Captain Jack Sparrow, and a day later he came up with the idea of cyborg makeup. Neither of us really knew what to do beyond that point, though. Cyborg Jack Sparrow? How would we sculpt a grand conceptual battle from that?

The ultimate idea birthed itself from our readings about plagiarizing, copying, and ‘borrowing’ other people’s art for our own purpose. The line (if there even is one) between Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence’ and the dozens of other works he referenced, quoted, and cited is very thin. Lethem’s essay depended entirely upon our foreknowledge and associations with other pieces of literature. So. Was it original? Was it clever? Was it Lethem’s own work, or did he….. pirate it?

With these questions rolling around in our minds, the only logical interpretation of Kyler’s costume idea was internet piracy. Our webspinna battle would be a decisive fight between the scumbags of digital downloading and the high morals of the FBI Anti-Piracy warning. Right vs. wrong. Dark vs. light. Property rights vs. free access and rights-free media manipulation.

Ironically, we relied on that free access and rights-free media manipulation to pull off our battle. We took other people’s creations and blatantly misappropriated their meaning, intention, and result for our own selfish use. Our web battle spun itself into an original anti-piracy ad made exclusively from pirated materials.

And if that doesn’t represent art, I don’t know what does.

Textual Poaching

Selfie

"It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easy, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

--Marjorie Williams Bianco, "The Velveteen Rabbit"

        I don’t know what my body looks like. Does that seem strange? This vessel I live in-- have lived in since birth—should be the most concrete thing in my life. I should be able to look at my body and be comforted by its constancy. By its reality. By my ownership of it. But I can’t.
        Body Dysmorphic Disorder is characterized by obsessive thoughts about trivial or nonexistent flaws in one’s body, often resulting in a distorted body perception and deep shame.
        My body is an enigma to me. Every time I see it in the mirror, it looks different than it did before. Distorted, somehow, and new, with varied imperfections popping up every time I scrutinize it. Sometimes it feels like the mirror is melting in front of me, distorting my perception of myself beyond recognizability, beyond hope, beyond love.
        The only way I know what I look like is through old pictures. Pictures taken months or years ago, where my face and body are captured inalterably in time. Pictures don’t shift. They aren’t projections of my perceptions, they simply are, and I can usually trust the way I look in them.
        “Selfie” explores this fragmented, constructivist way I see myself. I photoshopped identity-defining photos of my body, my eyes, my nose, my torso, my hands, and even my favorite hairstyle over a Jean Metzinger's "Tea Time" painting. True to its cubist heritage, this painting looks like a shattered conglomeration flesh-colored shapes. It suggests a body with shape and form and color, but it remains abstract. Disjointed. Unsure of its own reality. Cubist paintings explore visual existence from every point of perception. Pieced together from these shards of ulterior perspective, cubism almost perfectly represents the way I have found my body. My body is a hodgepodge of old social media photographs pieced together into a frankenstinian reality—still distorted, maybe, but significantly more realistic than the way I see myself in the mirror.
        The longer I exist with my cubist body, the more I understand Marjorie Bianco’s quote from “The Velveteen Rabbit”. With the help of old pictures, other perspectives, and the ideals of cubism, my body is slowly Becoming. Becoming what? Something perfect? Something untainted by distortion? Not quite. My body may never become something constant, but it can become Real to me. My disjointed perception probably won’t be beautiful—like Bianco's rabbit, I’ll have handled it and obsessed over it so many times that my perception gets shabby and overworked. At least I’ll have that perception, though. And I think any perception, new or worn, loved or unloved, is beautiful as long as it’s Real.