“De-capitalizing my design practice” is a fancy way of saying “I’m an artist, and I’m sensitive about my shit.”
Packet #2 Writing Focuses on the art of biographical and autobiographical storytelling. Stories are things we tell ourselves to make our lives make sense. No human life is without t(T)rauma, or grief. We also experience joy, peace, laughter, love. Each side of the human experience deserves equal measure and honor. How do we tell the heavy parts of our stories without hijacking the nervous system, or spiralling into bitterness? How do we tell the lighter parts without gaslighting or spiritually bypassing the heavy ones?
Packet #2 Design/Art thinking and making focuses on the practice of visual storytelling in art and design practices. How can lived experiences be moved through inspiration, and creation as a way of healing the self, and others, and creating empathy, community?
What potential sits in this process that push the evolution of the way design is taught, and practiced?
Anna Tsouhlarakis' solo exhibition "Indigenous Absurdities"
“Galleries are not feel-good places as much as they are classrooms for difficult learning. Most of us see this as a necessary reckoning, overdue and legitimate in most cases, and it is bound to continue for some time. But it is not much fun for the paying customers who go to see the shows. They endure the situation because they feel they ought to, sometimes because they want to understand and grow, and sometimes because they want to alleviate whatever feelings of guilt they might be carrying due to their own acquiescence to the enduring inequities of our world.
Whatever the reason, the aura of displeasure is so pervasive that the MCA goes to considerable lengths here to let viewers know they can actually laugh out loud at the objects created by Boulder-based artist Anna Tsouhlarakis.
In her short, opening statement, which greets viewers at the museum and sets the tone for their visit, curator Leilani Lynch employs the word “humor” five times and the word “joke” three times. In just three paragraphs, she also squeezes in “levity,” “playfully,” “amusing,” “ridiculous,” “snarky” and “sarcastic.”
“I’m not a comedian, but I try to find the funny parts of a situation. I enjoy making people laugh.”
Working in the sublime requires that you are in tune with mind and body-sometimes we need to react and let our body help us solve the problem
My reply to these questions is:
We who have suffered must have some say in how that suffering is interpreted. We won the right, through our scars, to discern the significance of what we endured. My grasp of that significance begins with my experiences of God when I was a child on my knees in front of my twin bed, hands clasped and eyes shut tight in prayer, repeating the simplest of prayers: “Help.”
—The Atlantic - Esau McCaulley
mexicanism =
doing the maximum with the minimum
The true measure of success is a calm nervous system.
ART
Art is highly sensitive people reporting back to the group what reality is like.
Alain De Botton
Art compensates for our poor memories.
Art increases in value when the memory we are capturing is significant, the more significant, and the more fragile, the more we value the work.
Art should serve the needs of our psyche.
Mark Rothko
“I have a sadness in me, you have a sadness in you, and my paintings are an invitation for our sadness to meet and therefore feel less sad.”
TRAUMA
Trauma is three sentences that live in your nervous system. A story is carried in the memory. These are two very different places within the physical body.
HUMOR
Comedy is like serving people medicine in their orange juice.
Perrito, estoy celosa de tu duende.
Home is where the homies is.
Things I Have Recently Learned About Myself:
I have:
ADD - a term used for people who have excessive difficulties with attention regulation.
Misophonia - A disorder in which certain sounds trigger emotional or physiological responses that might be perceived as unreasonable given the circumstance. Those who have misophonia might describe it as when a sound “drives you crazy.”
Aphantasia - Is a characteristic some people have related to how their mind and imagination work. Having it means you don't have a visual imagination, you are unable to create images in your mind.
My Attachment style is:
52% Secure
12% Disorganized
20% Anxious
16% Avoidant
Something I Have Known Since I was a child:
I am a Pisces (thanks mom).
The Overton window is an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. It says politicians can act only within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window.
The most important thing about the Overton window, however, is that it can be shifted to the left or the right, with the once merely “acceptable” becoming “popular” or even imminent policy, and formerly “unthinkable” positions becoming the open position of a partisan base. The challenge for activists and advocates is to move the window in the direction of their preferred outcomes, so their desired outcome moves closer and closer to “common sense.”
IN MY DNA
In what ways are my ancestors sharing themselves with me, calling me back to them? I’ve been focused on Spanish language learning which is a bridge that will connect me to the living, but perhaps there are languages that my family on the other side is speaking that have been hearing but not comprehending/ noticing?
VISUAL THOUGHTS
Mrs. Stewart / Cars that go boom
Cuidate on a yellow cone
Amate/target of intimacy Amantes
Animation of a balloon in the wind aggressively whacking someone in the face over and over.
A tiered wedding cake merged with a “caution/cuidado” cone.
Hypothetical Book/Project Idea:
Reparenting Yourself In Your 40’s
A latch-key kid’s guide to finally growing the fuck-up.