The academic life has finally arrived in full force and most free-spirited summer pastimes I had so fully enjoyed were abandoned with a sigh of regret. To make up for it, I have been trying to merge together as well as juxtapose as many of the current studying activities with the creative musings I wholeheartedly enjoy. Without further ado, I include an essay of mine, part-private musings and part-reflections on the recent work and experiences:
The media occupies an unquestionably significant position in the modern society. It has many faces and can be generally described as a tool to deliver and store information. Fine art, advertising, news and print are only a few descriptive adjectives that can come in front of the malleable word “media.” Media is as much an artistic self-expression of a director playing with a blend of French New Wave and a musical comedy in creating a new film genre as it is a political article dealing with voting system tampering in the developing countries. Why are two seemingly distinct concepts similar?
What unites an artistic film and politics here is media. When we watch a movie, we learn the plot of the film as well as the vision of the director who expresses a certain view of a time period, an event or a concept. Where the movie, unless a documentary, relates its information in a symbolic and wrap around way, the news are made to deliver a strong message clearly and without bias. Media often claims to be transparent and dispassionate, however, it is often skewed by the government and accepted cultural preferences. More often than not rather than seeking out and reporting the truth to people, the media itself has the tools to actively influence and mold the public opinion. Therefore, media has the power to enlighten but also the power to deliberately mislead its consumers and undermine their trust. Moreover, today, with an ever-increasing instant stream of information via youtube.com and various blogs, the excess of unregulated media has multiplied, lowering not only the credibility of its informative sources but also questioning the journalistic integrity in general. “Mediascapes,” a term coined by Arjun Appadurai and referring to the landscapes of information in the scope of transnational media sharing is extremely relevant now. In the modern time with rocket-fast connectivity, the accountability of media is at its lowest point and consumer must use his critical thinking when accessing the information and analyzing its actuality.
As a response to all the various thoughts on the subject of media that have been occupying me lately, I chose to make a collage. In my mind it speaks on several levels just as the layers of mixed media piece are combined to create a single but multidimensional structure. My work, called “Mind Games” is a diptych, consisting of two separate unattached panels. The first panel is a 15’x30’ canvas with four smaller canvases symmetrically layered on top. The canvases are painted in black and gold acrylic and feature an animal skull, metal pins, cutouts from vintage record illustrations and copies of old black and white photographs of films. One of the smaller canvases in the bottom right corner contains a poem by the 13th century Persian theologian and mystic Rumi. The second larger panel of 30’x30’ also contains several canvases but, as opposed to the first work, the three canvases are layered on top of each other like a pyramid. The base canvas layer features a nude color along with black and gold. In addition to pins, photos and illustration clippings, the panel displays newspaper clippings, an image of a woman holding a baby and lyrics to a rock song.
“Mind Games” is a critical study of media. According to Arjun Appadurai, “‘Mediascapes,’ whether produced by private or state interests, tend to be image-centered, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality, and what they offer to those who experience and transform them is a series of elements.” “Mind Games” feature an abundance of media sources presented by the published world (newspaper clippings, poem, written lyrics), visual arts (posters, illustration cutouts) and film (black and white photography from the film sets). My collages, however, do not only reflect on the multifaceted plethora of media elements centered on images but also highlight their significance and potential danger through symbolism. For example, the obvious visual reference of the nurse woman to Virgin Mary highlights the religious cult-like status of information gathering today. Most people cannot phantom their lives without constant updates from various media sources online and in print. We are the generation who constantly feeds their minds and feels lost and isolated if the stream of information is interrupted due to a technical difficulty. The golden handprint, in its play on meanings, can both signify the human “imprint” and possible bias on the produced information and the media “imprint” on the minds of its consumers. Poem by Rumi is an example of yet another form of ancient media. Back in the day most historical events, current and considered news at the time, were passed on to the new generations via poems, fables and fairy tales. An excerpt from the poem here tells a personal story and an exquisitely subjective one, which begs a question – how objective is all media?
The skull is the most controversial part of “Mind Games” as it signifies a mind that is both alive and dead. It is alive because it is a real skull and not a plastic replica, yet it is dead because the animal it belonged to is obviously no longer living. Symbolically, the mind would reside in the brain inside the skull, yet the skull is empty signifying our brains’ vacuum in absorbing information without questioning it. It also signifies death of trust and death of selectiveness. Police separator reading danger and on/off signs go along with the skull symbolism and its mind connotations. Although you can turn the source delivering the message on and off, you can never completely mute your mind to it once you are subjected to its information and subjectivity. While according to Marshall McLuhan media can give “the global village” a voice and identity, in my opinion it can also be overpowering to the point where it develops a life of its own mutating the minds of people coming into contact with it.
To sum it all up, the pins sequence reading “Sinful Delinquency” once again emphasizes the information following “cult” and its possible misdemeanors on the minds of its loyal listeners and observers. “Mind Games” is not an all-negative critique of the modern media but a warning sign to keep one’s mind open to challenges and capable of selective analysis. The movies taken to extreme challenge our notions of beauty and already show great influence on the self-esteem of the growing generation of girls. Music and fiction can inspire and relax but also instill radical ideas. News channels, often claiming their unbiased standpoint, promote governmental preferences and propaganda. All of my examples are taken to extreme on purpose to highlight the possible influences of media on the minds of consumers, challenging them at best and altering them at worst.
What “Mind Games” call for is a diversity of media that like a jigsaw puzzle has many elements that go together to create an environment of growth cooperation and increasing knowledge and self-awareness. Just like the “global soul” of Pico Iyer, the global media should sum up its collection of separate sources into a new harmonious and more advanced whole.
Bibliography:
Appadurai, Arjun. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. The Globalization Reader. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2000
Iyer, Pico. The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home. Vintage, 2001
