Monday: Response to first 7A Lecture

When I walked into the first day of 7A lecture I was already excited. I had heard from many friends that it was a fun and definitely worthwhile class to take. Kip Fulbeck's reputation had preceded him and I already knew that he was a dynamic teacher from when he guest lectured my 1C class in Fall. I took a seat and lecture began to open my eyes to the convergence of Art and Life.

The definition of art is something that I as an art major have struggled with for a while now. In the modern art scene, I have definitely had moments where I've disagreed with some things being classified as art. For classification, you need a definition though, and I was never able to create my own definition that encompassed the many forms of art that there are, yet dis included the things that I thought were pretty much total crap. The definition that Kip presented with the quote "Make meaning happen" by Eleanor Antin opened up new horizons of art that I am curious to see during the course of the class.

The value and impression of the icon was an overarching theme in lecture. Kip showed videos, art, and photographs that all had an impact on virtually everyone in the room. It is amazing how powerful an icon can be and its such an interesting concept that an artist to be able to use the social connotations of an image and manipulate them to convey meaning through creation of artwork. Obviously this has been done since the beginning of art, but the lecture really brought it to light the subconscious processes that I had already been experiencing while viewing art, magazines, advertisements, and any other visual material that surrounds me in my life.

Personally, I found the video by Matt Harding for wherethehellismatt.com and the video by Jimmy Wong as a response to the Asians in the library video by Alexandra Wallace to be particularly powerful. I thought that the video where Matt Harding is dancing in so many places was extremely moving especially when other people joined in. He went to so many places and even in poverty stricken areas the people who joined into his dance had a moment of joy and pure fun in their days that I would imagine are often hard and a lot more serious. It was a celebration of movement in a carefree way that could unite people all over the world. Jimmy Wong in addition to being very talented, had a great and creative response to a current hugely negative event in viral video history. It was a powerful response because most people respond with uncreative negative or reprimanding comments but his video was neither of those. It is definitely art that provided social commentary in a very positive way and that is sadly rare in our society.