NYC Tattoo Documentary

thank you for filling in some of the gaps and bringing your insight and views. i’m out in nyc and it’s tough to know exactly what’s happening on the grown in my hometown (davis) from the other side of the country. it’s interesting how messages are blurred/skewed/diluted/and in some cases totally lost as they travel through cyber space. the first headlines i read and live video streams i viewed only mentioned OWS. subsequent accounts and articles making observations about James Alex’s work use OWS tags, but few make reference to OWS in the actual article/posting/etc. and even fewer mention the reason for the UC sit-ins. i was aware of the tuition hikes, but didn’t realize this group differentiated itself from OWS. i was also unaware of the protestors who were focused on making a statement about police brutality. information flows so quickly with so many sources and citizen journalism (not complaining - i think it is great and it makes me wonder who differently things might have gone down during past conflicts if we had the world at our finger tips the way we do today.) i must have missed the connection between the police brutality and tuition protest. 

i agree, there has been a lot of very interesting art surfacing over the past couple of months. like you, seeing some of the images (and videos) really made me feel sick to my stomach. there has go to be a better way! if a group of people want to gather and protest, they have that right. my question is - what is it that people are hoping to get out of the time they’ve devoted to this? for an example, if the dean or chancellor or whomever makes these decisions were to stand up tomorrow and say “we decided not to raise tuition as drastically as planned. resent events brought this issue to our attention and we will do everything in our power to resolve the problem(s). we want to open our doors to any of you who can fit in the meeting hall to help us brainstorm ideas and come up with ways to bring the price back down to a manageable level.  If that happened, would the majority of the UC students leave the quad, say goodbye to their new OWS cronies and go home and call it a day? 

What are you studying at UCD?

fleecy:

nyctattoodoc:

i find this whole “art inspired by the police pepper spray response to protestors” to be absolutely fascinating. before these images started to go viral, i was in a conversation with a friend about our generation and art inspired by activism or activist art (like Dada during WWI or music from the ‘60’s). We were discussing how this “movement” (OWS) could possibly be told/shown through art. since there isn’t exactly a unified mission or goal, it’s hard to say what the narrative would be…it turns out, some power hungry, overly aggressive cop wrote the story for us. i wonder, though, is this to the detriment of a movement that was actually starting to pick up momentum? are people going to join OWS to protest police brutality now? does this shift the discussion away from the agenda (if there was ever an agenda to begin with) of the people occupying?

i’m intrigued.  

Sorry if you get two notifications, I accidentally auto-reblogged without typing out a response.

UCD’s movement was a response to what happened at UCB, the first rally last tuesday was to stand in solidarity with UCB against police brutality and increases in fee hikes in UC tuition.  Today’s general assembly was joined by those from Occupy Oakland and Occupy Sacramento, among others.  However, my campus’s particular movement is not the same as OWS.

‘The movement’ is not all one movement.  Of course many of the aims and goals are the same or similar as much of dialogue and methods are the same or similar, because all the problems we are all fighting against come from the same broken institutions.

As these movements are not all one unified movement, aims and goals will also not be unified.  As I’ve written earlier, I think to have one unified goal would be detrimental to everyone voicing their concerns (would everyone be able to voice different concerns within one unified goal?).

There is not just one narrative.  There are tons.  Every individual has their own values, their own issues, their own agency to express themselves.  These images are not the overall narrative, but they are opening up discussion to people who would otherwise be uninvolved, uncaring, or uninterested.

Besides this meme, and although I personally am skeeved out by a lot of violent imagery, I also think the art emerging through posters and infographics in these movements has been fantastic.

i find this whole “art inspired by the police pepper spray response to protestors” to be absolutely fascinating. before these images started to go viral, i was in a conversation with a friend about our generation and art inspired by activism or activist art (like Dada during WWI or music from the ‘60’s). We were discussing how this “movement” (OWS) could possibly be told/shown through art. since there isn’t exactly a unified mission or goal, it’s hard to say what the narrative would be…it turns out, some power hungry, overly aggressive cop wrote the story for us. i wonder, though, is this to the detriment of a movement that was actually starting to pick up momentum? are people going to join OWS to protest police brutality now? does this shift the discussion away from the agenda (if there was ever an agenda to begin with) of the people occupying?

i’m intrigued.  

how do we feel about Taylor Swift’s decision to write song lyrics on her arm? apparently this was during a dress rehearsal for her Speak Now Tour and the lyrics are from a Selena Gomez song.