Extra Credit

            Last Thursday, I went to Urban Interventions Conference at the little theatre. The first person to present was our professor Dahlia Elsayed. She started her presentation talking about art in city that the landscape of our city change rapidly and it is not a fixed place. Then she talked about how we can relate and connect to a hidden stories by using text and context through art. As an example, she showed us the rug that her great grandmother made and described the rug in a formal analysis, stylistic analysis, and contextual analysis. Her grandmother was from the Egypt and it was interesting that each symbols on the rug were representing something. For example, there was a symbol of pride on the bottom of the rug and the rug also had a symbol of representing where she physically was from. This gave the audience an example of how text and context can be related to art and that art also has a hidden story in it.

            Professor Dahlia also showed us her works that she has done. It was interesting that most of her works used words and it was not a 2D or 3D but 4D. She showed us how she approached as a work by using a lot of text on landscape. One of the work that impressed me was the one that she went up to the top of the mountain and stick the flags made by a toilet paper that has a words in it. One of the words were like how it feels to be on top of the mountain after climbing. It was emotional and the art that she did had a story with a plot and a setting. The word and the physical space was connected.

            Moreover, she talked about a map and it was interesting that she mentioned about the author related to the map. We tend to look at the map for the location and we usually don’t think about the author most of the time. However, it is true that map also have author and by thinking about who made it, the center of the map can be changed. I was able to acknowledge how we are accustomed to looking at the mark on the map and believe them to be true.

            Next person who made a presentation was Pricilla Stadler and the work she showed was about ‘fragile city’. She used textiles to build buildings in different ways. She showed us how we can involve the art by participating and having interaction to the society.

            One of the work that she did was to activate art for the neighborhood that can’t afford their living. She focused on food justice and worked with gardeners to make sculpture of tree. On the tree, she put an apple that she made. The neighbors of town gathered and picked out the apple and they were told to write what they want to grow in their neighborhood. This activity made kids and adults of that neighborhood to participate and talk to each other. It was very emotional.

            At the end of her presentation, she talked about fragile city and asked how we think about fragile city. When I thought about fragile city, I thought of a ghost town, feeling of anxiety that it will be destruct soon and feeling of change. Pricilla told us we actually deal with changing every day and that fragile city is vulnerable like the residents who are living in that city or town.

            The last presentation was by Ricardo who is an immigrant. He is a photographer and he introduced himself through a video. He was very active with his work to show that immigrants are not criminals and that they are in the US with a hope to have a better life. He took pictures of people holding words like “leadership”, “not a rapist”, and etc. The works that he did was very attractive and it really grabbed the attention in the convention. I was really fascinated by his work and it was interesting how he conveyed his opinion, thought through his works.

            This art convention was really fresh to me and I learned how art can be emotional by applying it in our society and by participating with many people.