6. Critical Public Art Pedagogy

Ka-Ping Lee's regender translator offers a great springboard to begin discussing issues of gender identity in a contemporary context. The program literally re-writes "history" (i.e. Web pages) by changing gender pronouns.  Many, many contemporary art concepts can be introduced, including semiotics, intertextuality, remix, different modes of interface, and appropriation. I'll brainstorm some ways these ideas an be discussed in class below.

Semiotics: "the study of the signifying process of making meaning, of forming relationships, through the use of signs and symbols."

What does it mean that we use the male pronoun to describe human groups as a whole in English? 

Intertextuality: "situates meaning within worldviews espoused by discourses from an image’s changing contexts of reception."

What's different in a religious text's use of male pronouns to describe a creator than other languages and cultures?

Remix: "opportunity to "talk back" to a dominant message that is being encoded in visual culture."

Why does it feel so strange to change gendered pronouns? How can we change this in the future?

Modes of interface: "a site at which visual and textual modes are interwoven but also confront and mutually interrogate each other” (Smith & Watson, 2002, p. 21).

How has the Web's instantaneous content creation (and meaning-making) affect our art-making process, and how can we use this to our advantage?

Appropriation: "art works being taken and used by another artist in a manner that causes the original image to take on a new or different idea than what the original image was intended to."

How can we express these new thoughts so others may understand them?

I was immediately drawn to the potentials that Lee's method of transforming dominant perceptions could be applied to the creation of visual art in the classroom. I realized that one way this could occur is through digital manipulation. Perhaps students studying digital arts could "re-gender" well-known works. For example, the profile on an image of a US dime could be altered from that of FDR to his wife, Eleanor. American Gothic could be manipulated to showcase a different power dynamic between father and daughter (notice how the female portrait stares off into space, while the male character stares straight into the viewers space, causing subject interpellation). George Washington's facial features in his official Presidential portrait could be edited to reflect those of Harriet Tubman's. 

Here's a quick "digital sketch" of the dime idea. 

Dime design of FDR

Dime design using Eleanor Roosevelt and "Goddess"

Images used from:

http://services.tomfolio.com/gibsonsbooks/images/lifeeleanor.jpg

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/40200/40207/dime_front_40207.htm