Medium Specificity: Wax Blessing

The assignment:

"Each student will choose an artistic medium (film, photography, drawing, painting, medium, dance, performance, graphic design, poetry, literary narrative, etc.) and produce a work which explores the specific elements unique to that medium--like Brakhage or Daren’s films, Pollock’s paintings, Warhol’s prints, Cage’s music, etc. Artist statements should include a discussion of how this particular work functions as a celebration, commentary or critique of their chosen medium."

Wax Blessing

16 brief poems by Jeffrey Hein

beach

   beach death

   beach windbreaker

   beach skin

   beach cardtable

   nebraska beach

   beach girl

   beach screen



warehouse

   warehouse udder

   warehouse whistle

   warehouse chick

   warehouse bologna

   warehouse birdhouse

   warehouse coolness

   warehouse idiots

   warehouse dust

   warehouse candy



pillow

   pillow table

   pillow cat

   pillow allegiance

   pillows shatter when I rub them



miilk

   milk gold

   milk apartment

   milk silver

   milk silk

   milk polyester

   milk coral

   milk mucus



lip

   lip breath

   lip membrane

   lip informalness

   lip blood

   lip cockroach

   lip sand

   lip mustard

   lip mustache

   Americo

   lip sex

   lip bandaid

   lip Asia



hotel

   hotel ballroom

   hotel gypsy

   hotel amethyst

   hotel gravy

   hotel cockroach

   hotel dumpster

   hotel jellyfish

   hotel fluorescent

   motel pool



Artist's Statement

            When I approached this project, I knew that I wanted to create something that explored the effects of the written word. I love language, and I love the vague tangibility of it when it is written down rather than expressed verbally.

            I was originally inspired by several Twitter accounts. I don’t love everything about Twitter, but I love when writers make the most of it by using it for posts that could not carry the same meaning in the same way on any other platform. Accounts such as @dril and @NotTildaSwinton take advantage of Twitter by tweeting with intentional typos or intentionally obscure formatting.

.DAEHDOG
— Tilda Swinton (@NotTildaSwinton) May 24, 2012

awfully bold of you to fly the Good Year blimp on a year that has been extremely bad thus far
— wint (@dril) July 19, 2014

             Tweets such as this use the textual platform in a remarkable way. They would not have the same effect if someone merely stated “Godhead backwards" or recited @dril’s tweet (his breaking up of Goodyear into two words is not possible in the spoken word).

            As such, a few aspects of these poems reflect unusual formatting, such as the misspelling of milk as miilk in its subheading. However, I wanted to approach text in a way that I had not seen explored elsewhere, so, among other things, I focused my poems on the ways that two separate words can come together and create new images, ideas, feelings, and even meanings. Originally, I approached this project with a focus on connotation, and as such, some of the words I chose are rich with connotative meaning—at least to me (e.g., beach, cockroach, sex). I also used with little connotative meaning (e.g., allegiance, screen). I wanted to have some poems in which the two words are easily associable. For instance, “beach windbreaker” creates a very clear image in my mind of visiting a rocky beach on a cool, windy day. I was interested in how concrete this and other images could become from the mere juxtaposition of two words, even when they say nothing about each other. I also wanted to see what would happen when I connected two very disparate words, such as “milk coral,” which takes two vivid words and causes them to lose a lot of connotative meaning, also as a result of their juxtaposition.

            Although I tried to explore several other aspects of meaning, the final one I want to address is the subversion of expectation. Language is supposed to feel completely true and natural, and when it doesn’t, we can react quite drastically. One way I did this was through flat out lies—such as the subtitle. I intended for each pair of words to be its own poem; with that context, there are clearly more than sixteen poems here. I realized that language is the only way to lie in such a way—visuals and pure sound cannot so easily and completely falsify meaning. I also tried to subvert expectations with non sequiturs, such as “Americo.”

            I realize that this work is perhaps less self-reflexive than McClould’s comic, and, unlike his work, it is more of an exploration than an argument. However, I hope that these poems can be similarly valuable. In creating them, I found humor, delight, disgust, and even new emotional experiences. I hope readers can also find these things, although even if they don't, I am satisfied that it was a valuable process thanks to my own experience.

Historical Story: Jordan Hall

The assignment:

"Students will work in pairs to write a 4-6 page film script that takes place around some historical event (which took place before the students were born), and focuses on a character(s) who is either based on someone they know OR of their own creation (BUT is NOT a famous historical figure). Scripts are to utilize standard screenplay formatting. Artist statements should include a discussion of the dynamic between character (attitude, belief, behavior, etc.) and context (cultural practices, political climate, etc.). Students must reference at least 2 legitimate historical sources in their artists’ statement, discussing how the information they gathered in their research informed the creation of their script (including dialogue, scene descriptions, etc.)"

Read Jordan Hall by Brenna Empey and Jeffrey Hein

http://hostingmusic.tumblr.com/post/110602695270

http://hostingmusic.tumblr.com/post/110602580215

Philip Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford Prison Experiment has been reimagined and documented in countless ways throughout the past forty years, most recently in the form of a historical fiction film by director Kyle Patrick Alvarez – a film Brenna had the opportunity to see at the Sundance Film Festival. A day later, she was twenty pages deep in Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect, and would later come across clips from the documentary Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment with me. These somewhat morbid discoveries of ours led to a screenplay that closely follows the actual events of the experiment. In writing this screenplay, we thought it was particularly important that the dialogue and action feel as raw and natural as possible, because we are dealing with a historical event notorious for its disturbing truths. Although our writing includes events that did not happen, every line of contrived dialogue was intended to be an artistic representation of this history. To give the screenplay as much impact as possible, we hoped that keeping most situations authentic would allow the experience to be engaging and compelling without subtracting from what happened during these six days in the windowless basement of Jordan Hall.

“My biggest mistake was that there was no one supervising me. We [the professors] became part of the experiment and there was no one stopping us,” says Zimbardo in Quiet Rage. We thought that one of the most compelling ways of telling this story would be through one character, perhaps a “supervising” character, but also a character that does not fit the demographic of the white males propelling the story. Rather than fake or dramatize the experiences of real individuals, we used Lucie as an outside observer and a polar opposite of Zimbardo, Haney, and all the test subjects. As we are readers of history, Lucie mirrors our experience as people learning about this event — she barely sees anything, only hearing unnerving snippets of what is actually going on. Everything she hears while in the basement of Jordan Hall was taken directly from the prisoners’ real screams and pleas, which were transcribed by Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect. This restricted sort of experience reflects the way almost all historical events are perceived. Perhaps the most important aspect of Lucie’s polarity, in this context, is that she is an inherently good person confronted with an experiment literally intended to study the human capacity for evil. Although neither Zimbardo nor his test subjects were “evil,” per say, Lucie’s presence as a good person throws off the balance of the experiment, and incites questions about the actions and intentions of its participants. This screenplay is an intentional discussion of what would’ve happened if the “evil” Zimbardo studied in that summer of ’71 was interrupted by unanticipated “good.”

Process Piece: Deaf Cheerleading

The assignment:

"Students will work in pairs to produce a 1-2 minute audio piece documenting some type of process. In this case, a process is an act of human labor with a beginning, middle and an end. Artist statements should should include a discussion of both form and content in their creations, as well as both the process and the product of their own creative efforts."

For our process piece, we had planned on recording a deaf basketball game. This opportunity came up because Jeff’s sister is taking an ASL class and was required to attend various events as part of her grade. We thought this would be interesting because it was a process similar to one that nearly everyone is familiar with (basketball), but different enough that it would bring a new experience to everyone.

In the process of recording this process, we talked with Jeff's sister and her friends about ASL and about the deaf community. Something we learned was that deaf people don’t think of themselves as being disabled—they just see being deaf as a different way of perceiving.

As such, we wanted that mode of thought to be reflected in our documentary. In other words, we wanted the experience of listening to our piece to reflect the mindset of “experiencing something differently, rather than through a limited lens.” Thus, our piece is simply an unmediated piece of audio, rather than being several sounds edited together. It also has no narration and no explanation—just a different way of experiencing the process (having no visuals).

We decided that the clearest process we could show in 1-2 minutes in this fashion was the halftime show, put on by one of the teams’ cheerleading squad (all of its members were also deaf), so that’s what our piece documents. We moved the final buzzer closer to the end of the routine to keep the piece brief, but other than that the process is reflected completely without interference.

In this piece, the sound that is most prominent is the sound of one of the cheerleaders playing a bass drum. You can also hear the swishing of pom-poms, the sound of shoes on the gym floor, clapping, and a little bit of ambient speech. However, without having the visuals of something that we would normally perceive as mainly visual gives it a strange, detached feeling. It ended up being a really interesting way to experience something that we normally would not give a second thought to.