Sally Walker Walking Down the Street

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Karina-Notes on Chapter 2

Social Roles (Nikolas Evreinoff)

In this text it mentions how men are "superior" than women. The quote by Evreinoff "Man became first an actor, a player and then came religion", and "the social "roles" of such representative figures as politicians, bankers, businessmen, priest, and doctors" show that men were the important people in the society while women were not even included, as they did not take part in. In every occupation it had to be given to the men while the women were their slaves at home, that was back in the day, 1970's. Now in the present you see more women in every occupation from Police Officers to serving in the Air Force/ Marines. One thing for sure is that there is always going to be that thin line between men and woman, there is always something that will set them apart.

Dramatism (Kenneth Burke)

Dramatism: The analytical study of the strageties by which individuals attempt to influence by their actions the opinions or actions of others. According to Burke, dramatism is a variety of social interactions and cultural behavior.

The 5 keys to dramatism is:

How (which creates the Agency)
What (which creates the Act)
When and Where (which creates the Scene)
Why (which creates the Purpose)

As you can see these five keys put together create the play and not only that but this happen in our everyday life.

Role Playing (Erving Goffman)

Certain type of behavior fits in both presentation and role playing. Goffman stresses that both of those terms suggest the initiative of a subject, "the fact that certain behavior has an audience and has an effect on that audience." When I was reading this it reminded me of that one time in class we were suppose to get into groups and come up with a shape and do a skit (role playing) or presentation. One presentation that I remember was the one with the Signs(Arrows). The group did a effect and cause presentation of having signs/arrows in our society and not having them. My group did the shape of a shoe, Cinderella, the glass slipper fit her and she decides her destiny. Moreover, these two groups are an example of presentation(Signs) and role playing (Cinderella).

Karina, My Recession Story

This was my story for the performance on Friday.

During the recession a lot of jobs were being cut but my parents got lucky and kept their jobs, only they had to work double shift. That left me more time with my boyfriend, we had unprotected sex and lead to an unplanned pregnancy. I was only seventeen, a senior in high school. I had to sacrifice my teenage life to become a responsible single mother. My parents didn’t support me, they were always at work. At five months I received the news that my daughter would be born with Down Syndrome and soon after my health care was taken away from me, because they were cutting that too. I was terrified and stressed. I had no idea what to do, I just prayed to God. On Thanksgiving I gave birth to my daughter who was healthy and it was covered by my health care that was given to me two weeks before. This is how..
LIFE PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE

Monday, January 24, 2011

Nellie: The Universe According to Me

Today towards the end of class Alan talked about how the universe exists in our heads. This got me thinking of how I view the universe un my head. One can try to break down everything in the universe into categories, such as plants, animals, humans, water, organisms, etc., but I found that list never really ends. So instead of trying to decipher the whole universe from what i make of it in my head I am going to post some of my paintings. See, I belive that whatever ends up in my paintings are the best representaation of what I think, and how I interpret my environment (and everything in it). This being so, somehow how have created the universe in my mind end up on canvas. Does that make sense? What I am trying to say is that if the universe exists in your head/mind/brain, and what I paint/draw comes from the same place, then how I define the universe comes accross through my paintings. Ahh, that is still too long. What I paint is how I see the world/ univers. This is what I mean, just look below,this is the world according to me.

My Mom actually let me paint on the wall!

People are just many circles put together.

Yes, I painted this:] (8 hours of my life)

All of the art shown was done by Nellie A. Ruiz.

Janet: Handouts

Twilight: When I saw this movie Twilight LA, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I don't know how people could ever act like that. I don't like to watch / see things like that. I thought it was very sad what had happen to Rodney King, and to the other man who got pulled out of his truck and beat in the middle of the street. The way the people acted back then in 1992 is what gives them and LA a bad name. Since a Korean women shot an African American girl; I believe that is why 90% of their business's got destroyed. I liked how Anna Deavere Smith was able to act as different people. She transitioned the roles very well. I believe she is very talented.

A Savage Performance: Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco's "Couple in the Cage" performance occurred in 1992. They had decided to put the viewer back into the frame of discovery. They started their Guatinaui World Tour as a sardonic response to the celebrations of the quincentennial. Their plan was to live in a golden cage for three days. They performed sewing voodoo dolls, lifting weights, watching t.v, and working on a laptop. They took donations (one dollar), Fusco would dance to rap music, Guillermo would tell Armerindian stories in a nonsensical language. They would also pose for polaroids with visitors. Two "zoo guards" would be in their hands so they could communicate to the visitors since they couldn't understand them. The visitors would take them to the restroom on leashes, and they would feed them sandwiches and fruit. At the Whitney Museum in New York they added sex to their performance; adding a peek for $5 so people could see their genitals.

Multiculturalism and Epistemic Rupture: The vanishing Acts of Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Alfredo Vea Jr. Cultural diversity is an epistemological object- culture as an object of empirical knowledge- whereas cultural difference is the process of the enunciation of culture as "knowledgeable" authoritative, adequate to the construction of systems of cultural identification. If cultural diversity is a category of comparative ethics, aesthetics or ethnology, cultural difference is a progress of signification. (Location 34)