Monday, 3 November 2014

Rand-some Notes

After a tutorial with William and a group crit I decided to start making rand-some notes aimed at the government, and stick them up in various places. 

So far I've only done education based ones, and I've put them up around uni. One in the lift in the Hanover building, which as far as I know is still there. I put another one on a leaflet rack in the library, which was there last time I checked. The final one I put in the window of the SU building, which was taken down the day after. 

Each poster said different things all associated with the price of uni:

'Lower uni fees or the poor will suffer'

'Uni is too expensive go on benefits'

'Education is a right not a privilege'

I want to keep sticking the letters in places relevant to the subject, but that might not always be possible. But I'm definitely going to put them in places other than uni.





Tuesday, 14 October 2014

Banksy


Banksy is a well known street artist. He's style of work is totally different to how I want to present this project. But he uses clever imagery to have a go at the government/society/police force etc. These issues are all relevant to my project and I am a big fan of his work, so hopefully I can get some inspiration. Maybe use his images to think of quotes even. 




















Word Association

In order to make some quotes I thought I would play a word association game with some friends/family using select words relating to my theme.

I chose to use these words:

  • Politics
  • Conservative
  • Royal Family
  • England
  • Labour
  • Power
  • David Cameron 
  • Democracy
  • Dictatorship
  • Government
  • The Queen
  • Liberal Democrats
  • President
  • Society
The first person I did it with was Fern, she wasn't particularly helpful:

  1. Tony Blair
  2. Democrat
  3. Queen
  4. Britain
  5. Tony Blair
  6. Hitler
  7. Tony Blair 
  8. Labour
  9. Hitler
  10. Politics
  11. Tony Blair
  12. Blank
  13. Barack Obama
  14. People
I was hoping more for adjectives. So next time I am going to ask people for what they feel about that word not what they associate with it as I am not going to get very far writing quotes about Tony Blair.


Lubaina Himid



During my last tutorial William said I should definitely use newspaper as my main material. He suggested I look at Lubaina Himid as she uses collage in her work and focuses on black history which is a strong subject like politics.













Friday, 3 October 2014

Quotes

William wants me to use my own words in my work. So I thought I'd do some research on quotes linking to politics/society. See if I can get some inspiration.

The first person I looked at was George Orwell, as we spoke about him and he is famous for making a point about society in his literature. 






'Freedom is the right to tell people what they don't want to here'


'Political language.... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.'


'In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics' all issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.' 


'War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.'


'Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.'


'War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.'

'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.'


'Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.'


'At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.'


'So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.'


'No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.'


'The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.'


'Liberal: a power worshipper without power.'


'A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.'


'In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.'


'Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper'


'Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.'


'Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.'


Quote Source

I then looked at Karl Marx as he wanted a different society and spoke against 'The Ruling Class'





'Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!'

'In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.'

'Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.'

'The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.'


'Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.'


'It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.' - Joseph Stalin
'I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.' Will Rogers

Quote Source