Imagine There's No Countries

            I knew at the beginning of this project that I wanted to make a poster about immigration reform, however due to the fact that immigration is a topic that is currently in the limelight finding an issue within the subject was not easy. Especially since my ‘Textual Poaching’ assignment was involved in the subject of immigration reform, I knew that touching the same subject again was a hard sell. But I felt that I shouldn’t shy away from the challenge, or something in which I believe so profoundly.

            I explored a variety of issues within the immigration subject but most issues I felt did not meet the requirement of being ‘inadequately represented’. After reading a few articles (see links below) I found a thought that I struggled to remove from my head. This thought was the contradictory nature of walls and freedom, the fact that we are building and want to continue building bigger and “better” walls to keep people out. I thought about other famous walls, the first two walls I thought of was ‘The Great Wall of China’ and ‘The Berlin Wall’. Both actually were good options considering the violent history of the construction of China’s wall, and the liberty limiting history of Berlin’s. I decided that Berlin’s wall to be more poignant due to it’s youth in history, and it's relation to liberty. When I searched ‘berlin wall’ I discovered this comic that in turn became the inspiration and thesis for my poster.

The historic words of President Reagan when he cried out “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!” rang in my ears as I conceptualized and designed my poster, I wanted to combine two images that would represent the similarities of the Berlin Wall and the U.S. Mexican Border Fence, that would bring together these two moments in history. This was the resulting piece.

After I showed it to my wife and uploaded it awaiting responses my wife mentioned that I was being singularly minded to the U.S. public by posting it solely in English. This reminded me of what Chimamanda Adiche spoke about in her presentation at TED, when she detailed how when she was growing up the only stories available to her where British stories or American stories. I realized the border wall isn’t a decision and an issue solely for Americans, but for Mexicans as well. There voice has been completely ignored on the issue, while the U.S. congress debates how much funding the project deserves. By only releasing my poster in English I too was playing to that tune. So I sat down for another short while and reproduced my poster in Spanish so that all Mexicans could contemplate it's message as well.

So with both of these posters released on my Facebook I bunkered down and waited for the debates to ensue… two days later, nada! I was disappointed and began to re-share the posters hoping to engage some kind of conversation. I didn’t achieve this until the very night that I sat down to write this blog. My friend wasn’t very aggressive but inquisitive about my perspective, by the end of the conversation it resulted in me saying “Freedom is a world without walls, it’s countries with no borders” to which he responded “So it’s a world without countries?” Bingo! This conversation was productive, and even though I wasn't successful in initiating a heated debate about how silly a border wall is, it was great to evolve my point of view by having a sincere conversation with another person. John Lennon said it best, "Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do... Imagine all the people, Living life in peace... You may say that I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will be as one."

1.http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/immigration

2.http://www.fairus.org/issues

3.http://www.no-border-wall.com/

4.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/washington/21fence.html?ref=borderfenceusmexico&_r=0

5.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

6.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_barrier

7.Imagine- John Lennon

Pirates vs. Ninjas

The ‘webspinna battle’ was an interesting investigation for me because besides my weeklong stint in karate and the first two seasons of Power Rangers; the extent of my knowledge of martial arts is very limited. I enjoyed having to think critically about being a ninja. Our subject was ‘pirates vs. ninjas’ a popular nerd meme that I was also not very familiar with. So like most things that I am unfamiliar with my first resource was Wikipedia where I found out that “ninja supporters hold the position that a ninja would win over a pirate because of their superior mental and physical capabilities, as well as usage of gadgets such as nunchaku and shuriken. Those who support the pirates argue that a pirate’s use of both sword and gun would ensure their victory in battle”. The article later goes on to point out that the fight is pointless due to that fact that there are no recorded conflicts between pirates and ninjas.

When exploring DJ Spooky’s “Hypnotext” I decided to explore the different words that I felt like applied to this assignment I started with Virus, then the word The Idiot then lastly Alias. It was in the latter that I found something that I felt applied to the battle assignment. “Identity, both nodal and distributed, is key”. Nodal refers to the nodes in our brains, which ultimately make up our personality. What this line meant to me is that is that identity is one part what we really are, and one part what we choose to share or ‘distribute’.

After researching a few YouTube videos built around this theme of pirates vs. ninjas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-7vT4GSodk or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJdve7GNuE) I realized that there was little I could do to overcome my lack of relationship with the meme, so I decided to take a satirical take on the ninja pirate conflict. In my mind it was pretty logical that a ninja would win in a battle, I will not delve into my justifications so as to avoid veering off course, but I thought what if I were to paint ninjas as these goofy absentminded beings instead of the intelligent highly trained assassins that they really are. This decision allowed me to concentrate on parts of my identity that were real and ‘distribute’ them in a way that was a new persona. So I referred to pop culture mediums that I can relate to, namely Chris Farley’s “Beverly Hills Ninja”, “Kung Pow” and “Napoleon Dynamite”.

As I sought out all these clips I was reminded of “The Ecstasy of Influence” where it says ‘Invention it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void but out of chaos’. This clearly explains my process because all of these quotes and lines cam flooding to my head and I kept looking for more and more and trying to find a smooth mix for them to mesh together. None of these quotes or ideas where originally my invention (nor where they their own original ideas), but the molding of all these media forms into a new persona was mine. Chris Farley’s, Jared Hess’s and Steve Oedekerk’s satires served as a formula for my own satire on the pirate ninja conflict. That doesn’t belittle my art nor theirs.

The performance of the piece was exciting to say the least, the raw energy of standing in front of your peers as you try to represent, and with costume, embody a new being was trying to say the least. I chose to abandon the chair and to perform standing because I figured that my character wouldn’t be a static zombie staring mindlessly into the screen. I feel like this helped with my overall experience. Good assignment.

Ronin
Punches
Karate
Not Built By Ninjas
Kung Pow
Kung Fu Fighting
Go Ninja
Ninjaness

The World of Wizards

"What if we were all wizards?", the fact that wizardry has already been popularly covered in recent years due to the success of the Harry Potter series, we really wanted to put our own spin on it. In Harry Potter the world was divided between muggles (non-wizards) and wizards, this would become the defining difference in our world, we are "all wizards". So there is separation, magic thus would be the norm in such a world. We looked at it historically first, this is when we realized that if everyone were a wizard and had access to magic, the need for technological advancement would be null and void. Who needs a car or airplane when one can simply fly, walk through walls and in theory teleport. In reality a magical world would seem to not  need to advance their architectures or anything. When thinking about this we realized that this would also likely have an effect on style, aka fashion.



So the traditionalist would probably look something like Gandalf or Arwen from the Lord of the Rings, having lived thousands of years they know what they like, (kinda like our grandparents). However the younger generation would want to have their own styles as well, to kind of set themselves apart.

Though they would still opt for the traditional hat and cape, they definitely would streamline them for comfort, such as these hip tights. On top of that, similar to the smartphone wielders of our world these young wizards would opt for a sleek portable solution aka wands, as opposed to the archaic staffs carried by the aged wizards of old.

We also asked ourselves what kind of social issues would the wizards face. We discussed some of the social issues we face in our world, one that's on the tip of everyones tongue is gun control. What if the 'Ministry of Magic' were to try and restrict wands as a measure to keep people safe? Then the people would need a protector so we unanimously agreed that the "NWA" (National Wand Association) would need to be formed to protect 'the right to bear wands'.

Like any good world sports must exist, otherwise what would the wizard men do on Sunday nights? So we discussed some entertainment opportunities, and came to the conclusion that everyone loves watching bull riders get thrown. So we decided in a wizard world we would up the anty a little. Imagine if being thrown included the risk of being burnt to a crisp and eaten...yeah I bet you would watch that. Thus Professional Dragon Riding came to be.

Obviously no entertainment medium would be complete with out some ad-placement to help break up the action. You would see ads like this...

We couldn't imagine a world without Denny's so we left it in.

In the reading it talked about swapping fact and fiction. This was very helpful for us because we already know what a real world looks like, we simply swapped things that are familiar to us make this imaginary world seem like a realistic option for wizards everywhere. 

We were inspired by fantasy stories such as The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Final Fantasy, Eragon the NRA and Denny's.

In The Name Of Freedom

I have had a strong connection with the Mexican culture ever since I met my wife. She is from Mexico City, we had to go through a long, cruel and seemingly endless process to have her immigrate legally into the United States of America. After having to go through this process I became obsessed with immigration reform and have been aware of the corruption in the U.S. immigration system. So when the ‘Textual Poaching’ assignment came up I immediately had a culture and a message I wanted to convey. I chose the infamous Mexican luchador films as the medium I would ‘remix’ for two reasons:

1. The recognizable nature of the films since the success of “Nacho Libre”, it would be easy for the viewers to recognize the medium as Mexican.
2. The consistent theme in the luchador films is that of a hero overcoming an ugly, soulless (often supernatural) foe.

I chose to remix clips from this film with the song “The Cave” by Mumford & Sons because of the pace, and because of the strong message of finding freedom, and helping others to find it also.

            Once I finished the initial remix I realized I needed to have some more elements to drive home the message of this remix, so I dug around until I found the speech given by President Obama when he announced his small immigration reform which I found made for a good Prologue and Epilogue to my remix but I still needed some more meat for the middle. Obama’s speech reminded me of a Speech given by Robert Kennedy entitled “Ripple Of Hope”. It’s message meshed well with the song, and I felt it hit right at the heart of what I wanted to say with my video.

            Lastly I needed to relate the mummies and vampires to something that we all could understand that is when I decided to incorporate the little known story of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas who was cruelly tortured and murdered by the hands of about twenty U.S. Border Patrol agents. I wanted to compare them with these monsters in the luchador films, so I meshed clips that witnesses captured of Anastasio’s torture and murder with those of the monsters doing their evil deeds.

            We hear Anastasio crying out for help, his cry is answered by the arrival of ‘Santo’, the proverbial super hero and savior of Mexican luchador films. After hearing Robert Kennedy’s inspired words he is freed from the vampires by the power of light, and destroys the zombies with his fellow luchadores. The final words are a simple plea, the song ends saying “…and I will change my ways, I’ll know my name as it’s called again.” And Obama finishes the piece by stating, “…we have always drawn strength from being a nation of immigrants.”

            When conceptualizing this film I took inspiration from Danger Mouse’s “The Grey Video”. I liked how he mixed the old film with the new and made them seem like one, and how he made the artist’s interact. That was my goal when bringing all these mediums together. I also took inspiration from the Cinderella piece, I couldn’t find quality film of Robert Kennedy’s “Ripple of Hope” speech, and so I sought out footage of another speech and spliced the audio from “Ripple of Hope” to the film and managed to make it look close to the real thing. Though my piece is imperfect, I feel like I was able to interrelate the clips to convey my message, “That there is hope if we realize that we are all strangers here”.

Materials:

Santo vs. Las Momias de Guanajuato

Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro

Barack Obama "Speech on Immigration Policy"

Robert Kennedy "Ripple of Hope"

PBS "Crossing the Line at the Border"

Chords

The medium that I chose to explore is music, and on a more specific level are 'chords'. I was playing around on my guitar and thinking about this project (not very happy with my previous attempts at the project with various other mediums) and realized how nearly identical chord progressions can sound so different based on the way they are played and obviously the accompanying lyrics and vocals. Now I am not much of a singer, nor a guitar player so don't mock me too much, I totally flop the ending of the recording. I was inspired by a song mashup I heard of 'The Police' and 'Snow Patrol' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__3McxusO7Y).

I picked four different songs, with four distinct styles that make use of nearly identical chord patterns to exemplify the unity in all music. "Good Riddance", "Wonderwall", "Tu Eterna Cancion" and "Hero". I then rehearsed the four songs, taking out a section from each song and combining them into one musical piece showing the interconnectedness. I felt that by doing this I could comment on how all music comes from the same place. The same notes. The same origin.

"Good Riddance" and "Wonderwall" are both sweeping acoustic ballads about life, love and consequence. "Tu Eterna Cancion" a spanish love song, and "Hero" probably one of the mushiest love songs there ever was. Listening to either of these songs individually you would not be easily reminding of the other, but when they are played together they transition quite smoothly, except for maybe my own errors as a musician. My major objective was to show how music has it's own life and rules that we can play by, just because we play the rules well doesn't mean we have a completely original license to it's content. Yes we may take the instruments and give them life, but notes and music give our sounds meaning.

The hardest part about this project for me was my own musical inability to play the songs as well as a talented guitarist or vocalist could have done. If I had more time I would have sought out a more talented musician and practice the piece with them and record them performing the piece. It was exciting because I toyed around with a few different song options before settling on this four. It was surprising to me because there were quite a few other options that I could have included, the piece could have easily been twice as long including a variety of other songs. I feel like the piece goes to show us that the artist can manipulate any piece of music in many ways. But art has a soul of it's own, and that rings through.

!Viva Santa Anna!

This is a Link to the past

Our original intention was to write about the adventure of a group of Mexican soldiers assigned to the rescue of Santa Anna the president of Mexico after his capture at the Alamo. According to the stories we were told by people we met in our missions, this was when he sold the western half of the United States to the USA. We figured this would be a powerful motivation for a seemingly suicide mission rescue. However, when we began to do the research for our story we realized that the stories we were told were baseless; the only property bartered upon his capture was a small portion of Texas.

            We studied various articles and Santa Anna’s Wikipedia page, hoping to find something that we both believed would be a good story. At this point we both discovered an interesting part of his life; Santa Anna being exiled to Cuba, (which on one hand doesn’t sound like that bad of a deal) while there he communicated with the USA to get assistance in reclaiming power in Mexico. This reminded us of the film ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, when Napoleon also in exile tricks a young man into carrying a letter to his supporters in France. Fittingly so, Santa Anna was commonly referred to as the Napoleon of the west.

            Now that we had a new premise, we still needed a story. Who would be the courier? Would he be a willing participant? What would motivate him? What trials would he face? As we began to throw ideas around, and we worried a lot about being factual and accurate, we thought about what we had talked about in class, in regards to “Be Kind Rewind” and “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts”. It doesn’t have to be factual; it’s history how we understand it, or how it came to us. There is no wrong or right.

            So we shot the screenplay back and forth each ironing out the others errors, makings sure the others voice was heard and his ideas included until we finished our story. There is no guarantee that this story is historically accurate, but it is an honest representation of our ideas, and plausible answer for how Santa Anna managed to get a letter past his prison guards and to the USA during his exile in Cuba in 1846. The best part about this project for us was learning about the power of collaborating, the story came together a lot faster, and we feel a lot better quality then either of us could have done individually.

1.  Santa Anna:  The Napolean of the West.  Frank C. Hanighen, 1934
2.  From the Life of Santa Anna.  Clarence Wharton, 1926
3.  http://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/santyanna.html - song information for "Santianna"