Identity

Considering identity throughout history.

Discourse methodology.

Identity in the digital domain.

Essentialism (traditional approach)
Biological make-up that categorises the kind of person you are.

Postmodernist theorists disagree.  Move away from essentialism in post modern era.

Phrenology

The idea is that you can have a perfect balance within the brain.  Notion that different parts of the brain formulate the person you are.  If one aspect is particularly large then another aspect will be muc smaller- upsetting the balance.

Physiognomy

Study of facial characteristics.  Gives rise to explicit racism.  19th Century.  Based on a white European middle to upper class background.  Suggests you can equate someones intelligence with features.  Using it as a way of legitimising racism.  

Anti-sematism.

Heronymous Bosch.  Anti sematic roots.  Notion that the Jewish race sent him to his death they are inherently evil.

Chris Ofili.  Work tries to display features that resonate with his audience. 

Historical phases of identity.

Pre modern-identity- personal identity is stable- defined by long standing roles.

Modern identity- modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles.  Possibly to start chossing you identity, rather than being born into it.  People begin to worry about who they are.

Post modern identity- accepts a fragmented self.  Identity is constructed.  Decide what your identity is going to be.

Pre-modern:

Institutions- marriage / / patriarchy / / the state / / government / / monarchy.

Secure identities - If you're a farm worker you report to the landed gentry.

                           factory worker- industrial capitalism.

                           soldier - state.

Modern:

To read up on:

                           Baudelaire

                           Veblen

                           Simmel.

Baudelaire:

Introduces concept of the flaneur (gentleman stroller).  By being out and about they show they don't need to be at work.  Conspicuous consumption.

Simmel:

Introduces the trickle down theory.  What the fashion system as we know today is based upon.  Showing something to aspire to / / something that differenciates them from the rest of society.  The lower class that see the upper then aspire to and attempt to emulate this.  The upper then combat this by new fashion, lower copy.  Fashion cycle.

Suggests that because of the speed of mutability of modernity, individuals withdraw themselves.

Foulcault:

"Identity is constructed out of the discourses culturally available to us."

Poddible discourses:

Age / / class / / gender / / income etc.  Four main:

- Class

- Nationality

- Race/Ethnicity

- Gender and Sexuality.

Notions of the influence of women has been overlooked in the past.

Class system came about from the industrial revolution.

Las Vegas quote.

Sums up the notion of dumbing down of society.

Gillian Wearing,

Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say, 1992-3

Gender and Sexuality:

Early media, history of art- what women should look like.  

Edmund Bergler,

Makes the point that the fashion industry is run by men not women.  

The Postmodern condition:
Liquid modernity and liquid love.
Post modern theory:
Suggests that identity is constructed through social experiences.
Bauman:
Identity is an objective that you can set out to achieve.
Hargreaves:
Introspection is a disappearing act.  
 

Cities and Film

Cities and Film

The city in modernism.  Urban sociology.

The city as both a public and private space.

The city in postmodernism.

Simmel.

A German sociologist.  

Metropalis and Mental life.

Wrote about the effects of the city on the individual.

Comes from surrealism and Dada.

The idea that one individual is surrounded by people, yet still alone.

Simmel puts forward the idea of urban sociology.  In his essay he examines how the individdual can exist in a space that is built on a group contribution.

Idea of the city engulfing the human figure.  In the background as a threat, yet also being dependant on physical and manual labour.

Sullivan.

Credited with being the creator of the modern skyscraper.

'Form follows Function.'

Guaranty Building.  The idea of the city growing upward as well as outward.

Extremely decorative.  Influenced by the arts and crafts movement.  The inside is tightly organised.  Divided into four zones.  Basement mechanical area.  Ground floor- piublic area, shops.  Third zone, office.  Final zone, consisting of elevator equipment and small offices.  

Ordered environment.

The skyscrapers in the American city represent the upwardly motion of business opporunity.

Manhatta.

Paul Strand and CHarles Scheeler.

The idea of an America that is built on immigration.

Positive?

Explore the relationship between photography and film.

Small cog in a larger machine.

Scheeler.

City towering powerful mechanical presence.

Fordism.

The human body becomes part of the machine.

Maximum productivity with minimal effort.

The worker who is employed for this menial effort labour, so they can get a wage to buy the goods they produce.  The labourer is also the consumer.  Self perpetuating prophecy.

1929 Stock Market Crash.

Factories close, unemployment rises.

Leads to the Great Depression.

Man with a Movie Camera.

Silent documentary film 1929.

Explores the role of the movie camera in the city.

Famous for its range of cinematic techniques- they are invented within this film for others to follow.

Seeks to create a futuristic commentary.

Celebration of industrialisation, mechanicalism, technology etc.

Flaneur

"To stroll"

Figure in literiture has been used to think about what the role of the body is in the city.

Baudelaire.

Looks at the Flaneur who is simultaneously a part of and a part from the crowd.

A man of leisure, with no place to go.  Just there to observe others actions and interactions.

Benjamin.

Adopts this concept as an analytical tool.  Ironic as he himself is in essence a Flaneur.

Arcades Project.

Allow an experience of the city that is both inside and outside at the time.  The idea of a 'cafe society'- places where these observations can be made.

Flaneuse.

Female version of the Flaneur.

What does it mean for the female figure to be a wandering observer in the city.

A femenist sociology of modernity should emerge.  

Susan Bock- Morss.

Suggests that what we think of when we think of a woman on the street is either a 'bad lady' or a lady of the night.

Arbus and Hopper.

Observed moments.  A sense of threat.  The darkness that surrounds them has depth to it.  The night is engulfing them both.

Venice.

Architecture and layout.  Labyrinth of alleys and streets.  Small- so you'd always end up back where you came from.

'Don't look now.':

Issues of memory and trauma of grief.  Play on identity.

The Detective.

Private dectective hired to follow herself.  His record of his obervation following her.  Photographic evidence of her existence.  Essentially like facebook- a construction and story that is edited and writeen by her.  SHe took the dectective wher eshe wanted to go because she knew she was being followed.

Cindy Sherman.

Stereotypical figure of women in the city.  Where the woman is in some sense almost lost/trapped by the city.  Low angle view points.  Looming presence of skyscrapers behind the character.

Weegee.

City as a place of threat not just examined by female photographers.

Dark side of NYC.

Mobile darkroom in the car.

Instantanious reporting.  Revolutionary.

'The naked city'.

Noire tradition.

L.A. NOIRE- 2011

The firt video game to be shown at the Tribecca Film Festival.

Challenges the player to control the L.A police department.

The idea of the city as simultaneously in the past present and future.

Metropolis/ Blade Runner.

Future in he city,

The idea of the body in the city is also explored in Lorca di Corcia Heads 2001.

Detatched observer.  Haunting, alienated subject of the individual in the crowd.  Clearly in their own mental space whilst surrounded by others.

Doesn't ask permission.

Name of the photographs are the city- placing them back into the annonymity of that place.  Taking away their identity.

Walker Evans.

Many are called.

Made with the sue of a hidden camere beneath his trenchoat.  Unobserved moments.  Moments of very private moments within the public space.  Unaware that they are being photographed.

Again, the idea that people are alone in the city despite being surrounded.

Ed Soja.

Getting lost in architecture.

Proposed same idea in the city.

City is a confusing and encompassing experience on the individual.

Joel Meyerowitz.

Eye level- confusing.

Reflects mental state.

Citizen Journalism

Impossible to be a detatched observer now.

Liz Wells.

Immediacy of mobile phone images.  Replaces the idea of reporters.  Different aesthetic in citizen journalism.  More about information- photography used as evidence.  Images of 7/7 bombings were online within an hour.  No longer have separation of individual and city and experience of the city.

Surveillance city.

Enormous investment in machinery of surveillance.

Coming together of photography and film in the street.