Blog entry 66:
Today during the session of Visual Culture: Debates, now that the presentations have been done, Ian delivered the basis for Corsework 2 (CW2), a critical essay establishing oneself as a practitioner and what one might focus on:
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| Screen shot of module handbook Visual Culture: Debates |
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| Screen shot of module handbook Visual Culture: Debates |
I feel that practically, I have been sampling controlled experiments which have informed how I can use materials to suit my purpose, and that I am now in the process of making informed decisions on how I might now work during next semester.
Now that I have shifted my theoretical practice from the idea of how to depict the divine, to how I might depict the lack of the divine, I am beginning to consider if I am working too in context for my traditional painted style: essentially, the painters and practitioners I am inspired by mainly come from a religious background in the Renaissance era and focus on the idea of depicting religious ideals or ideas, and with this idea of the lack of the divine depiction, I am essentially staying within that boundary. How can I make my work contemporary if I am not challenging any kind of boundary?
When considering how I might break away from the boundary of a religious basis to inform my work for next semester, I started to look at my target audience once more (blog entry 63) and what I might want to say through my artwork. I found that a personal 'pet hate' so to speak is how advertisement or informative artwork surrounded with raising awareness of and speaking to people with autism is often, I find too 'happy clappy': My Partner is in fact autistic and is also the most intelligent person I know, and I feel that either this informative work either is aimed only at children or is so simplified that it is actually unintentionally patronising to adults with this "disability".
"I hate the way that everything about autistic people is so stereotyped" (Nathan Shepherd my partner who has been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, 2014)
Examples of advertisement or informative work about autism which I have found:
PLEASE NOTE: All observations here are stated from my point of view as someone who wants to make this imagery that is more relevant to a slightly different audience with autism or who care for those that are affected by it. Although I am not apologetic for stating my views on the subject of the quality of imagery within this area, I maintain that I am not attacking or arguing against any from of disability or organisation and that all comments made on this blog are for the development of my own personal practice in my Masters Degree.
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| National Autism Association |
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| National Autism Association |
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| National Autism Association |
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| National Autism Association |
The above images were taken from the National Autism Association Facebook page and are constantly posted to anyone who likes the page. I find that the target audience for these images is children or parents with autistic children. Although I find that some of these images work very well for the target audience, I feel that they in most cases try too hard to market autism and make this particular different way of thinking (I have chosen not to use the world disability when I myself am referring to autism because I personally believe that autism is not a disability, but rather a different way in which the brain works) a commodity or "special" "X factor" that everyone should want or want to support. In the case of many autistic people I have met, especially young to older adults who are lower on the autistic spectrum, and have been diagnosed with conditions such as Aspergers Syndrome (like my partner Nathan), this imagery does not interest or apply to them, and I want to find a way to possibly create non - patronising imagery that does speak to them.
The two images above are more subtle forms of informative image making which my lend itself to being rather more sensitive toward what they are attempting to raise awareness about, in this case I feel that these images suit a wider audience and are more straight forward in the way at which they tackle a subject and relay information.
The top of the two images directly above, again gives a sense that autism is a special gift or "requirement", although I personally intend to work towards fighting against the stigma attached to autism and in fact to all disability, I feel that this way of dealing with the subject still alienates autistic people through potentially making others jealous of their "gift" as it shows them to be different.
This image personally bothers me, mainly due to two reasons: The characters representing autism and the text. Although as a practitioner, I am fully aware that these characters are stylised to not look too realistic, I have a problem with how they look if they mean to represent autistic children. The characters eyes are unnaturally close together, which to me suggests a physical disfigurement, also associated with disability, and the fact that their faces are all strangely shaped, to me this draws in a sense of "weirdness" or "disfigurement" which can work towards adding to a stigma. The fact that all of the characters work so hard to obviously have different skin colours, which to me is far too politically correct, which draws into question: if we are accepting people for being disabled are we only doing this to be politically correct? Personally I find that disability and political correctness are mutually exclusive and should not always strive appear in the same context.
The writing in the above image I also take issue with due to it reading "Special Needs Kids Autism", to me the term "special needs" has a huge stereotyped stigma, which many associate with stupidity or strangeness, e.g. someone that you would not like your children to necessarily play with. I find that when I look at this image all I see is a very patronising way of representing people with autism which actually does more harm than good. Many people who do not understand autism may look at this poster and find it either odd or funny: The fact that many people in this society mock and find it humorous to look at or associate with people with a disability have been taught to do so mainly through lack of education about said conditions, e.g. the horribly offensive term beginning with an "r" is often used by those who feel threatened by how a person with a condition may look or act in a way that is not something they are familiar with or know much about, not of course that this is a correct or good way to go about things that we fear, but if more people were desensitised to sometimes seemingly shocking or upsetting manifestations of peoples conditions, there might possibly be less stigma surrounding disability.
I feel that my style of work could possibly be a fitting new way of creating imagery that deals with speaking to more adult audiences who are affected by autism or to teach people about the condition, as it is completely different to what has already been created, which in my opinion is not working as well for an adult audience as it could. I now intend to create a few brief visuals to suggest how I might tackle this issue in my concept stage next semester, to show at my concept panel 07/04/2014.
Now that I have established this idea as something I am passionate about and want my work to involve, I have decided that for my CW2 essay, I will aim to use this as a critical aspect of my study which I will carry through to next semester in my report. To research this I will being by looking at how I can apply the potential problems I might face to a number of the scholarly texts that I have read for this module. I then intend to speak to people who either care for or have autism and those who do not to draw a contrast to get first hand experience on my subject area.
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