Identity in Question

P R E F A C E

T H E

P R O J E C T ; W H Y H O W C H O R E O G R A P H Y P R O J E C T O R S G R A P H I C S L O C A T I O N

D O C U M E N T A T I O N A D V E R T I S I N G C O N C L U S I O N

Identity is something deeply personal and intrinsic within each of us. As individuals, we come from vastly different backgrounds and cultures, some bearing little resemblance with each other. Our worldviews are crafted by our experiences, our families, and values that pulse through our veins. Yet, we have come together to create a piece that unites us as a force. Together, we are a collective, piercing through the labels that have branded the people and places that we stand for. We are exposing our wounds and scars that are results of unfounded, ignorant hatred.

Identity in Question is a performance piece that aims to reveal the baselessness of the stereotypes, the accusations, and the projections that we experience on a daily basis. By emphasizing the demeaning, derogatory effects of stereotypes, we question the basis for institutionalized discrimination, especially in light of the present sociopolitical climate. Through this performance, we challenge society’s construction and perpetuation of categories that simplify entire peoples and cultures into negative generalizations. Identity in Question is a platform where we, as a class of diverse, multicultural beings, use our voices and actions to amplify our collective and individual experiences to influence change.

This catalogue is a manifestation of this project. Throughout you will find details regarding the conception of this project, documentation of our process, and audience interviews. Most of all, you will find the fruits of dedication and labor- evidence that we, as a class, were united in our pursuit to communicate our denunciation of stereotypes and discrimination.

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The studio visual culture final project is one that makes a statement about unfounded projections that people place upon immigrants and Americans of color. The themes addressed in the performance: racism, discrimination, and xenophobia, were chosen by the class as a whole. Our class is composed of immigrants, international students, and people of color, so we strongly feel that we belong to a community that, for the most part, encourages diversity and unity. We are well aware of the richness that comes with embracing other cultures, as well as the prejudice that comes with diversity. Our performance seeks to show the crippling, distressing effects of unfounded stereotypes or projections made by others. This was achieved by projecting offensive words and racial slurs upon our bodies, and ultimately questioning the basis of these labels.

The performance confronts issues of racism, discrimination, and xenophobia. These problems have existed for many years (EX: slavery, holocaust, Armenian-genocide) and they have been able to persist due to people’s inability to be more accepting of one another. Currently, societies are further fragmented by sentiments of racism and rooted discrimination. Though overt displays of bigotry are generally frowned upon, micro-aggressions are rampant, and oppressive systems and institutions are proliferating. Furthermore, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and presidency has encouraged and amplified xenophobic, discriminatory sentiments. The hate speeches, fear-mongering, and discriminatory practices that were a staple of his campaign continued beyond the campaign trail and have defined his presidency thus far. Knowing that a man with such values of bigotry holds the presidency has made a lot of people think it is acceptable for them to carry out acts of racism. The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 867 cases of hateful harassment or intimidation in the United States in the 10 days after the November 8 election[1]. These tragic incidents are said to have been incited by Donald Trump fostering xenophobia during his electoral campaign. As a result of the rise in hate crimes, discrimination and racism, the studio class decided to create a performance that sets aside negative misconceptions that people have about immigrants and people of color. This performance took place in Madison Square Park on April 29th, 2017. Through this performance, the class was asking the audience to look past negative misconceptions and unfounded fears and embrace diversity.

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C H O R E O G R A P H Y Through well-curated choreography, Identity in Question goes from being a group of curious student-artists merely performing for the public to a united front that challenges the prevalent misconceptions and prejudices found in today’s society.

During the initial choreographic meeting, we discussed what we wanted viewers to gain from our piece. Our main takeaway and what would later be our mantra was, “To show that regardless of the hate others will direct towards us, we know that there is power in unity and beauty in diversity.” With this in mind we tried to find the most cohesive physical expression of these qualities and design the choreography based around that. We each presented examples of artists who have inspired our ideas, and we unanimously agreed that Vanessa Beecroft conveyed the intention for our project like no other. A contemporary artist from Italy known for her large-scale conceptual performances, called ‘live paintings’, her pieces were the pinnacle of effective performance art. As such, it was our aim to emulate the effect of Vanessa Beecroft’s work on viewers.

Before the piece begins, performers are spread across Madison Square Park, dispersed in a fashion that suggests that they are strangers.

As the performance begins, the individuals walk towards the park’s northernmost fountain, uniting to present the world with a much warranted message. Using their bodies as canvases, performers stand naturally as harsh, derogatory terms and stereotypes are projected upon them. For ten solemn minutes, the performers serve as a mirror to society, a reflection of the stifled hurt and bitterness.

The great amount of work put into choreography paid off as it matched and fit this unique performance. Due to the overall coordination being accurate, a perfect symmetry was present within the formation, which further allowed for a strong connection to form between the spectators and the work itself. The projected text could be seen from all three sides, presenting each person as an individual body of art.

Inspired by Beecroft, we aspired to blur the lines between hardened sculptures and naturally moving bodies so we let the projections be the focal point as our bodies served as the canvases with minimal movement. These slight transitional gestures have a captivating and euphoric effect that allow for deep understanding by displaying a sort of honesty and sincerity in its subtlety that we felt had the power to ignite emotions within the viewers. We expressed our intention and exerted that through our creativity and were met with a result we’re extremely proud of!

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P R O J E C T O R S The projector team was mainly in charge of providing projectors for the rehearsals as well as the final performance. Some of us were skeptical about using projectors outside, however there were also some positive outcomes of integrating them with the performance.

During our first rehearsal at Madison Square Park, we were all surprised at the capacity of the long lens projectors. It seemed to light up the whole fountain area and took those flourishing trees in the back as the screen. The strong light radiated out towards our bodies while brightly and bravely illuminating the labels projected on us. The brightness of the projection method really amplified our original idea of the performance: to raise awareness of the hurt caused by the labels and stereotypes society projects on people groups.

On the other hand, we also considered to use plexiglass with manual flashlights instead of projectors, but we ultimately decided against it. The use of plexiglass would’ve increased the workload of the slides team and it would require more effort in terms of printing the text. The glass or plastic with printed text would’ve been placed in front of the light source in order to be projected. Through continuous trial and error, our use of projectors was successful, and the plexiglass idea, though original and unique, was dismissed.

Despite the fact that the projectors and our choreography were in good working order, the spontaneous nature of performance art provided us with several challenges on the day of the performance.

An hour before we were set to start, park workers came over and told us that we needed permission to plug in our projectors. As we had never encountered this problem during rehearsals, we decided to push on and set up only when the workers had left the park.

Additionally, since there was no water in the fountain, children were playing inside, which proved to be a disruption we had to work around. The children who were there on the day were rather rambunctious, and were more interested in throwing frisbees than our performance. Not only was this distracting, but it created a vastly different atmosphere than we had anticipated. Ultimately, we solved this problem by talking to the children’s parents, and eventually, the children left partway through our performance. Despite our need to accommodate these challenges, our ability to collaborate and overcome them produced an effective performance.

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G R A P H I C S Once we decided as a class that we wanted to project words and phrases on people, like the way society projects them on us, we knew we had to start collecting these words. We compiled a list of 10 words from each performer. We wanted all the words to be honest and not shy away from the brutality of these words.

Though each person provided ten words, we decided on just using five of them, depending on how effective the words were in terms of sending our message across. We also decided to keep the words and phrases short since longer sentences or words had a higher risk of running off the performers’ bodies, making it illegible.

In order to emphasize the personal, heavily impactful nature of every word, we agreed that the text would be most effective handwritten. The rough and raw quality of handwritten text would serve to further personalize our message. We divided up the words and we began to write the words and transfer them into photoshop. We also decided that the text would be black and appear against white backgrounds to ensure they were clearly legible from a distance while not distracting the audience. The color of the text also helped to determine that we would wear plain white shirts during the performance, in order to minimize distraction. Afterwards, we split the slides into three sections, with each section having a different word repeated all over it. We decided on the repetition of words in order to further imply the weight these words can carry when projected on someone.

After our first dress rehearsal, we had to make quite a number of changes in terms of the size of the text. When projected, the words would be magnified significantly, and we experimented with font size in order to manipulate the text so that it would appear as we had planned. Additionally, the size of the text also determined the distance and angle that the projectors would be placed at to ensure that the complete word would be visible on the body of the performer.

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L O C A T I O N

For any performance-based piece, the location must be adequate in contributing to the outcome of the project. Because our performance dangerously rested on the narrow shoulders of the projectors, reliable power sources were imperative and crucial to the overall success of our project. In addition to available power outlets, we also had to observe and tackle the areas with the most foot traffic on any given day, as we wanted to garner the largest audience possible.

After researching multiple public squares, parks and places with public power outlets, the location team compiled a shortlist of frequented and easily accessible locations that included Union Square, Madison Square Park, and Bryant Park.

After visiting each of these sites and documenting the pros and cons, we quickly dismissed Union Square since the most immediate power source was linked to a private restaurant, thus deemed unavailable for public use.

After further visitations to Madison Square and Bryant Park, the location team asserted that Madison Square Park would be the more logical decision. Since the formation of the performance took form as a circle, the area surrounding the north fountain was most ideal, as there were also adjacent power outlets. Even though the power sources in Bryant Park were located near public walkways, the remaining area was restricted to narrow footpaths that restricted pedestrian movement.

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Audience turnout was initially expected to range from very low to nonexistent due to chilly, miserable, cloudy conditions at our first rehearsal. There was a looming concern that our performance would fall flat as we would be essentially performing for no one but ourselves. However, as the weather picked up the following week as temperatures warmed up, we noticed more pedestrians and park-goers spectating in our following rehearsals.

While this came as a relief, we also doubled up on our efforts to advertise the event to ensure a sufficient audience turnout on the day of the grand performance.

It was also brought to our attention that Madison Square Park has a rather rich history that contributed to the message of our performance.

Set aside as a parcel of land for public use in 1686, Madison Square Park served a variety of purposes before being designated as a park in 1847. In the years 1794-1797, what is currently Madison Square Park served as a mass burial ground for lay people.

In the early 1800s, the park served a variety of military purposes, ranging from barracks to munitions storage. It was also grounds for a children’s shelter until the establishment was unfortunately destroyed in a fire. While it is clear that the presence of Madison Square Park played a role in shaping New York City, the founding father whose name it bears has had a controversial past. James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, was a slave owner for part of his life. As such, this location provided an interesting setting for our performance, and serves as a starting point for our performance’s discussion of stereotypes as well as socio political and ethno-racial identity.

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D O C U M E N T A T I O N

Although the contributions of the video team were not immediately apparent, we played a key role in documenting the processes that we went through to achieve our desired final performance.The video team agreed on utilizing Adobe Premiere as the primary editing software. As for the field equipment, we acquired our needs through the many available sources we had. Suah already owned a Nikon DSLR, Mickey rented a Canon 70D, and Cearah shot with a Canon generously provided by Dolan. We also rented the other necessities, such as tripods and microphones (shotgun and Zoom kits), through the school’s equipment center.

Once the location was confirmed, we scouted out the area for any limitations and disadvantages when filming. Because the placements of the cameras was crucial to the success of the performance, we closely collaborated with the choreography team to confirm that there would be no conflicts. Although a lack of lighting constantly came up as a concern, the park’s existing lighting eased our worries as the cameras recorded footage smoothly and clearly.

Furthermore, we planned to separate the video into two parts: a documentary style of the planning and rehearsing, and the final performance. During the discussion in Studio, we decided on adding a third portion, an audience reaction, to the video. Todd also suggested we incorporate interviews of members from each group into the first portion of the final video.

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A D V E R T I S I N G Through this performance, we aimed to reach out to everybody who was willing to listen to our cause. Our ultimate intent with this performance piece was to change the perspectives of people who view the documentary after the performance. We wanted to open everyone’s eyes to the hate that many minorities and/or immigrants often faceand the fact that both physical and sentimental representations of hate are rife. As the performance took place in Madison Square Park, a public place, we had no control over who our audience consisted of, nor could we moderate their opinions in regards to our performance.

We aimed to expand our audience by using social media. Our primary channels of social media were Snapchat and Facebook, but some members of the team used Instagram to spread the promotional information as well. We chose Snapchat and Facebook because currently, those two forms of social media remain the most popular. Facebook has a wide demographic of users, while Snapchat is frequented by millennials. We created an event on Facebook and invited people that we knew would be in the city at the time. On the Facebook event page, we chose not to reveal all of the information regarding the performance, since keeping it a mystery was a key strategy in garnering more interest in our performance. The mystery of the event was intended to pique curiosity from people, which in turn would compel them to pay a visit to the park. A key piece of this “mystery” was further emphasized by the posters we created for the performance, as they revealed almost nothing about the event itself.

We created two different poster versions for our event, both of which are posted on Facebook. One version features a large question mark and “i” combination, which represents the piece title“Identity in Question.” On the other poster, different translations of the word “identity” are depicted to represent the various languages spoken by the class. For our Snapchat filter, we created a simple layout, with the words “I am Change” on the bottom left corner.

These words are connected to a question mark on the top right corner, which is a main symbol for our performance. The filter was designed in a way that was simple and eye-catching. As a general observation,, as long as a snapchat filter is well-designed, people tend to use it on their photographs despite not knowing what is being advertised. Through the use of the snapchat filter, we wanted the viewers to feel involved in the performance itself and participate in raising awareness for our cause, regardless of whether they do so consciously or not.

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C O N C L U S I O N

The goal of Identity in Question was to effectively expose and denounce the stereotypes that people have projected onto us our entire lives at a time when the perpetuation of these stereotypes has placed every marginalized group into danger. Deportation, mass incarceration, lack of access to reproductive rights: these are the very real stakes.

Although the number of people in attendance was on the smaller side, Identity in Question undoubtedly made an impact. From the woman at the beginning of the performance who bluntly stated, “I don’t understand this and I don’t have the time to try,” to the two little girls who asked if Trump was going to make them leave because they were Mexican, the performance elicited a broad number of reactions. A large handful of people even paused their leisurely walks in the park to watch and applauded at the end. Friends who attended the event described it as “powerful,” “intense,” “important.”

We believe that celebrating our diversity, rather than ignoring or attacking it, is key at a time like this.

Working as a group can be challenging; not everyone agrees on everything and some schedules are difficult to work around. The beauty of working as a team, however, is that each person has their own set of beliefs and boundaries that they bring to the table. Without a diverse range of experience, we could never create something that would be relatable to a large group of people, and we might have never come up with Identity in Question in the first place. When we unite as one, whether it be our class of sixteen or throughout the country, we can make positive change. We can alter the narrative. Do you hear me?