Public Pedagogy of Upstander Art

In the first part of the Upstander investigation I learned what it looked like and felt like to empathize with individuals of a different culture and era. Linda Stein's "H2F2" chose to focus on the people left out of the history books because of their religion, their gender or sometimes even their ideals. The women that she wove into her tapestries, molded into her sculptures, and spoke about in her workshops inspired questions about teaching, biases and accommodations.

When I explored the amazing life of Ruth Gruber I had to really reflect on why individuals like her were left out of history books. Modern day curriculum is written and guided by a variety of individuals with differing philosophies. However, one has to wonder how all of these curriculum guides still seem to follow the same trend. I would like to think that as an art teacher and as a woman that I would be vigilant in teaching my students about both male and female artists. However, no matter how hard we try to be aware, the simple fact is that we still exist within a patriarchal society that devalues women. What do my students think when I teach them that women rule but then they step outside of the brick walls of our safe space into a world that pays women less, marries them off and persuades them that they are meant to be the vulnerable and merciful figures. One of the biggest things that I took away from this exploration is the knowledge that to change this trend I can't just simply teach in my standard "Introduce-connect-demonstrate-apply-produce" routine. I dance around what artists have done in their lives because I am worried about being "politically correct" or presenting information to my students that might shake their belief systems or make them reconsider their identity. For the first time in a long time, I had to ask myself why I teach this way even though I don't want to. I believe to truly be able to teach free of the patriarchal trend, we must begin to confront the injustice and the things that make ourselves and our students uncomfortable. If we don't allow our students a chance to reconsider reality then we are just producing another generation that is just like us. 

The theme of being welcomed was very confusing to me at first. It made sense in the macro sense of looking just solely at refugees and immigrants but in the grand scheme of things I didn't understand how it applied to art education. Then, I participated in the Judy Chicago Dialogue portal in the second part of the exploration. The thread asked, "Do institutions of education address the needs of those who reject the binaries of male/female? If not, why not?" to which I responded: 

"I do not think that our institutions address the needs of those that do not identify with their biologically defined gender. I think that this is explained in part by Michael Kimmel with Linda Stein when he describes how racism works. Kimmel talks about societies tendency to aggregate or disaggregate. This means we either identify a problem by aggregating and saying that it is “their” fault, putting one persons actions on the group as a whole. Or, we disaggregate and view the problem as being isolated to an individual part. As a society, because we have not accepted those that do not identify as male or female as a part of the larger whole, we will continue to see the needs of those people as individual issues that should be dealt with on a lower, flexible, and less noticeable level..."

I bring these ideas together because they both are speaking to an injustice to a part of our society. We refuse to accept or welcome certain people as a part of the whole. As a teacher I always worry about how we are treating African American student or student with special needs, but what about the students whose difference is not physical? What about the student who is keeps their true identity hidden because they don't feel safe?

Which brings me to my last point. Nan Goldin is my hero because she confronted domestic, spousal abuse by photographing and sharing it with the public. She did this in spite of knowing that some people may become upset, that some people may disapprove and some people might even call it selfish.  She chose not to hide her partner's actions and confronted her bully. In one simple snap of the shutter she created an image that asked the public if they were going to just stand in the museum and be bystanders or if they were going to be brave upstanders. I think that these exercises mostly taught me that education needs to learn how to confront the uncomfortable. We need to search for the similarities instead of the differences. We must teach each other how to stand up for ourselves and each other. We need to acknowledge the "us" instead of "them" and the "we" instead of the "I".

Empower

Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word instinct as "a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason". In my opinion, when we respond to violence we are responding with our instincts. Some of us freeze, someone of us fight back and someone of us just turn on our heals and run away. But if our instincts don't come from reason then where do they come from? 

We know by now that part of these instincts stem from the experiences that we have as young children and some through out our adult life. As an individual that grew up in an aggressive household, I find that it is more comfortable for me to run towards violence than others. This "instinct" has grown and developed from the experiences I had as a child and now adapted as a teacher. In the face of violence I think that I confront it in hopes of stopping it. I was raised by a father who was suffering from undiagnosed Type 2 Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Attention Deficit. With this trifecta of disorders came a whirlwind of emotions, abusive behavior and erratic responses. I think that I respond to violence in person versus in the media in very different ways. Due to my father's violent behavior becoming my normal everyday, I do not bat an eye at reading or watching violence because it makes rational sense to me. 

At first, when I was asked to consider who my heroes were, no one came to mind. When I think of heroes the images of people running into burning buildings and risking their lives came to mind. I think that I have never clung to individuals like those because they do not reflect my own set of characteristics of morals. So, I thought of artists who reflected what I thought was a creative philosophy that matched my own. 

My "hero" is Nan Goldin for a variety of reason. Goldin is a photographer that began working the the early 80's in New York. This was a time before smart phones and Instagram, yet she created with the same mentality: document everything and everyone. Her book "Ballad of Sexual Dependency" is filled with intimate moments between lovers, fiery fights between friends, and every day habits of her and her friends life. These photographs were presented as messages of vulnerability that simultaneously asked you to empathize with situations beyond your own. Mixed within these photographs were examples of substance abuse, gender and sexual identity, and physical abuse.   

 In this self portrait, Nan Goldin responds to the violent actions taken on her with bold confrontation. This photograph is titled, "Nan One Month After Being Battered". It was taken not to shock you but share with you the reality of her situation. Her situation was that her long term partner Brian had beaten her so badly that she had almost gone blind. By taking that reality and unapologetically sharing it with others she was raising awareness and giving volume to a problem that had a very quiet voice. The division of men and women then, and now in today's society needs to be closed. Men need to be taught that it is okay to be gentle and have mercy while women need to be reminded that it is okay for them to stand up for themselves and be fierce. Is violence a part of men inherently? Or does society teach them that to be men they must become violent?

In Nan Goldin's work, she confronted many issues with her camera. Her photographs documents a generation that was quickly dying not only from substance abuse but also from the AID's epidemic. Her way of confronting the violence of death was to present it in a gentle fashion. Her photographs were always about creating and sharing relationships. She did not view the people that she photographed as her subjects but as her friends. In this image, a lover kissed his dying partner on the forehead. Again, this image strikes a hard note within us but it is not done to shock us. It is done so to show us, share with us and teach us about the consequences of the injustice that was being done to an entire community of people. Goldin confronted everything without any filter, she simply showed you what TV ads and radios couldn't.

 Now, as a photographer in the 2000's Nan Goldin is taking these experiences and putting them into action. After battling an addiction to OxyCotin she not only fought back with her photographs but she took action against those in the art world that benefitted from the pain of others because she says, "I can’t stand by and watch another generation disappear." She has created the group P.A.I.N (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) whose aim is "...to address the opioid crisis. We are artists, activists, and people dealing with addiction who employ direct action as a platform for our demands. We target the Sackler family, who manufactured and pushed Oxycontin, through the museums and universities that carry their name."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/arts/design/bleak-reality-in-nan-goldins-the-ballad-of-sexual-dependency.html

https://www.artforum.com/print/201801/nan-goldin-73181

https://www.sacklerpain.org/mission-statement

Upstander