Annie Zheng - Arts-ivism (Art is the New Revolution)
– bell hooks
When we got this assignment, I immediately texted my mentor, Abigail, and asked if I could interview her about her work with ART/EMIS, an organization that I had just joined and was very intrigued about the niche, intersectional activism their work covers within the USC community. Originally, I had planned to witness her journey of finding her voice both creatively and politically within her art and discuss how resistant and resilient themes in her work contributed to promoting a love ethic. However, as our interview progressed, she began to discuss the nature of intersectional art and how the medium itself must be resistant to social and creative norms that threaten to restrain it, and it must be resilient to impact society years after the piece was released. Thus, I ended up tailoring my approach to her journey around this idea that all art is resistant and revolutionary.
How I witnessed her work and revelations was mostly through the curation and the annotations I added to my zine, but I allowed the zine itself to be almost entirely in her words, driven by her reflection on her work. I used the quotes in that way was because I thought it was essential for any viewer to experience the conversation I had with Abigail in the same way I did – the gradual culmination of her ideas on the transformative role of artistic mediums led to a slow but influential shift in how I viewed art, and I wanted viewers to experience the same shift as it is pivotal to both Abigail’s activism journey and protest in general. Then, I added the annotations as I noticed that throughout the interview, Abigail was incredibly humble about the impact she has made, and consequently she tentatively, almost hesitantly outlined her actions, not wanting to take credit where she believed she did not have the jurisdiction. Thus, I used annotations to delve into her words and connect overarching themes, such as her constant desire to make spaces for marginalized communities, and they were also my way of witnessing and outlining actions I have noticed about Abigail outside of the interview during ART/EMIS meetings. I did find witnessing particularly challenging for this project because I discovered that defining what it means for art forms to be resistant is a delicate and complex matter – if I did not explain her thought process properly, it would have been difficult to understand as it is such an abstract concept. Further, in the same way that Abigail wants to make spaces for underrepresented demographics, I tried to ensure that through my curation and my witnessing, I was able to create a space for her to adequately express her opinions, her frustrations, her successes, and anything in between that she believes is important.
I chose to create a zine as I believed that was the best way to showcase Abigail’s voice while allowing me to seamlessly include my own observations about her unspoken actions. I did consider creating a video essay instead, but I felt restricted by the medium from executing my vision, as video would have made it quite difficult to simultaneously represent both her quotes from the interview and my further observations on those thoughts within the given time limit. I suppose this is an ironic connection to my discussion of how artistic mediums shape the content in the zine, as this zine format enabled me to experiment with format and design to effectively convey my elements, as well as to couple it with Scalar’s annotations and achieve my desire to input my own observations to supplement Abigail’s words. Further, using a zine format allowed me to first inform my audience of my intentions with the discussion and how it is best experienced through my editor’s note on the second page, which would not have been as seamlessly integrated into a video; in other words, the zine allowed me more conceptual control of how I wanted my audience to witness Abigail’s activism.
Within this entire project, I focused on two quotes, one from All About Love: New Horizons and the other from “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”. From hooks’, I used her teaching that “when we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear - against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other” (93). Further, Lorde emphasizes that “only within that interdependency of difference strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters” (2). From these, I drew the idea that in order for a love ethic to be promoted and encouraged within a community, the differences that usually alienate people need to be illuminated, celebrated, then normalized to eliminate fear and move into a space of love and support. Through this concept, I connected this to all of Abigail’s work to create spaces for marginalized communities, as I saw that even though she did not realize that she was promoting a love ethic within USC, because her work focused on niche demographics that were often unacknowledged and were showcased to anyone at USC who was willing to watch, she is always actively illuminating and celebrating differences, thus encouraging mutual understanding among the student body and bringing people together through this love ethic.
Lastly, my biggest takeaway from this process of “witnessing” to create a multimedia essay lies in how media can be both inclusive and transformative through its lack of definitive restraints and its endless possibilities to convey information creatively. I am by no means a graphic designer or even a visual artist – I had no idea how to use Illustrator and I still do not know how to use it properly, nor do I understand anything about graphic design theory – but it was so empowering to be able to harness all these sensory experiences through media and portray a narrative in a visual and fluid way, especially for this project. From listening to Abigail’s projects and going through this project’s creative process, I have learned that media is inclusive because it does not isolate certain groups of people because they cannot understand or emphasize with it – there are less barriers between access to media than access to other forms of communication. And media is transformative as no two people are going to interpret it the same way, so media will continue to change social discourse through the ways that personal experiences and viewer interpretation intertwine.
Even though I was only tasked with witnessing Abigail’s transformative effects on her community, I felt oddly connected to her narrative, like I was watching a version of myself in the future. We both are quite similar in multiple areas – we both joined ART/EMIS in freshman year in our search for a place to find our creative community in college, and we both recognize that spaces for marginalized groups are the foundation of increased visibility – and I truly admire all the work she has created and how she views her position in the world. In the next few years, I will continue witnessing how she is paving the way for herself and the people she speaks for, as well as others who do the same; as I follow in their footsteps, I hope that one day, I will learn to pave my own path and be someone whose experiences can be witnessed and valued by others in the same way.