Museum of Resistance and Resilience

Erased Video

In the video, we incorporated the drawings and poem with music and animated text. The poem repeats four times, with each iteration becoming more censored with gradually drastic consequences on freedom of speech and freedom expression. With the first iteration of the poem, the original, we used text with color/more handwritten fonts. As the video progresses, the text slowly becomes more digitized (i.e. typewritten fonts), symbolizing the gradual homogenization of both the ideas and the expression of said ideas, as well, the colors of the video fade (both the drawings and the text), emphasizing how freedom of expression is essential to sustaining the vibrancy of creativity and intellectual stimulation. At the end of the video, the music climaxes as the drawing fills up with black squares (which are supposed to represent the complete censoring of the words). If society was shaped by the same ideals and values, then we would be confined to the same sphere of thought, resulting in a lack of contentious debate and thus little social change; without different perspectives, we would not be able to be exposed to and understand the differences that make each of us unique, and without embracing these differences, we would not be able to encourage a love ethic to create transformative change and meet everyone’s needs effectively. 

We choose to use the drawing of a bedroom to symbolize the context of our problem of sexual assault. Using color and detail to symbolize livelihood and expression, the stark juxtaposition between the two styles represents the slow, dark progression of overt governmental control and censorship—which parallels the same message that the poem illustrates. Within the first two images the girl seems happy in her room, emphasizing her freedom of expression. It is youthful, organic, and natural;  however, as that colorful, lively environment begins to crumble and take a new shape—thematically representing our dystopian world of complete censorship—the new reality is one that is harsh, colorless, devoid of expression and confined. Everything depicted in the second illustration aims to illuminate the jarring confinement that exists in this dystopian world, where individuality is forgotten and where the government speaks for everyone.

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