This Weeks Plan

Thursday we will be meeting in Old Main#G23 at 4:00pm to set up and install.

Friday we will meet in the neovox office at 9:30 to prepare and get t-shirts.  Everyone will chose a design to wear to the presentation.

Any questions...email lorraine or I.


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Okay, so this is it.

Okay, so these are my final two panels. I did one less image for the young boy because they are usually either killed or enlisted into the army if they are boys. I changed the third picture for both of them also to symbolize that they are made up of all the labels and emotions that come with this war and going through what they did. I'll have my artist statement soon.

Final Panel look?

I have another panel that will be basically the same but with a picture of a young boy. I tried to represent how she is a woman at first, then she loses herself, then is labeled, then loses her self in the labels, then feels nothing because she is whatever the world made her.

It makes sense to me, I hope it makes sense to everyone else.

Text of the Pamphlet--Critique?

I have posted the text of the pamphlet on Open Salon. Please, if you get a chance, take a look at it. I know it's running long, so please feel free to tell me where it should be cut and tightened up.
Lorraine

http://open.salon.com/blog/fingerlakeswanderer/2010/04/05/what_you_can_do_for_the_women_of_the_drc

Panels

Sorry I was late with the post, my internet has been down at home.

My first panel deals with the idea that the war in the DRC is part of cell phone use throughout the world and the minerals we use for granite that are hurting the women of the DRC.

My second panel shows an exerpt that we got in NeoVox from the new york times about one of the women's story about her torture in the DRC. I grabbed pictures of congelese women and children.

The images are being difficult to upload through mail and blog so i will resize them when I can.

Martine- I will have them in class on Monday to show you.

The Size of the Panels - 24"x72"

Panels can be printed on luster, glossy and matte.  Think about what will work for your imagery.

Images are due next Friday so we have a week to print.  I will need volunteers to help with printing.

This might be larger if you couldnt see the other..

my first poem i ever wrote!

I was talking to my friend the other day and he had an assignment to do for creative writing and the insturctions said something about how with every word and new image is created and words being added to a phrase change and image. So i thought how i could use that and change the one word of. "WOMAN" then i just started brainstorming and my friend actually mentioned some words and i put it together. took a while.. My friend mentioned the word victimized and i thought how perfect it would be in the end.. after all of the words are added to the body the ending statement changing to VICTIMIZED WOMAN.. and starting with just WOMAN...

So i wrote this poem its the first time i ever wrote one so i hope that you all like it. I wanted it to be POWERFUL and really capture the attention of the audience because it is all about rape. I think i did a good job portraying what I wanted to... what do you think?? i had this image of the words within a girls figure and i came up with this.. i worked on it for a while and had help from someone in the lab .. her name was melissa and she showed me how to do it all.
What do you all think??

-Jen

an article on conflict minerals

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/congo-gold-adam-hochschild

more news about the Congo

from today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/world/africa/28congo.html?hp

One More by Eve Ensler

This one is important, because it discounts the "cultural" argument. We can argue that rape is a cultural phenomenon in the U.S., also, but that doesn't stop us from doing what we can to stop it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/ten-radical-acts-for-cong_b_418425.html

Charlize Theron on the DRC

Most of you know that Charlize Theron is South African. This is an article she wrote after her visit to the DRC:

http://www.vday.org/node/1818

Some things We CAN Do About the Congo

I know after today's discussion, some of us were left with the idea that we can't change anything. I want to provide some links with concrete ideas that we can incorporate into the brochure.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090202/ten_things

http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/interviews/evecongo.html

http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/08/rape-in-the-congo

Perhaps we need to once again, focus on the small things--primarily the construction of the City of Joy in Bukavu.

Another organization that is doing a lot of work in the DRC is Doctors Without Borders.

As I said in class today, we can't save a nation. But perhaps we can improve the lives of a few women, which, to me, is worth doing this for.

Lorraine

For the new folks (and the old)

Those of you who are joining NeoVox as a second quarter class know that we are working our collective behinds off trying to get ready for Scholars' Day. I would like to ask EVERYONE who is intending to show up for tomorrow's 1:30 meeting to brainstorm how they might be able to contribute to the presentation. Second-quarter students are going to be different work, but FOR RIGHT NOW, we need help, so I'm asking you to do this as a required assignment.

There are several tasks that need doing. For the writers, our primary task is to put together the brochure with information about what is going on in the DRC, the statistics about the numbers of women raped and the numbers of people who have been killed. We also need someone (maybe one of you science folks?) to do some research on conflict minerals. Coltan is the major conflict mineral that is being used to finance the war in the Congo, and we want to bring Cortland students' attention to the fact that our use of cell phones and computers may be inadvertently contributing to financing the war. We need a list of officials that people can write to. I would suggest the following: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice; President Kabila of the DRC; First Lady Michelle Obama. I have some templates of these letters from last year. We could consider putting together a postcard on the back of the brochure that folks could tear off and send to one of these officials. Can we brainstorm what we might like the postcard to look like? Should it have an image on it?
Finally, for those of you who are feeling moved by what you have been learning about the Congo are free to write prose/poems/ or any other type of art that not only expresses how you feel, but may also move students to action.
As Martine notes in her post, we are RUNNING OUT OF TIME. Please consider that this assignment--which you will tell me tomorrow what you're going to take on--needs to be in good shape by next Friday.
If you are one of the folks who cannot attend class on Friday, please e-mail Martine and I with your idea, and plan on e-mailing your assignment to both of us by next Friday.
My most recent blog post about the DRC can be found here:
http://open.salon.com/blog/fingerlakeswanderer/2010/03/23/did_your_cell_phone_kill_someone_today

Any questions? Contact me at lorraine.berry@cortland.edu. Feel free to comment.
I

Thank you for your posts

Firstly, on Friday 3-26 many of the art students are going on a field trip to NYC. So, for next week we will have a critique on our Scholars Day image panels.  Everyone needs to come to class next Friday 4-02 prepared ready to critique!  Between now and next week, please post images in progress.
We will need to decide on the sticker on this day as well.  So if you have not posted an idea, do so asap.  We will only choose from designs submitted to this blog.

Remember:  you will each create 2 image panels based on the DRC.  In the software of your choice your document needs to be 24" x 72" 200dpi. 

Secondly, we need to move quickly on the booklet that we were discussing to hand out.  The printer will need some turn around time, so I would like to see comps for the layout next Friday as well.  Lorraine and I will supply content. I would like to get this to the printer no later than April7th. Does anyone want to head up the layout on this?

Lastly, I would like to spend our time printing all of the panels when we meet on April 9th.  The imagery will be done a week before we install.

Please be ready to work, and work really hard.  Scholar's Day is around the corner.