22•US•She/Her•bi
Aesthetic/fashion blog: vividinteriorlife
"No one can love you until you love yourself" is like the worst possible way of articulating "if you don't respect and value yourself, it's very easy to become attracted to people who don't treat you right and then justify their mistreatment, so be careful."
so THAT'S what it's supposed to mean. that actually makes sense.
*frothing at the mouth* LIBRARIES ARE THE BACKBONE OF OUR SOCIETY AND ONE OF THE LAST PLACES WHERE YOU AREN’T VIEWED AS A WAY TO MAKE MORE MONEY
frankly I think a lot more people would be open to postmodern art if we all stopped pretending you had to be very smart to understand it and start acknowledging that the starting point for deriving meaning from it is frequently ‘this is stupid bullshit’
To clarify- it’s not just ‘this is stupid’ and then you’re done, finding the meaning in something that seems meaningless can usually be found by starting with that base feeling, ‘This sucks.’ Okay- why does it suck, specifically?
‘This is just a vaccuum cleaner, it doesn’t belong in a museum’. Okay, follow that thread- why is that weird? Is it the elevation of normal commercial products to be put on a pedestal? Does that sentiment remind you of anything? How does that make you feel?
“This is just splatters, anyone could do this.” Anyone could, couldn’t they? Anyone can create things, anyone can make these movements and gestures. Dancing does the same thing, doesn’t it? How do the splatters imply the artist’s movements? What does it say about them?
“This person made a mobile out of twine, flower pots, and pictures of cats. How is this art?” What mediums do you define as ‘art’? Paint? Marble sculpture? Photos? Why are you so sure that this is what art is? Doesn’t this remind you of the kind of crafts a child would make, or maybe a first-time DIYer? Is that intentional? Does the construction or material evoke any other emotions?
This isn’t an end-all be-all, of course- among many other things, there’s postmodern art that’s just for a show of mastery, there’s art that’s commenting on a very certain time in history or about something within the art community you may not be privy to, and there’s art that’s simply about creating and the creative process. It’s hard to approach a full narrative with just a single sentiment. This can’t cover every single topic, obviously.
That being said, it’s just as important to note that in many cases, there’s no wrong answers in art or interpretation. If your takeaway is completely different from the artist, as long as you don’t try to insist that the artist has no real say over their work’s meaning, that’s totally fine. A large part of non-representational art is reliant on emotions, and emotions are informed by your experience as a human being. Your interpretation is just as right as anyone else’s. And you don’t even have to LIKE everything- I hate Jeff Koons and his stupid balloon dogs! Cremaster makes me incredibly uncomfortable and even if that’s the point it’s still uncomfortable enough that it makes me not like it! You can just not like certain art, it’s not all-or-nothing it’s good or it’s not.
TL;DR- if you have a hard time ‘getting’ art, try listening to your base reaction to what you’re looking at, and then ask yourself why it makes you feel that way, and why it’s constructed the way it is.
Leslie Feinberg on trans exclusion in feminist spaces.
“We’re in danger of losing what the entire second wave of feminism, what the entire second wave of women’s liberation was built on, and that was ‘Biology is not destiny’. ‘One is not born a woman,’ Simone de Beauvoir said, ‘one becomes one’. Now there’s some place where transsexual women and other women intersect. Biological determinism has been used for centuries as a weapon against women, in order to justify a second-class and oppressed status. How on Earth, then, are you going to pick up the weapon of biological determinism and use it to liberate yourself? It’s a reactionary tool.”
From TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, issue 7, volume 1. 1995.
mythbusters was so good because it wasn’t a killjoy show. they didn’t just say “see, it doesn’t work” and leave it there
whenever they find that the stunt doesn’t work as portrayed in the movie, they immediately ask “what would it take to make this happen?”
“we know it takes this amount of explosives to work, but what if we doubled it anyway?”
Some myths I’ll always remember:
* Are elephants scared of mice? (They only did that because they were in Africa and had access to elephants.)
* Will a bull run amok in a china shop?
* Is it better to run zig-zag or straight when chased by an alligator?
I love these because NONE of them turned out the way they expected. They went into all three with pre-conceived ideas of how it would go, and each time they “failed.” Elephants WILL cower from mice. A bull moves very gingerly through a china shop. It doesn’t matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON’T CHASE YOU.
And each time, they reacted with just… pure glee. “Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!”
And that, to me, is what science is. Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information.
