The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture (By Mary Ann Bolger)

Mary Ann Bolger lecturers in design history and theory at Dublin Institute of Technology. 

She is a graduate of the joint M.A. in History of Design at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and is currently pursuing postgraduate research at the RCA on the topic of post-war Irish graphic design. 

In this essay she explained the cult of death in Irish culture. She mentioned Nina Witoszel and Patrick Sheehan'statements which they believe this cult is amplified by Irish literature & drama. Mary states a great deal of literature has been dedicated to the subject. Most of focuses in the writing is on political uses of death and on the folk tradition of the wake.

She mentions memorial card is the aspect of Irish Catholic funeral practice.



Typical memorial Card: single  bi-fold
                                        2*4 inches/ holy photo in front
                                The name, date of death, adress of deceased, recent photo in reverse

The aim of sending those cards was that to wish prayers for deceased relatives.

Mary focuses on testing the material dimension of printed matter itself. Method of addressing printed ephemera is informed by Elizabeth Edward's work on memory and photography + by Roland Barthes meditation on photography, materiality and death in his book 'Camera Lucida'.

According to the writing (by Brian Dillon) in the Guardian that book's more penetrating influence has certainly to do with photography and mortality: both the memorial uses to which photographs have long been put – one thinks of Victorian mourning portraits, or the profusion of post-9/11 mementos – and the vertigo we can feel in the face of even the most vivid and living subject. 

Mary said Barthes mentioned about vulnerability of the photographs and he said they are not mortal because their paper are attacked by environmental effects like light, humidity,...

The Designer As Author (By Michael Rock)

Michael Rock is an American graphic designer and recipient of the National Design Award. By his own writing  "The Designer as Author", he provokes a debates over the authorship of design content and he poses this question: "what dose it really mean to call for a graphic designer to be an author?"

He said "Authorship" has become a popular word in Graphic Design especially in those at the edge of the profession. Then he states that the meaning of the Author has shifted through history and has been the subject of severe survey in last 40 years. .......

My body is my manifesto! Slutwalk, Femen and Femmenist protest (By Theresa O` Keefe)

Theresa O` Keefe says (according to University College Cork website): "I joined the Department of Sociology at UCC in 2016, where I research gender and egalitarian social change. My areas of expertise are feminism and social movements, gender and state violence, precarity and inequality in higher education. As a feminist sociologist I have a firm commitment to feminist praxis and public sociology which reflects in both my scholarship and teaching."

In that essay she argues any desolate possible these recent movements (slutwalk or femen protest) should offer is limited among the multiplication of patriarchal and gender discrimination. This theory is included some primary research by way of news reports, illustrating on websites, Facebook pages and other online platforms.  

Unfortunately there are so many unrespectful reactions against of females are happening in the world and Theresa mentioned some of the female protest which Toronto Slutwalk is one of them. She said in one campus safety information session which was held in Toronto, one officer said to women "if they want to be safe they might avoid wearing dress like sluts."

According to BBC news after that session, thousands of people ( some dressed in jeans, others more provocatively)  are taking part in marches, or "SlutWalks".
The aim, say organizers, is to highlight a culture in which the victim rather than rapist or abuser is blamed.

Theresa mentioned that the photos of Slutwalks are in all different websites and they are including wearing a mixture of costumes, performances , happiness, sexual expression. Women dressed scantily, wear fishnet, bras, short skirt with high heel shoes. Also some people scrawl their naked body by writing Slut with lipstick or some wear badges which is written `I love sluts` or `My little black dress does not mean yes` 

According to Agreeing, Gilmore. (2011) SlutWalks have orientated organically, in city after city, fueled by the raw emotional and political energy of young women and that's the real reason SlutWalks have struck me as the future of feminism. Not because an entire generation of women will organize under the word “slut” or because these marches will completely eradicate the damaging tendency of law enforcement and the media to blame sexual assault victims (though I think they'll certainly put a dent in it). But the success of SlutWalks does herald a new day in feminist organizing. One when women's anger begins online but takes to the street, when a local step makes global waves and when one feminist action can spark debate, controversy and activism that will have lasting effects on the movement.

I have to state that unfortunately these protests are not happening in my country due to some ridiculous limitation but I like to mention about (Golshifteh Farahani) one Iranian actress`s movement in France against of Iran`s restrictions. She was naked in shooting for Le Madame Figaro and by this movement she wanted to protest Iran`s restriction on how women are allowed to appear in public, according to The Daily Beast. The facebook page created in support of Farahani’s protest says its goal is “to support Golshifteh’s move, in order to say NO to relegion (sic), tradition, culture and anti women’s law.”

   

Question:

 

 

No Muscles, No Tattoos (By Alice Twemlow & Jop Van Bennekom)

Dr. Alice Twemlow is a writer, critic and educator whose work focuses on Graphic Design and she writes for Eye Magazine, Design Issues, ID, Print, New York magazine and The Architect’s Newspaper. 

" No Muscle, No tattoos" essay was written in Eye magazine which is the international review of graphic design and is a quarterly printed magazine about visual culture & graphic design.

At first of the essay she mentioned that Joe Van Bennekom chose the American Typewriter (font) for Butt magazine as he thought it is a gay typeface and it is qualified by the reality that the interviews and erotic gay porn which are printed in pink color.

The Butt magazine, originating in the Amsterdam, features interviews, articles, and advertisements and illuminates upon attitude and lifestyles within the male homosexual community. it is produce by Van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers and it has published photography and interviews with renowned gay artists, and became popular with its first issue, which showed German fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm in nude portraits taken by Wolfgang Tillman.

(Issue=refers to how many times that periodical has been published during that year)

 

 Bernhard Willhelm

Butt was established in 2001 that time Van was starting to attract critical attention for Re-magazine and it ran from 1997–2004 and was launched by Van Bennekom as part of his design studies, he wrote, designed and photographed everything for the first few issues before building a team to help with later ones. The earlier issues set the tone; the run of 15 issues form an extraordinary series of individual magazines that shift theme and approach, using the visual and verbal language of magazines to create different experiences that are both intelligent experiments in storytelling and meditations on the art of magazine-making. 

Alice mentioned when Re-magazine spreading, it was attempting to find a new identity however Butt had a defined, format, characteristic language from the start and also it is sex magazine which provides spaces for defects. 

Van says"Other gay magazines have cut and paste, retouched bodies unlike any you have ever seen in real life & certainly not like mine."

Alice states that Van is a creator as none of Butt`s portrait is a studio shot and all photos show real people in their own environments an d it was his rules when he developed guidelines: No muscle No tattoos

Also She has  mentioned that In 2004 When Butt could starting to generate money, Jonkers and Van decided to invest it in a new fashion magazine for stylish mid-thirties men and Fantastic Man is another magazine by and for Jop van Bennekom. That magazine looks more formal that Butt and Re. Also he chose Time font as he feels it has unlimited flexibility.

 Finally Alice explains the reason of the success of his stable of publications derives, counter -intuitively, from the unsureness of his outlook,  his wayward and cruel awkwardness.



Questions:

1) What designer should do to create an identity for magazines?
2) Do you think in near future all printed magazine will killed? (Due to replacing by on-lines)

Exhibition (This Is How We Bite Our Tongue)

I am going to write about my own personal experience of the seeing three exhibitions I met recently which are Whitechapel Gallery (Elmgreen & Dragset), Calvert Gallery (New East Photo Prize) & Barbican (Balata) in London. Before going to those exhibitions, we supposed to look at the text (living Pictures) by Olivier Vallerand to prepare ourselves for the exhibitions. 

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset `s biography: They based in Berlin and London, have worked together as an artist duo since 1995. They have held lots solo exhibitions in art institutions worldwide, including Serpentine Gallery and Tate Modern in London.

That essay was related most to Whitechapel Galley which displays Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset`s art works. Olivier tries to show the impact of the transposition of spaces understood as private in the public space of the gallery and using two projects of art and architecture. He compared Mark Robbins’s Household (2003-6) with Elmgreen & Dragset’s The Collectors (their large-scale installation for the 2009 Venice) Biennale that transforms gallery pavilions into two artificial domestic spaces for a bachelor and family. Both projects emphasized the performativity of space but Olivier underlined the difficulties of transferring these critiques in lived spaces, as the design of Elmgreen & Dragset’s own house-studio shows.

Olivier pointed that two space (The collectors 2009) were different, family house had more traditional room divisions while the bachelor inhabits one large open space organized around a central glazed bathroom in a glazed enclosure in the middle of the space.

In the Whitechapel Gallery (Nov 2018) by transforming the ground floor with a new commission, they show the ghost of the Whitechapel pool and it make us questions the destiny of urban spaced in an age of austerity.

The first of their work I saw in the exhibition was that empty pool which they pointed that it reminds us the past hope and present disappointment of what is called public space. They mentioned the feeling like you arrive at part too late but it reminded me the past times when most people in my country (Iran) had a pool in their gardens (even very small) and we used to swim during the summer and in the autumn we had to keep it empty. Looking at the empty pool with soil and leaf on it, reminded me my childhood enthusiasm for waiting next summer. The interesting part of that empty pool was that all the material inside it (soil & leaf) was made by Bronze. I have to point that I found out when Emma mention that in our discussion meeting.

In that galley you also see two decades of Elmgreen & Dragset`s sculptures which are included a pregnant maid, a reversed crucifix, judge`s wig, a frightened schoolboy & a rifle on the wall. 

The first sculpture that drew my attention was the one day (The boy look at gun) which at the same time was interesting but it gave me sadness feeling. In our discussion session some students believed that it was represented the Gun culture in the United States but in my idea beside that it displayed the violence in the world which for some humans is the very simple issue. Moreover it represented the war and how easy some cruel people can kill others without a second hesitation. When I saw the innocent boy I felt there are lots of children in the world they have to get use to it.

The other sculpture I like is the Reversed Crucifix. You could see the Christ has been replaced by another ordinary man hanging the wrong way with tied wrist and it represented scenes of erotic bondage and it showed the pleasure rather than suffering. I liked artists’ braveness due to the numerous of religious beliefs in every society.  I think as an artist we should be more brave and open minded.

 The second exhibition was selected work by finalists for the second edition of the New East photo Prize and there were included 29 countries. One of my favorite photos is after season (by Adam Wilkoszarski from Poland) which focused on holiday resorts at the end of the season and gave me a relaxation and calmness and I wished I was there.

The second Photo I was interested in was Vrajitoare (By Lucia Sekerkova from Slovakia) which is focus on the witches and fortune tellers in Romania and this skill has been changed in to online business today. They can find their client online instead of walking on the streets but in my idea it represents the proper relationship between two friends or two sister and with that orange background you feel warmth of that relation more. 

 Third exhibition was about one New Zealand born artist Francis Upritchard who created a new series of sculptural interventions in the Curve to transform the space with a vibrant collection of materials and figures. All figures were in varying sizes from medieval knights to meditating hippies, painted in monochromatic or distinct patterns and decorated with bespoke garments and objects. Upritchard has conceived of the gallery as a spectrum in which to play with scale, color and texture that shifts as you move through the space.

I really like her works and I just share some of her beautiful and unique artworks.

Overall it was a great experience to see other artists`s works from all over the world.

The Feminine Awkward: Graceless Bodies and the Performance of Femininity in Fashion Photographs (By Eugenie Shinkle)

Eugenie Shinkle is Reader in photography at the Westminster school of Media art and Design and also she writes and lectures on fashion photography.

At first of the essay she states that fashion photography has been involved with uncomfortable and awkward poses recently which in her point of view this awkwardness is the history of fashion photography. There is no relation between awkward fashion photograph and different signifying practices; it just arises out of emotional responses.

External and internal forces shape the creation and experiment of the fashion photos. Internally awkwardness is included in relation between the model, camera and photographic frame but externally is the linked to the way of understanding of the photo by viewers and awkwardness is the way you understand the images look and their feels.

Eugenie points that in last decade of the 19 century models were taught how to walk, pose and gesture and they required acting like formality designed to repress emotions and individual personality. Totally they supposed to draw attention to their clothing that they wore rather than themselves.