Accessible Arts Disability Training Day

Yesterday courtesy of the Big Fag (thanks guys!), I attended a course on disability training at Accessible Arts run by Amanda Tink.

This was instigated by my project with John Demos, who's been doing a residency with our Press, funded by Arts NSW and administered by Accessible Arts.

There were quite a few things I learnt that I didn't know before. I generally treat everyone around me with respect, but when it comes a person with a disability, it's important to understand life from their perspective and make sure you know what phrases to use and how to approach them.

The section on stereotypes was one I was already very familiar with, but the section on communication was an important one for me. The difference, for example, between saying to a person who uses a wheelchair "do you need some help?" and "would you like some help?" is a good example because the idea of need perhaps takes away a little of their feelings of independence. That said, a person with a disability is not necessarily always in need of help - and they probably get asked that question about 10 times a day.

There's also many disabilities that are invisible. In fact, 1 in 5 Australians identify with having a disability, but the most prominent kinds of disabilities are psychological or health related. These people may find it difficult in work places as to whether or not to disclose their disability. Disclosure may mean they for example, would not prevail in a job interview. However should they not disclose, their disability may cause them difficulty at work.

Amanda played us this amazing video from the UK Disability Rights Commission: (you can find the second part on YouTube)

Language was also a key factor of the training session. Personally, I would never use words like spastic or retard, but I wasn't aware that perhaps a word like "handicapped" might cause offence. The best way to refer to people with impairments is to first regard them as a person, and to not assume anything about their life. So for example, you should say a "person with cerebral palsy" not "he suffers from cerebral palsy". You should not say "the deaf man", you should say "person who is deaf/ hearing impaired". And generally, it's better to find out a person's name! Also never talk about them as if they are not present, obviously. There's also things like being honest if you haven't understood what a person has said, and knowing the difference between simple language and moderate speed as opposed to talking to someone as if they were a child.

One thing that came up was how some people who are deaf sometimes don't consider themselves to have an impairment at all. Rather, that their ability to use sign language simply places them in a separate linguistic culture, one which has been extensively developed. I didn't know that before.

50 years ago being left handed was considered something of a disability. 20 years ago being gay meant you had a psychiatric condition. It's the society and world that shifts. It was interesting to look at how society has treated the issue of disability over time, beginning with a religious perspective that a person with an impairment must be so because he had sinned, or his family had sinned. Then from a medical perspective we would do the best for a person we could medically, and then they would just have to do the best they could to try and integrate within their family and get by.

The current model stemmed from the UK in the 70's where we think of people who have an impairment as not them being disabled, but rather than society itself is disabling them because of all the barriers they face, taking a wheelchair up stairs, or trying to find a cinema session that has audio captions.

Not many organisations have Disability Action Plans - only about 40% of arts organisations in Australia. It's important to understand that it's not a matter of building a ramp and hanging some audio tour headphones on the walls, it's about creating an environment that is entirely welcoming and not hostile through a range of means, both physical and emotional, and then, making the community of people with disabilities aware of those changes.

Anyway, I learnt a lot at the training session and I'm sure it will help me in my many current endeavours!

Cake Decorations in Love

Image from: The Age, 'Gay or Straight, Love is Love'

Those of you who know me, know I'm a 'wannabe' cake decorator, so this image caught my eye because the decorations are really awesome and something I'd love to try. However currently, this image - as cute as it is - is controversial.

I was once approached on the street by a charity worker who asked me what I thought is the most fundamental human right. I think he wanted me to say clean water, because polluted water is one of the most serious issues faced globally. Anyway, I wasn't really thinking, but my response was "love". I think maybe I threw him for a second, but yes, I truly believe that along with clean water, food and shelter, people have the right to love and be loved, and to be heard and understood.

So hear me out.

I'm an atheist, I don't believe in any higher governing power, but that doesn't mean I don't have a set of morals and values by which I live. I do, and one of them is the fact that in this sometimes scary world, humans have the ability to love one another, to do good to one another, and to fulfil each others' lives. I would say this belief is something close to what I might call my faith. It is what makes me a thankful person. It is what brings meaning to my life.

So the idea that people oppose the relationship and marriage of two people who love each other, and intend no harm to society, that is a threat to my beliefs.

Because in my philosophy of right and wrong, every person in this world deserves the chance to be happy.

For me, that's all there is to it.

Daddy's Little Princess

Daddy's Little Princess at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre by Linda Wilken opened a couple of weeks ago. If you remember, I first met Linda by chance at the Firstdraft Depot where she was undertaking a residency and I was working at the Big fag Press. We discovered we had some conceptual ideas in common and I interviewed her for Ivory Tower Magazine last year (page 10 in this document).

Sexualisation and objectification of young girls is a current social and political issue. This exhibition represents the way young girls in contemporary western cultures develop their identity based on popular culture and stereotyping which begins in childhood. Influenced through magazines, music videos, social media and the internet, these ‘young consumers’ are being seduced into stylising themselves on hyper-sexualised ideals.

-From the Casula Powerhouse website

Here are some photos I took of Daddy's Little Princess.

[All photos are mine of Linda Wilken's work at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre]

Ann-Sofie Back

So, part of my dissertation was looking at the way we use fashion to hide or conceal parts of our identities, and one of my case studies was the work of designer Ann-Sofie Back.


Here is an excerpt of my current dissertation draft:

 ___________________________

A case study relevant to this argument, is the work of Ann-Sofie Back, which blurs the line between art and fashion, looking at concepts of masking oneself with clothing, and as Beck states “drawing inspiration from mine and other women’s failures at achieving perfection and beauty” (in Granata 2007, p394).

There is a general consensus that Back is considered as an avant-garde designer, at least in the first few years of her work, because rather than focusing on fashion as a commodity, she broke certain practical fashion rules in order to expose ironies present in fashion systems, and the superficiality of fashion which she felt she grew up with (Granata 2007). Her interest in fashion was spurred by ideas like Goffman’s that “the individual... intentionally conveys misinformation[s]” (1959, p2). While many theorists have explored fashion as an indicator of identity, essentially clothing being the construction of a personal cultural expression (Wilson & de la Haye 1999, p1), Beck’s work expresses the notion of fashion as a disguise or mask, “rather than its alleged ‘authenticity’” (Granata 2007). Back’s work surrounds the idea that every aspect of fashion is “a perfect lie, watertight, nothing left to chance” an example of which is her “faux wasp-waist garments” which have a fake belt attached to the front which can be tightened to give a visual sense of thin-ness (in Granata 2007).

The concepts present in Back’s work are not news, in fact society has a general understanding and awareness of “the power [fashion] wields in defining and communicating our identity” (Arnold 1999, p490), and that clothing acts as a “superficial gloss” (Craik 1997 p1). Individuals use fashion deliberately to disguise and flatter aspects of their identity, one example of which we are all familiar with is the thought process we go through when selecting what to wear for a job interview (Goffman 1959, p47).  

 

 Arnold, Rebecca 1999, ‘The Brutalized Body’, Fashion Theory, Vol. 3 Iss. 4, pp. 487-502

Craik, Jennifer 1993, The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion, Routledge, London, New York

De la Haye, Amy & Wilson, Elizabeth 1999, “Introduction” in De la Haye, Amy and Wilson, Elizabeth ed., Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning and Identity, Manchester University Press, Manchester

Goffman, Erving 1959, Representations of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books, USA

Granata, Francesca 2007, ‘Subverting Assumptions of Female Beauty: An Interview with Ann-Sofie Back’, Fashion Theory, Vol. 11, Iss. 4, pp. 391-402

____________________________

 I looked further into Ann-Sofie Back's work and I liked how her design work is driven by concepts in society she wishes to comment on or disagree with. Her concepts have included the way men look at porography, mental illness, and the idea of God. I think these concepts lead her to some very interesting places.

 

Porn:

 Porn 2:

   God:

God 2:

 *Images linked from Ann-Sofie Back

I suppose I'm looking at ways a fashion shoot could be made into something that can be interpreted as semi-satire, and I think anything as concept rich and opinionated as this could really work.

An Inspirational Story: Aimee Mullins

I recently heard a podcast from The Moth, which was a story told by Aimee Mullins so inspirational, it drew a few tears! Aimee needed both her legs amputated at the age of 1, and struggled through her adolescent life with accepting her disability. She managed to overcome her struggles by embracing the way she had to live, and finding the positives - which included world running records using prosthetic legs, having designer legs made for her by the late Alexander McQueen, and becoming a model to show off her "leg wardrobe".

Image by Terry Richardson

Photography: Nick Knight

Aimee Mullins in Cremaster 3, collaboration with artist Mathew Barney.

I.D. Magazine:  Howard Schatz Photography

Aimee Mullins as a muse for Alexander McQueen

She describes the turning point in her self image where her father told her, "you can see the knee joint when you walk, it's inappropriate, go back upstairs and change", and she refused. She refused "to hide something about [her]self that was true".

After that she started to embrace her disability, and speaks of her different legs, or "wearable sculpture" with humour. "I can be as tall as I want to be, I have different legs for different heights, I don't have to shave, I can wear open toed shoes in the winter and most importantly opt out of the kankles I would have most certainly inherited!"

"I had moved past acceptance, I was having fun with my difference - thank god I'm not normal, I get to be extraordinary! When we can celebrate and truly own what it is that makes us different, we're able to find the source of our greatest creative power."

Here is beauty in diversity.

Primary Research

I was thinking about the Rally for Marriage Equality, and how mostly everyone took it as an opportunity to dress up and show their "true colours" in the company of people who also shared their views. I began thinking - what would we wear if we had no fear of judgement?

I asked a few people to describe for me what they would wear in an environment where they had zero inhibitions, zero fears of judgement and zero desire to fit in with social norms. Here are some visual representations of the answers I got:

 

Interestingly I feel like I got two variants of responses - those who would simply not bother with clothing or wear pyjamas and baggy shirts, or those who would be wearing traditional clothing from different eras, or extravagant styles or clothes worn by famous historical icons. Few people said they would wear things in between the two extremes - nobody said they would simply want to wear a t-shirt and jeans. So if our desire lies in the two extremes, why does the general population end up somewhere in the middle?

I asked this too, and most people seem concerned with social conventions, dressing in what makes their body look good, the expense of extravagant clothing, or lack of practicality. It seems we're not seeing people's true nature through their clothing.

*All images sourced from Google.

Bodies Talk

[Image sourced from AllWalks]

 I recently read an article called Bodies Talk by Caryn Franklin, the founder of All Walks Beyond The Catwalk which I'd grabbed from i-D magazine 2010, The head, the shoulders, knees and toes issue, pages 130- 131.

All Walks is a fascinating initiative, that I will dig deeper into for a separate blog post, but I just wanted to share some of what I perceived as 'truths' that spoke to me from this particular piece of writing.

This article, written during London Fashion Week 2012, targets how the fashion industry is an indicator of social change and dialogue with innovative designs and forward thinking, yet has such a retrograde representation of the human body.

Interestingly the ideals of modern society have this attraction to what is essentially an unhealthy weight for a woman, directly opposes subconcious biological genetic processes in the male brain for the purposes of evolution to choose a healthy female partner.

The article critiques the industry as "The Authority On The Way Clothes Look Best" for knowingly having a huge psychological impact on women, yet doing little to influence positive body image ideals and self esteem.

According to the article, whether the consumer is an intelligent self actualised woman or pre-teen (i.e intelligence, age, etc) has little relevance on the ability to think logically. When presented with fashion advertisments, the visuals impact the psyche on a subconscious level and the consumer cannot make a separation between the clothes and the body. This brings up a concept I have already spoken about in this blog about the goal of advertising in general being to make the consumer desire the product by feeling their own lifestyle to be inferior or as Caryn puts it "rectifying a Hopelessly Imperfect Existence with unnecessary purchases". There is little ability for us to think critically of images 'Gee, I wish I looked like her, maybe I should get that dress - hang on, even she doesn't look like that!', because "institutionalised body dysmorphia is a default setting for all of us".

Another issue I've spoken about before - airbrushing, is touched on in this article too. It basically says that the result of the manipulation of images means what is achieved is all the tiny things that make one body unique to another one are gone, and therefore we have "a repetition of the same unachieveable thing over and over and while we become more disoriented and miserable, the large corporate benefits." What happaed to beauty in the individual, the difference, the 'otherness'?

And this is not limited to the size of models. The scarcity of varying ethnic models on catwalk and fashion visuals could explain why Caucasion women suffer lower levels of self esteem than darker skinned women - as a white woman we're constantly being presented with images of what we "should" look like.

The article asks of fashion, "what if the entire industry lead the way in acknowedging what a powerful force it in in communicating to woman about their bodies, more powerful than music, sport, art and film put together, and Actually Did Something About It?" Obviously because of profit loss, established companies cannot afford to change their images now without risking a loss, so, as the article points out, it has to start within Fashion Educational Institutions, so that the next generation of designers/ creative directors/ stylists/ photographers/ etc are hell bent on promoting a revolutionary change in the industry and in the world of body image mental health.

Not to criticise my design degree, because I understand that we have a limited amount of resources within this degree. But the Womenswear fashion major students were told to aim to a size 9 model, because size 8 is a little on the underweight side and that's not what UTS wants to promote, and the models in the Graduate Show will be turned away if they are underweight. Well, firstly, I was at last year's fashion graduate show, and I did think there were a fair few unhealthy models included in the catwalk. Plus, we're constantly being told "Don't design for yourself, design for the market that's out there". I think the average Australian Woman is a size 12-14, so there is a certain irony to catering to the market by only creating clothes that look good on people who already look good. Using a size 9-10 model probably keeps you in the realm of a fairly healthy body, but we're still going for the thinnest possible ideal in the healthy range, which is not really a representation of the real world.

The industry may think that advertising their clothing on the most beautiful models they can find, is promoting their clothes in the best light. Well, studies show people would be more likely to buy clothes if they see them on a person who vaguely resembles them - age, size, ethnicity. Only, if they tried say, using a model for a photoshoot who's a size 14, they might discover that after grading to the size and essentially trying to fit that design to a larger person, well it distorts the original intention of the garment. So maybe we should have designers who start draping on size 12 or 14 mannequins - why should someone within the range of a healthy weight have to go to "plus size" stores to find clothing specifically designed for their body shape?

I liked this article. And I find myself constantly being highly critical of everything the fashion industry stands for. Well, also in our lecture this morning we were told industry members were excited about designers with ideas that could change their industry. Maybe I'm not as lost as I think I am.

 [Image sourced from AllWalks]

Second Skin

I loved the theory part of the subject Fashion, Gender and Identity, we could choose from any topic related to body, identity or clothing, I chose to think a little outside the box and analyse Tattooing from a fashion perspective. My essay Tattooing and Identity remains one of my greatest achievements in this course. I focused on three main ideas, that tattooing is an indicator of identity in an individual not just through aesthetics but also through the realms of the physical and the emotional processes it conducts. The main inspiration taken from this research was the idea of tattoos or clothes, or the way that we change the way we look, is all about conveying our sense of self (or disguising it) to the outside world.

I've recently been watching the series Criminal Minds, which begins and ends with a quote from significant leaders or writers - one that recently stuck out to me was,

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves."

*From the French:  
Nous sommes si accoutumés à nous déguiser aux autres qu'enfin nous nous déguisons à nous-mêmes.
-François de La Rochefoucauld

It also made me recall a Postsecret from Extraordinary Confessions of Ordinary Lives:

[Image Scanned from Book]