Because of access to the Internet, youth are exposed to a global range of both injustices and common experiences more quickly. They encounter someone like Rene Silva, another attendee at the symposium. From his beginnings as a pre-teen making a paper-based school newspaper in a small town in Brazil to his time as a teenager ultimately taking advantage of the audience potential of Twitter to report on the battle between drug cartels and government forces in his town, he serves as an inspiration for these students from afar (DMLCentral, 2014). Fifteen years ago, a participant in my program would not have had access to stories of such power and influence that another teen can have on his particular situation. Previously, teens entered with
projects more often emulated that experience. With access to the Internet, teens in all environments witness this power, and are forced to consider more broadly what impact their work might have on their own lives and that of others.
For example, one former student of mine arrived at this consideration more quickly than others. He lived in a less-resourced neighborhood in Boston, and came to the Fast Forward program with much humility and appreciation. While he wandered the galleries experiencing work from various artists, he also wandered the burgeoning Internet, possibly further recognizing the disparity between his situation and those that have easier access to resources. In his experimental piece Cause and Effect, he takes a poem by Peter Spiro and adds autobiographical imagery heavy with digital filtering. Branden is aware of the challenges he faces as a young black man in Boston. But he is also aware of the potential power of the context of creating art within an institution such as the ICA. The freedom of contemporary art allows him to explore this self-perception in a non-traditional way, aiding him in removing himself just enough to maintain comfort. The immediacy of the
Internet helps Branden to continue to distribute this piece quickly and widely. Equally as important, his classmates are now forced to reconcile their understanding of the privileges and challenges that are present in this microcosm of a class.
My curriculum does not require work to confront personal perspectives of social injustice, but in the 12 years I have been directing this program, it has become clear to me that the medium mixed with the globalization of interaction, drives most students to confront this. The following represent just a few of the examples of students’ works:
• The Countdown is a spoken word video which questions each of our roles in the September 11th attacks;
• Public Enemy #1 is a daughter’s public tribute to her father from whom she draws much inspiration; • Iron Face is an autobiographical piece by
Abraham who uses the piece to come to terms with the violence he faced as a child in Monrovia, Liberia;
• Breaking the Cycle is another autobiographical piece by Maxwell where he confronts the
similarities he has with his father who was a Vietnam War photographer.
In all of these examples, the students are revealing personal or cultural struggles while acknowledging their roles in challenging circumstances, or they are celebrating the overcoming of those challenges. In one last example, Cartago, a work by Monty Alcott, Monty creates his own library of visual allegories to reimagine the relationship between Aeneas and Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid. He is confronting the other students in the class with the struggles that one can assume within the context of philosophy. He is confronted with Branden’s struggles with poverty, while Branden is confronted with Monty’s philosophical conundrums. This absurdity represents the myth and promise of peace, prosperity, and first-world status. This is the potential of the context of the Institute of Contemporary Art and the beautiful promise of art.
All of these pieces are performative in style, demonstrating the impact that the ICA has had on the student. The students are encouraged to improvise so that they do not feel encumbered by conventions. They take issues that are of importance to them and begin to develop new modes to
explore them. They imagine an audience informed by contemporary art. All the while they anticipate the potential of a web-based audience and desire a dialogue that considers what they have to say as well as the way in which they say it.
Yolé!Africa’s video series “Art on the Frontline” presents a variety of examples of art and activity with a backdrop of tension and hope. As described on their website, the videomakers are “a collection of artists and cultural curators from the Great Lakes Region who stand for peace in the face of war and injustice and believe in the power of art to cultivate critical thought, encourage non- violent self-expression, and catalyze positive social transformation.”
Episode 9 in this series, Faraja on the Frontline, is a story of entrepreneurship by a school-aged boy who, after school, rents bicycles to people in his
town of Goma. Through its setting the film serves as a document to the scarcity of goods and less-developed conditions of Goma, but more deliberately it serves to reveal the spirit of the residents in portrayals of ambition, celebration, and a desire for fun. The protagonist of the film notes some of his challenges and fears, which range from the fear of being killed in war, to the occasional theft of the bicycles. Yet his focus, and that of his family, is his enterprising nature and what it might lead to. Created for a YouTube Channel film series, and subtitled in English, the film is intended for a global audience. The boy and his business are metaphors for the residents of the town, and portraying their spirit is a clear goal of the film series. The possibilities of Participatory Culture invite this personal
exploration for public reception and, like the youth artists in the ICA program, the anticipation of the audience seems to encourage both the filmmaker and the subjects to perform at a heightened level. Participatory culture through new media cannot exist solely in the virtual world. In 2005, Ndaliko founded the Congo’s first international film festival, Salaam Kivu International Film Festival (SKIFF). The 2008 festival occurred as the rebel general was advancing towards Goma, but Ndaliko was determined to maintain the normalcy of the annual festival and hosted more than 9000 people throughout the event (Power of Culture, 2014)
The U.S. has more than 150 international festivals, with some over 60 years old. Whether one festival or 150, the desire and ability to peacefully gather in person, to share and celebrate the stories of those around you and those around the world, is an important gauge of the cultural strength of one’s community.
Conclusion
My interactions at the symposium allowed me to see that my work can help to unearth buried personal conflicts within my students. Civil war and the racially motivated brutality of the civil rights movement might be considered history in the United States, but the ills of that historical context reverberate enough to allow us to draw comparisons with a new media program working in a much more volatile environment.
Sharing “the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, provocation, and imagination” in the context of a contemporary art museum is the benefit we gain from legislation, social movements, and social conventions. As we embrace our context, we must always acknowledge that people old and young are drawn to new media for interpersonal reasons. Digital improvisation can encourage creative freedom in new mediums, but the traditions of interaction and desire for validity and audience are embedded within these creations.
References / Resources / Links
Art on the Frontline. Retrieved from
http://yoleafrica.org/projects/art-on-the-frontline/
Breaking the Cycle. Retrieved from
http://www.icateens.org/video/breaking-cycle
Cartago. http://icateens.org/video/cartago
DMLcentral (2014). A Teenager Taps Social Media to Help Change His Struggling Community. Retrieved from http://dmlcentral.net/
blog/raquel-recuero/teenager-taps-social-media-help-change- his-struggling-community
Faraja on the Frontline. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=BTtB95-xBYA&feature=youtu.be
ICA (2014). Mission, History and Programming. Retrieved from
http://www.icaboston.org/about/history/
Iron Face. Retrieved from http://icateens.org/video/ironface Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Public Enemy #1. Retrieved from
http://icateens.org/video/public-enemy-1
The Countdown. Retrieved from
http://icateens.org/video/countdown
The Power of Culture. (2014). Even Nkunda Could Not Hinder the SKIFF Festival in Goma. Retrieved from
http://www.powerofculture.nl/en/current/2008/november/skiff
YoleAfrica. (2014). Projects. Retrieved from