Everybody stops what they are doing and keep on reading, this will be worthwhile.
I would like to draw your attention to some amazing educational projects that focus on using the performing arts as a tool to teach literacy and also provide children and young adults with expressive confidence. GETheatre is behind this initiative that has now been running for a few years worldwide.
But there is a catch, for these workshops to happen, they need your support. The one that requires an injection of cash as soon as possible is the project that will be based in Zanzibar later this year.
Go to the Rocket Hub website to generously fund this project or use the panel below. Any donations would be appreciated.
GETheatre has been working in Zanzibar since 2006, providing secondary school students with intensive English literacy training workshops using devised theatre techniques.
Typically programs run for two weeks at each school and involve facilitating a group of 20 – 25 students through dramatic activities towards devising a performance. Read more about what GETheatre is doing across the globe.
We have also included below a video where Jennifer Holmes and John Socas talk about the Zanzibar project
“Reified people proudly display the proofs of their intimacy with the commodity. Like the old religious fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments of fervent exaltation. All this is useful for only one purpose: producing habitual submission.”
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, p.33
White 12 (L’Atalante), (c)2011 Cathy Lomax
My first question was what exactly is a ‘reified person’? “In Marxism reification is the thingification of social relations or of those involved in them, to the extent that the nature of social relationships is expressed by the relationships between traded objects,” I found that definition in Wikipedia, it made an impression on me once before and I wondered if it would shed light on what Debord might mean as a ‘reified person’.
Some possibilities perhaps:
1. a person who worships someone in the public eye turning them into an idol and collects all manner of idol memorabilia
2. a person who takes on the attributes of a worshipped idol in the projection of a personal identity
3. a person who expresses personal identity through the outward display of status brands
4. a teenager
5. each and every one of us in the Western World (I cannot speculate here on other cultures)
As I wrote the first three, I realised the fourth and fifth. Some of these possibilities present themselves through the work of Cathy Lomax and other artists in This ‘Me’ of Mine such as Annabel Dover and Kate Murdoch, though, in their work, not as idol worship but the simple expression of social relationships through objects or the exchange of objects. This idea of ‘reified people’ is implicit throughout my interview with Cathy Lomax, The Perfect Wrapper.
Muslin, (c)2008 cathy Lomax
Jane Boyer: Your work often deals with pop idols (Sixteen Most Beautiful Men, Dead Filmstars) and iconic film imagery (Film Diary, The Count of Monte Cristo). Curiously though, it’s not pop culture which is your subject, but the fascination, escapism, hero-worship and fan-love we’ve all experienced. What fascinates you about our psychological propensity to fascination and ‘longing for something unobtainable’?
Cathy Lomax: I think that pop culture in general is just a wrapper for supplying the things that the market demands – i.e. what we want. These things do not change much; they are excitement, desire, escapism etc. So with this in mind I let myself lead the direction of my work by following what it is that I am drawn to. I do not like to think that I am in any kind of elevated position in my commentary on my subjects; I am in and amongst the subject matter. Looking deeper into what it is I am interested and fascinated by, it is apparent it is something that I do not actually want but rather that it is something I can think about and live out in my head – probably because this is the safest way to do it. This is what led me to the Film Diary as film for most people is the most intense way to experience other lives and worlds.
This is it. Last stretch before the start of The Other art fair and the display of delightful artworks as usual. We are also looking forward to see our friends at Jester Jacques gallery who will hold their fort in the bar area – nice.
True to themselves and always believing and supporting of the emerging art scene, Jester Jacques gallery will most certainly please use with a pertinent selection of artists for the fair. Artwork from Rob Bellman, Chris Daniels, Super Future Kid, Steven Quinn and Nicholas Goodden will be showcased.
We have included below our favorite artwork for each artists and hope to see you at the fair.
Despite the dodgy weather in what’s supposed to now be spring, some of our favourite artists haven’t been deterred and continue to get up with some excellent work appearing in recent weeks.
No one fits that description more than Art Pie favourite Conor Harrington who added this stunning portrait to the East London streets.
