Interventionists Chapter III: Quotes and Artist

Youklendy Calderon
Professor Cacoilo
Art 263
27 November 2018

Interventionists Chapter III: Quotes and Artist

Quotes:

• "Rubén Ortiz-Torres has produced a series of baseball hats that, through the re-arrangement of their insignias, produce new, culturally charged meanings" (71)
• Traditionally, baseball hats and other clothing items have mocked cultures (e.g. Native Americans and the Scottish) by appropriating traditional/cultural symbols in the name of fashion. While society has chosen to ignore such subtle abuses of power, Ortiz-Torres has returned the symbols to their roots by bluntly incorporating clearly cultural symbols to baseball hats with the intent of creating controversy. These controversies alert society of cultural appropriation by appropriating culture. This positive feedback loop is effective because the controversy makes people uncomfortable, thereby forcing them to change.
• "By allowing a wearer to face a viewer while still retaining a sense of personal safety and anonymity, Dis-Armor assists in discussing painful experiences" (72). 
• Although we often claim that everyone has the liberty to speak, society has historically muted voices by public disapproval, fear, hypocrisy, and mockery. Thus, minority groups in terms of racial and political arenas, victims of abuse, and immigrants often find themselves in positions that eliminate their opportunities to share their opinion. Although they continue to have the freedom to speak, when they do speak society shuns them. Dis-Armor breaks this cycle by providing victims with microphones to speak and cameras to face their oppressors without showing their faces. This allows them to anonymously share their stories while literally giving their backs to those who have ignored their voices.  
• "Trained as a fashion designer, Lucy Orta develops conceptual and functional projects that extend and perpetuate her socially concerned aesthetic. She produces nomadic architecture as well as nomadic clothing" (104)
• Despite having formal training as a fashion designer, Orta uses her profession training to create and use clothing as architectural bricks to confront society about its treatment of modern-day nomads.
• "Clothing is not only a space of autonomy and refuge, but an industry as well. In particular, in the age of globalization clothing has been more often than not correlated with its industrial practices in the form of sweatshops" (104)
• Behind our simple practice of shopping and wearing clothes is an entire industry that survives on the abuse of factory workers whose working conditions are so terrible that they attempt to commit suicide and are prevented from doing so by their hiring companies. Such a reality makes one question the morality of purchasing unnecessary clothes and contributing to the profits of companies that have come under national shame for such practices.

Artist:  Lucy Orta

Lucy Orta highlights the living issues faced by refugees and the homeless in terms of their lack of space to settle. By giving them tents that assemble into communities, her projects highlight the lack of 'belonging' faced by their wearers. Despite having temporary homes, participants break social norms by forsaking their invisibility and intruding in society, thereby demonstrating their presence in socially uncomfortable numbers. Overall, her projects raise awareness about the large number of people without homes and their lack of belonging.