Annotated Bibliography #3: my resistance

First source: Prostitute
My own work created in 2007. It is hard for me to summarize the source, since it is a piece of art. Please allow for this space to be a time to look and examine it yourself.

I thought it would be only fitting to include some of the ways I engage in resistance. I am a fan of the subversive method of resistance. I find in art, express and image. I truly subscribe to the idea that pictures are worth a thousand words. I want to dislodge perception of realities, I want to make people pause. A little bit about the piece of work. My inspiration for the piece came after reading a book by Denise Brennan called, What's Love Got to do with it?. The book looked at sex workers in Dominican Republic.

Second source: BANKSY

Banksy is a graffiti artist from England. There isn't much information about him because know really knows who he is. The technique he uses is a combination of stenciling and traditional graffiti. He does not sell his work but offers high resolution pictures on his website to allow for others to make their own shirt, mug, sticker, poster, etc...

The reason why I use him as an example of my resistance is quite simple. He inspires me. His art inspires me. Take for example this one:

The first time I saw this I was shocked--almost applauded. It offended me more than the photos that mary shared with us. Funny, right? I have always had an artistic mind set, I come from to artists. This piece was the first time I realized how powerful art could be in getting a point across (political or not). It pushed my own culture back into my face without even having to say one word. I could choose to look or not. The piece messed with me, it was burned into my mind.

Another piece(s) of Banksy work that had deep impact on me and my own work is this one:

Both of these pieces of work again do what I mentioned before but they also do something slightly different. Banksy has never been caught doing what he does. I am not sure how. See, these photos were stenciled on the Palestinian wall. What the what! There are mixed feelings about them, some people love them and others hate them. An old Palestinian man is quoted as saying: "his painting made the wall look beautiful. We don't want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall" and then told Banksy to go home. For me his work operates in a very subversive/in-your-face/fuck you type of way. I like that. This is only made more cool by the fact that he doesn't flaunt himself... he doesn't need himself to be known.

My third source is a little bit of a risk. Traditionally it is suppose to be an academic piece of work. I believe it is but maybe others might not think so. *Drum roll please* The third source is our blog!

This may seems to be a little bit of a cop-out but believe me in is not. For the longest time I have never been a fan of class assigned blogs because they missed the boat all together. No one looks at them, people hardly interact with them, waste of space and time. That was my thought but I got to say I have been converted- a little! :-) This blog has been a great place to examine more, to ask more questions and to see different angles. I wont write too much here about what I thought about the process since that will be for the wrap up but this is what I can say...

This blog only makes sense to incorporate it into resistance. We have been participating as a collective in active resistance to academia (formal writing and grading), to the blog sphere (offering up critical analysis to works by other people) and may I dare to say the status quo (by queering...well, everything). This annotated bibliography is titled, my resistance and this blog has been the thing I have had the most outlet for resisting.

A note about this being an academic source: I believe it is because, well, we are scholars in our own right... we might have not been doing this as long as some other people but we are doing it. We have been coming up with our own analysis of concepts and theories I would venture to say even coming up with 'new/fresh' theories as well. We might not be published but who knows...