This Land Is Mine: the great Middle East tragicomedy
"I envisioned This Land Is Mine as the last scene of my potential-possible-maybe- feature film, Seder-Masochism, but it's the first (and so far only) scene I've animated. As the Bible says, 'So the last will be first, and the first will be last.'"
(Nina Paley)
Fig.1 Nina Paley (2012) "This Land Is Mine".
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
American Progress: expansion as a spiritualised feminine figure
"George Crofutt, publisher of a fashionable western travel guide series, commissioned the creation of 'American Progress' by the Brooklyn resident, painter, and lithographer, John Gast. Crofutt reproduced the petite painting, done in 1872, as a color lithograph poster and also engraved the image in the guidebooks he published widely circulating the image. The painting depicts a sense of technological development’s advancement upon the untamed land like the coming of an impenetrable, inevitable militia with one uncharacteristic exception--the company is led by a feminine figure.
In the wake of four years of Civil War, the creation of the promotional material of 'American Progress' portrays a spiritualized feminine that provides nurturing, protective guidance and fortitude for the extension of civilization over wilderness and the 'uncivilized,' the enigmatic, and the primal. Disembodied, the idealized feminine portrays the evolution of the split of spirit from daily life as well as the sanctified superiority of the immigrants above human beings who lived in harmony with the spirit of the land.
The dominating and centralized angelic being’s paradoxical innocence and sensually alluring presence has the effect of distracting and softening the reality and the violence of this movement to 'win the west' where Native Americans depart the frame as non- natives stake claims in the form of prospectors, as settlers: farmers, homesteaders, and travelers. One of the popular artists of the times, Maynard Dixon speaks of the untruth of the romanticized representation of facts as he complained he was being paid to lie in his artwork and portrayals of life on the wild prairie (Dixon).
Fueled by an underlying desire to be free from tyrannical government and the prospect of a new life and livelihood in a world new to them, Euro-Americans manifested suffering and persecution similar to the very situation they sought to escape."
(Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism)
Fig.1 John Gast (1872). "American Progress", painting: oil
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
A house is a symbolic place that regulates privacy
"A house is a symbolic place combining paradoxical concepts that can easily be identified as 'binary codes.' Internal and external, private and public, female and male, sacred and profane, clean and dirty are binary codes used to explain roles and activities of people in spaces (Lawrence, 1990; Ünlü, 1999). The spatial configuration of house layouts may be different in different periods, regions, cultures, and societies. Societies establish order in their livelihood spaces and reflect their personalities in these spaces.
There is a mutual relationship between space and human relations. The differences in social systems reveal morphological diversity in house layouts. The family contains the socio-economical structure of society; although it is a small element, it is the cornerstone that forms the future of society. The family needs a specific space, a house, to achieve this function based on their characteristics and the desired level of privacy (Sungur and Çagdas, 2003).
Privacy is a dynamic topological property of space; therefore, it should be approached in an analogous manner. Spaces could be categorized not only depending on their degree of privacy, but also according to their capacity to regulate privacy. At the same time, complementary approach counters the strict categorization of spaces into either public or private. According to that point of view, architectural space and its various elements should act as regulators of privacy. Space and its elements should be able to increase or decrease privacy according to the customized needs of its occupants (Georgiou, 2006).
Robinson (2001) identified different zones of privacy within a single Midwestern house and pinpointed their importance for the individual. Robinson argues that through a series of spaces with different degrees of privacy, the autonomy of the resident within a small social group is provided. Furthermore, the individual is granted a large measure of control over time, space, activity, and social interaction."
(Faris Ali Mustafa, Ahmad Sanusi Hassan and Salahaddin Yasin Baper, August 2010)
Faris Ali Mustafa, Ahmad Sanusi Hassan and Salahaddin Yasin Baper (2011). 'Institutional Space, Domestic Space, and Power Relations: Revisiting territoriality with space syntax', Asian Social Science, Vol. 6, No. 8, ISSN 1911-2025 (Online), Canadian Center of Science and Education
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Colour Space: The Coolest Shades in Corporate America
"Companies spend millions trying to differentiate from others. Yet a quick look at the logos of major corporations reveals that in color as in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. The result is an ever more frantic competition for the best neighborhood. Here's a look at the new blue bloods."
(Michael Rock, p.157)
Fig.1 Rock, Michael. (2003). 'Color Space Coolest Shades in Corporate America.' Wired Magazine.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines
"In the Philippines, the term 'indigenous peoples' is legally defined by Republic Act No. 8371, otherwise known as the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997. IPRA defined 'indigenous peoples' (IPs) or 'indigenous cultural communities' (ICCs) as:
A group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, nonindigenous regions and cultures, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. ICCs/IPs shall likewise include peoples who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country at the time of conquest or colonization, or at the time of inroads of non-indigenous religions and cultures, or the establishment if present state boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, but who may have been displaced from their traditional domains or who may have resettled outside their ancestral domains (IPRA, Section 3h)."
(Nestor T. Castro)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
