How To: Get To Know Someone

 Do people ever show their true colors? It most certainly isn't socially acceptable to. Why you may ask? Why do people refuse to let their guards down, why do we tell people what they want to hear, why are most people constantly working to keep everyone in the dark about who they actually are?

 

For those of you who don't follow The Office, Ms. Kelly Kapoor is demonstrating for us how it has become so unusual for a person to openly speak their mind that anyone who does draws attention to themselves. My next question is this: when did it go out of style to tell people what you really think? If we filter almost everything we say and do, what's left?

The sad reality is that the more similar we are, the better we get along. If across the world, everyone had the same political, religious, social, and economic beliefs, we would all be the best of friends. On a smaller scale, if you and the guy sitting next to you in class are both wearing differently crazy clothes, you would each look at the other and think, "Wow, that guy's insane." Instead, if you and your classmate were both wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, you'd think, "Hmm... this kid's got good taste." You're more likely to enjoy the company of people that you're similar to. Since everyone is unique, we dull ourselves down in order to be able to connect with a wider range of people. 

Is this a conscious decision? Do we choose to censor ourselves for the sake of human interaction? And as for the people that make the decision to be 100% true to themselves, such as Timothy Treadwell, do they sacrifice their ability to have relationships with others for the sake of following their dreams? 

Is it possible to genuinely get to know someone?

How To: Recreate Creationism

Belgian artist Wim Delvoye worked with a team of professionals for eight years to create this piece, Cloaca. This machine was originally in Antwerp, Belgium at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MuHKA) in 2000. When my sculpture teacher first showed this image to our class, none of us knew for certain what Delvoye's creation produces; most of us guessed it makes something like cookies or alternative fuel.

What does it actually do? This machine performs the exact same function as the human digestive system. Food is imputed at the far end, and travels through a series of tanks, hoses, and pressurizers, and eventually comes out onto a conveyor belt as human feces that was once sold for $1000 daily.


It could easily be argued that this is more of a scientific experiment than a work of art. Either way, Delvoye forces his audience to think about the complexities of the human body we take for granted constantly.

More information about Cloaca and other works by Delvoye can be found here.

How To: Manipulate Children

My teacher read The Story of Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff, to us in Modern World History last year. This was a little unexpected, considering the other books we had read were a little more in-depth than this 1930s children's story. Brunhoff writes about Babar, the little elephant, who moves from the jungle to Paris, and becomes polished and sophisticated. Babar later returns to the jungle, gets married, and together the couple rules over all the other elephants as king and queen. A more detailed summary can be found here.

In the context of my history class, The Story of Babar's soul purpose was to plant ideas about how urbanization is good in the minds of children growing up in the 1930s. Looking back now, I'm realizing how, although the ideas are still present, there is more to this story than the destruction of small villages in the effort to create giant powerhouse nations. Still, the idea of secret messages is ever-present.

If secret messages are present in what is supposed to be innocent children's books, it makes sense to assume that they are also common in the media, pop culture, and just about anything else you might come across. The result of this realization is more of a constant paranoia that I'm being forced and manipulated into believing certain things, rather than a skeptical eye searching for credibility. Hopefully over time, I will be able to see through empty ads and implicit news articles, but for now I'm alright with being paranoid.