Borda Hospital is a psychiatric hospital for mentally ill patients in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They use art, music, theater, radio, writing, cooking dancing, and more as therapy to engage their patients socially and prepare them for re-entry into the outside world. It’s an approach focused around the view of these patients as humans that create and add to society instead of the historical view that a “crazy person” is a danger to society. We talked about graffiti as a form of therapy for many people who probably can’t afford to go to a therapist. But more than that, I think Borda Hospital shows that not only is art the next best thing to therapy, it’s one of the best treatments itself. Art is expression of the emotions and for these patients, the thoughts in their head that they can’t always express in words. It is a process of creating something positive, meaningful, and beautiful, something that someone who feels separated from society and community desperately needs.

I love this mural at the Borda Hospital. It is not nearly as intricate or colorful as some of the others and while I would usually opt for something with visual aesthetic appeal, these words are much more intriguing. “El arte es la locura más sana” or art is the sanest madness is a perfect representation of the perfect union between art and “craziness.” I think of some of the best artists in the world: Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Francisco Goya, Georgia O’Keefe, Edvard Munch, Beethoven, and more who either were literally diagnosed with a mental illness, are thought to have had a mental illness posthumously, or their art was so progressive and radical for their time that people thought they were crazy. I think of Johnny Depp who has played so many wild characters, many with questionable mental health themselves, that we wonder at his mental health. As the saying goes, there is a fine line between genius and madness. For all of these artists, it may be impossible to say if they are brilliant or mad, but it doesn’t matter in retrospect because society has decided that it likes their particular brand of madness when it contributes to the arts, and therefore they must be sane because we want them to make more art.

When the Ramona Parra Brigade (RPB) was created in the 60s to support Salvador Allende’s campaign, they were very politically motivated with socialist and communist views. They painted murals freely in the years leading up to and during Allende’s presidency, but on 9/11/73, they had to go into hiding, doing their art secretly for fear of capture, arrest, torture, and eventually death. Their art became subversive and they often had to re-do pieces when the military covered them up repeatedly. When Chile returned to a democracy in 1990, the RPB came out of hiding and spread their artistic influence across Chile and the world. Now, Valparaiso is the place for graffiti. In the past ten years, it gained the reputation of being a great place for graffiti artists because law enforcement didn’t try to prevent it and artists could even go and the community was very open to having art in their public spaces. Valparaiso has become less accommodating for graffiti now and the local government is making more of an effort to prevent it, but it’s too late, graffiti artists from all over the world have come there to make their art.

Scrolling through these online exhibitions, I truly can’t understand why some people dislike graffiti. I personally love how so many of these pieces are colorful with full spectrums of bright, vibrant, hues. They draw you out of simply looking at the sidewalk or starting at yet another building. I remember the first day we arrived in Madrid, we took a bus from the airport to our homestays, and I just stared out the window for the entire ride like a little kid going to Disney World. And on every piece of empty concrete surface there was some kind of graffiti. It’s like living in a jungle with strange, new, exotic animals you’ve never seen before. Even when I think about my street in Rock Hill, there’s not really a ton of space to put graffiti because the buildings are small and filled with features like windows and doors that make it hard to paint on. But cities are filled with flat, empty surfaces just begging to be filled with anything else but more gray plaster.

The Loved Ones series in Mexico is incredible. Not only am I amazed by these artists ability to paint something so realistic and at the same time so LARGE (I’ve painted murals before and it is so difficult to keep your proportions right on a vertical wall), but I just love the emotions that it conveys through these people. Many of the subjects are older which creates a certain narrative of memory by itself as you see their experiences and wisdom in the lines on their faces. But there is something so special for us to see “regular people” just like us or just like someone that we know that elicits a memory from our own experiences. In particular, the pieces of El Chino and Doña Socorrito remind me of my grandparents because they feature two older individuals with birds and my grandparents love birds from having them as pets to keeping way too many bird-feeders outside their kitchen window to watch them. I think that most graffiti constitutes as art (although it is a subjective grading scale), but especially these portraits are as good as anything in a gallery or museum and they’re ten times larger. Using that size of space allows the viewer to see all the details and technique used by the artist that is harder to appreciate in smaller pieces.

I also looked at the exhibit in Bogotá and there were so many pieces with such a variety of styles that I don’t know where to begin. Once again, each piece is incredibly detailed and I respect these artists’ approaches to art, but I have to wonder how much money they could make if they desired to sell their art. It’s difficult to discern the memories that these pieces appeal to given their diversity, but it is clear that several of them have possibly more political significance with images like gas masks, corporate logos like McDonalds, soldiers, Che Guevera, the Pope, and indigenous cultures. Many of these pieces probably hold specific memories for the artists too. However, I pose the question: Does every piece of graffiti/art have to have some kind of significance? Is it possible to “just” paint something? Or if only the artist knows it’s meaning, does it make it any less meaningful? (Kind of like if a tree falls and no one hears it, does it still make a sound?) Some pieces I look at and they don’t elicit any of my own memories. I can’t create any connection to them other than interest and intrigue. Some of them seem very abstract and random, but is it possible for anything to be completely “random”? It is interesting that whether or not I take any meaning from them, I still enjoy them all the same.

I really enjoyed this documentary and in particular how it highlighted the consistencies and differences between countries, their cultures, their views on graffiti, and their artists. This is probably the topic that I am most excited for because I have some background in art from classes in high school, a mural I painted for my senior project, the mural I helped paint on Stone Avenue for the Art in the Community May X class I took freshman year, and the graffiti tour we took while living in Madrid. I think the documentary also made an excellent case for the value of graffiti, especially in urban communities, and the clarification of only painting public spaces and never houses.

The main theme of the documentary was the differences in graffiti culture between countries. It is amazing to see how graffiti began in Philadelphia and New York and then moved literally all around the globe to Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, South Africa, São Paulo, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. Each city and country had their own context for graffiti that shaped their approach to it and the kind of styles that were present. New York graffiti is more gritty and more simplistic while graffiti in Amsterdam and Tokyo have super complex shadings and textures. There were different techniques like using stencils and stickers, using a brush or spraying straight from the can. One artist said he preferred to separate his letters to make his message clearer instead of mixing them together which shows how artists adapt to create a unique style based on the same elements. There were different climates to graffiti like in São Paulo which is a very tough place to live, graffiti artists have a lot of freedom because the police are more concerned about bigger issues but in other cities the artists have to avoid the police and risk imprisonment. That affects the style of art because in places like New York they may have less time to complete a piece while in Amsterdam they can paint a whole building.

I loved how the documentary intentionally included female graffiti artists and their perspectives on the art. The female artist from Tokyo mentioned that her art shifted from a focus on hate and angst to joy and happiness when she had a child and became a mom. Another female artist said that someone was mad that she was painting girls but pointed out that the prostitutes on the street, some of whom were really young, that should be much more offensive and she addresses those issues in her art. The female artist from Los Angeles was eccentric to say the least, but I think its so interesting to include the female perspective on things like being in a “tribe” which is her tag name and how she defends her turf just as well as any male artist. Just like Cindy C and B-girl dancers, it is so essential to include female voices in our discussion on hip hop culture because they bring something completely different to the table and challenge the hegemony with their art in ways that men can’t from the perspective of a mother or what its like to be female in their communities.

The other interesting element to me was age. Specifically the generational gap between most of the artists and the people who criticized their art, but also graffiti artists’ influence on the upcoming generation. I found it funny that everyone who criticized the graffiti artists was at least one if not two generations older than the artists themselves. The documentary is so good because they made sure to include the voices of people who disagreed with graffiti from people just passing by to people in the highest levels of government. So many of them were really passionate about preventing graffiti in their communities, especially the guy in Los Angeles who spends all his time tracking artists which seems like a weird hobby to me. I would be interested to know if it is just a generational issue where people who didn’t grow up with graffiti being a thing dislike it, or if there is more to it. I wonder if in 10, 20, 30 years, graffiti will still be a controversial topic in these communities.

Latinoamérica

This song is impressive in its coverage of all Latin America and its representation of so many experiences within that region. It is interesting that the connection for so many different people groups, cultures, and communities and the foundation of memory and identity in this song is their oppression and exploitation at the hands of colonizing and imperialist countries. And thus the pride of their identity is in their resilience: “mi piel es de cuero por eso aguanta cualquier clima,” “un pueblo sin piernas pero que camina,” “trabajo bruto pero con orgullo.” There is also the repetition of “soy” which is directly assigning these characteristics and qualities to the individual identity. The memories are used collectively to create a communal identity but also an individual on as well. Other specific memories mentioned include “Maradona contra Inglaterra” y “Operacioón Condor” which both have political significance for all of Latin America, “soy lo que me enseño mi padre, el que no quiere a su patria no quiere a su madre” which is communicative memory, and “haciendo rituales de agua bendita” y “soy todos los santos que cuelgan de mi cuello” which are cultural memories. The song is also sung in Spanish and Portuguese which is a great way to include Brasíl in the collective identity of Latin America.

Querido FBI

This song is FULL of cultural memories and references to people, places, and events and it is unfortunate that I don’t recognize any of them which makes it difficult to analyze. It is clear that these cultural memories are significant to Puerto Rican identity, but in a negative context that creates a sense of anger against the U.S. intervention there through the FBI. I do recognize “piragüero” from my favorite Broadway musical by Lin Manuel-Miranda (who is also Puerto Rican) as the man who sells piragua which is a much better version of our shaved ice. The fact that the piragüero was in both Miranda’s musical and this song tells me that the piragüero is an important part of the Puerto Rican identity alongside doctors, accountants, lawyers, teachers, mayors, and cops. To me, it seems like el piragüero is so important because he brings a small piece of joy and refreshment to a community stuck in heat and struggles. This is a cultural memory that all Puerto Ricans seem to share that creates a joyful piece of their identity. I also searched the reference to Ponce and read Nelson Denis’ blog for his book War Against All Puerto Ricans about the Ponce Massacre where the police shot at people at a peaceful protest organized by Pedro Albizu Campos and killed 17 men, one woman, and a 7-year-old girl. I’m sure this is an incredibly significant memory to the entire island because despite the police chief trying to make it seem like the police were returning fire, the newspapers reported that was false, adhering to their identity as Puerto Ricans first.

Familia (Nicki Minaj, Anuel AA, ft. Bantu), from the Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse Soundtrack

This song is from one of my favorite movie soundtracks of all time and if you haven’t seen Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse yet, it has incredible connections to our topics of art and music as performance memory from this class. The movie is about Miles Morales who is Afro-Latinx which is why the song is in English and Spanish by African American and Latinx artists. It deals with the topic of familia in particular, a common cultural theme in many Latino communities that I’ve seen. It also connects to cultural memory with references to prayer “Father, father, could you bless his soul?” which is a ritual tradition in the Catholic religion which many Latinx families are. The song is describing Miles’ emotions after (SPOILER) his uncle is shot when he gets mixed up with some bad guys. This theme may connect with the African American cultural memory of black men being shot whether by police or violent groups like gangs. (That is not to say that gangs/violent people are black or always prominent in black communities, the reality is a much more complex combination that affects impoverished neighborhoods that more often include African Americans because of the oppression systems in America.) I don’t have quite enough knowledge of Latin music to pinpoint exactly if there is any influence in the song other than I get the impression that it has some Latin rhythm, especially in the Spanish verse.

I would like to begin with an addendum to my previous post by saying that I made some incorrect assumptions about Rebel Diaz based on their videos and songs. As with most things, their approach to counter hegemony and messages made more sense within a context and especially when you can hear the message given in a face-to-face, personal encounter like we had the opportunity to do on Friday. They spoke about people power meaning giving power to the people, but I think I also witnessed people power in how communicating with people in person has the power to form connections. Their message meant more to me when I could see their heart and passion for hip hop and their community than what I could see in their videos. That’s not to say that their videos are not important, but hearing their message in person is a completely different experience. I was thoroughly impressed with their extensive research and knowledge about these issues and their radical counter hegemony seems more appropriate within the context of the history.

At times I became frustrated that this was the first time I’d heard about certain events and oppressions, because we rarely heard them in our high school history classes or they were framed in a way that favored American ideals and our government. We learned about the Red Scare and U.S. imperialism but they make it sound like the CIA went rogue and maybe disrupted a few governments but nothing really came from it when in reality U.S. Presidents were intentionally giving orders to assassinate democratically elected leaders and manipulate national economies in favor of our own economy and power. When you can see the extent and the intentionality behind what the American hegemony has been doing to minority communities, I absolutely resonate with their radical approach.

They also did an incredible job of connecting to our topic of memory. So much of what they shared with us were stories from individuals they’ve met that you would never find in a textbook because it’s communicative memory that they are making cultural memory. I loved their shoutout to Cindy C (Cindy Campbell) as the brains behind the first hip hop party because it includes female influence in the history of hip hop, which as they acknowledged is so often left out just like that of minority groups. And their telling us that piece of communicative memory is creating cultural memory as people outside of a family or a small community hear about her. They continued to tell memory after memory from their parents’ experience in Chile to a policeman telling them “you’ll need us when you all start fighting” to Victor Jara to DJ Kool Herc to the disregard of NYC urban planner Robert Moses and so much more.

I think one of my biggest takeaways from Friday was their story about just taking over a building in the Bronx and building an art center there. So often I think about counter hegemony as a long process with people in suits and in corner offices; basically countering the hegemony by going through the hegemony. But sometimes it is as simple as just starting. Finding “Titos” and getting your friends together to start somewhere and when people see what you’re doing, they’ll naturally want to pitch in too. This is a much better form of counter hegemony because it doesn’t depend on the hegemony itself to happen. You don’t necessarily apply for a permit for whatever, you just do it and see what happens.

I’m intrigued by Rebel Diaz and their particular approach to activism and counter hegemony. The word that comes to mind is “radical” but not necessarily in a positive or negative way. Their call for a revolution at first glance seems intense, but I myself have surveyed the institutionalized social issues in America and thought that the only way to reverse systematic poverty, racial divides, and a polarized, ineffective government is to tear it all down and start over. However, I also abandon this method pretty quickly because I cannot imagine a way to do this short of violence, chaos, or an near apocalyptic event. But the alternative non-violent, idealized approaches of protesting, lawsuits, and even symbolic actions seem ineffective and slow to create change, so I am at a point of questioning traditional avenues of counter hegemony in favor of new ones, but I also realize that any kind of lasting change will take a certain amount of time given the complexity of these issues.

When I first saw the video for “Which Side Are You On?” I was surprised at the images of violence and radicalism. I understand the use of those images to set the tone for a revolution and to promote an ideology of counter hegemony that requires risk and confrontation. I don’t think Rebel Diaz is promoting violence or encouraging their listeners to adopt those methods of activism per se. When I pay attention to their messages, they advocate for education as the greatest tool for change, like in their video for “Revolution Has Come.” However, to draw from my Communications background, we talk a lot about how images create perceptions and perceptions create impact whether that was the messenger’s intent or not. Maybe part of their thought process in using those images is even to target an audience that is more familiar with violence in order to redirect their passion and energy towards non-violent action. But I do wonder if those images create a perception of their platform and their values that is not as accurate as it could be. To me, the message of the video does not seem to align with their values and approach to counter hegemony.

Also, as we discussed in class, the dichotomy of “Which Side Are You On?” can be dangerous. As an advocacy tactic, it called Polarization, where the activists are forcing the onlookers and neutral voices not directly impacted by these issues to choose one side or the other. There is merit in this because for the issues that Rebel Diaz are advocating, I think there is a clear side to be on. Police brutality is real and wrong. Mass incarceration is real and wrong. How ICE is treating immigrants is real and wrong. For those issues, if someone disagrees with Rebel Diaz’s position, it is usually because they don’t think those issues are real or they don’t care because it doesn’t affect them. Therefore, polarization is an appropriate tactic to use. However, it is not just the issues that Rebel Diaz are advocating but also a call to action against them, and rightfully so. But watching their videos and listening to their lyrics, I can get the impression that they are also polarizing a radical approach to counter hegemony and any other kind of counter hegemony as too complicit and really part of the hegemony. This may not be their intent, but I feel as though they would reject my preference for a less radical approach to counter hegemony and say that I am complicit in the dominant power structure. This is where I have some push back against polarization because I think that there is more than one way to skin a cat and it could end up polarizing important allies to help the cause. And like Eric mentioned in class, our society is far too concerned with dichotomies, reflected in the two party system, that says gay marriage is either right or wrong, abortion is either right or wrong, gun control is either right or wrong, etc. The reality is for most of these issues that the answer is somewhere in the middle, in the gray area instead of black or white, the issue is more complicated than personal morals of right or wrong, and the answer depends on individual needs instead of one law fits all. The more we can confront issues in their complexity and create solutions that do less polarizing and more collaborating, I think we will be more successful in making lasting change. Although, as with anything, this is much easier said than done.

I also don’t want to be too quick to criticize more radical counter hegemonic tactics because I realize that I come from a level of privilege that has allowed me to live a life separated from violence and gives me access to means of counter hegemony through institutions like the legal system. It’s not fair for me to say, “they’re too radical” or “I think that’s indicative of violence” because they are coming from a neighborhood and community where the luxury of avoiding violence or using non-violent tactics is not always an option. So I will absolutely not say that Rebel Diaz’s approach to counter hegemony is wrong and in fact we probably need to be a little more radical in fighting injustice, but it is difficult for me to connect with that approach even though I want to help fight these same issues and want to support them in their mission.

As I began to read Dr. Rojas’ work Rapping for a Revolution (which is such an interesting combination of topics and very well connected), I immediately made the connection to my Mass Media class that I just completed this past semester. We talked about cultural hegemony as a direct product of mass media, or how media like television, books, film, advertising, radio, and more reinforce the systems of power in our American society, often without our even recognizing their influence. I’m intrigued by the idea of therefore using media to reverse cultural hegemony (that is, counter-hegemony). It would be a daunting task given that so much of mainstream media is controlled by a few media conglomerates (Google, Apple, Disney, etc.) that are motivated by profits. It seems to me that it works in a cycle: beings in authority create messages to send through channels of mass media based on their perception of the hegemonic society that then shape how we perceive cultural hegemony and then the authority continues to create the same message because it is what the consumer is expecting to see. Therefore it takes a significant impact to disrupt that cycle.

Music is a great tool for just this purpose because it is an everyday part of our lives, it communicates a connection to ethnic and cultural styles and values, and it gives an opportunity for almost anyone to create a message that is easily spread and understood. I also made connections to my Advocacy class that I also completed this past semester (I do love how liberal arts inevitably brings all things together), in the use of music as symbolic action by both Rebel Diaz and Residente. However, the artists represent this symbolic action in very different ways, with Rebel Diaz openly condemning the entire political system in the United States and refusing to support any candidate and Residente choosing to support Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election. Residente was motivated in particular by Sanders’ denouncement of U.S. involvement in Latin American dictatorships and the resulting conflicts and suffering that came as a result. I think this was an intelligent move on the part of Bernie Sanders to connect with the Latinx community by using the communicative memory that has passed down pain and distrust of the United States government from grandparents, to parents, to children. I absolutely agree with his statement, but to a certain degree, like Rebel Diaz, I question the authenticity of political candidates, especially ones who want to secure favor with minority groups like the Latinx community, and their efficacy to make any real change from those sentiments.

The Chilean New Song too, is music as symbolic action and advocacy, mobilizing students, unionists, workers, farmers, and the lower class. It also thrived by building community and commonality among various groups of people with various grievances but all united by their oppression at the hands of the hegemonic establishment. Like Rebel Diaz and Residente use a genre of music in rap and hip hop that simultaneously sets the tone of their message and connects to the target culture, the New Song used folk music and instruments like flutes, pipes, and drums native to that region that struck a chord (sorry, had to do it) with the oppressed. These instruments have traditional roots in Latin America and therefore represent collective memories (cultural and communicative) of the Chilean people and their cultural identity. At the root of the conflict in Chile at the time was the corruption of a few in positions of power and wealth that neglected the much larger general population living in poverty without access to political and economic advancement. Therefore, creating a cultural identity through music, and folk music in particular, creates a narrative of “the people,” the majority, and their unity based on shared memory of Chilean identity. The music inspired participation and by its rhythm and monotonous repetition, it suggested equality and community. This is an example of solidification, a tactical stage of advocacy where the agitation comes together as one entity against the establishment; another example would be protesters singing freedom songs during the civil rights movement in the United States. Solidification is what creates power through numbers which is often the only way to combat the dominant hegemony that suppresses any outside access to platforms of influence and authority.

I think that memory is the mind creating visual and associative shortcuts to organize and store our past experiences in such a way that we can retrieve them when they become relevant and then apply them to our current experiences. Contrary to common thought, memory has less to do with accuracy and more to do with significance. It’s interesting that in Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “Funes de Memorious,” he describes Funes’ memory as infallible, because the very nature of memory is fallible in that our memories are never completely objective. Our memory is constantly distorted whether that’s because of sheer forgetfulness in the details, our desire to recall a story that portrays us positively, or because of suggestions from others and how they remember something.

Memory is how we categorize and shape ourselves in our own minds. Everything we know, believe, and think about the world and ourselves is based on memories. If we weren’t able to group together a series of memories that our mind particularly favors or finds meaning in, we would have no basis on who we are or why we’re important. If our mind was only capable of processing current information and not storing it, we would never be able to remember anything beyond the present moment or conceptualize our relationship to that moment.

There are several kinds of memory. Inner level memory is only a reflection of the thoughts that our own mind has produced over time and creates an image of our own selves. Social level memory includes those memories that the people around us have shared through communication. Those memories bond together with our own to create a collective memory that establishes how we view ourselves in the context of others’ perceptions.

Collective memory is divided into cultural and communicative. Cultural memory creates a cultural identity within a group of people specifically through media like “traditions, transmissions, and transferences” or institutional character. Communicative memory is “not supported by any institutions of learning…it lives in everyday interaction and communication and, for this very reason, has only a limited time depth which normally reaches no farther back than eighty years, the time span of three interacting generations.” (Assman) So cultural memory might be a piece of art like the Mona Lisa which has withstood hundreds of years and shaped the culture around it as a standard for art, but communicative memory would be more like the drawing of a child that a mother might keep and maybe show to her grandchildren, but it would not survive after they died and it would not shape the culture around it.

Memory doesn’t work like knowledge in the sense that it is not always currently circulating in our mind when it is relevant. Memory is stored for a period of time to be brought back when we need it. So we forget about it when it is not relevant but when it is forgotten only to be brought back, when it is important enough to be stored in our minds, that is when it forms part of our identity. The very act of remembering something ascribes a certain level of importance to it that is central enough to who we are to remember it.

Memory is less like a bookshelf where we alphabetize books in a certain order than it is a multidimensional geometric figure with bookshelves on every face where we categorize our experiences and thoughts according to our various dimensions of identity. And that system of organization changes all the time as our identity shifts depending on who we project ourselves to be and also how our identity itself changes over time (like if someone were to discover Native American heritage that they didn’t previously know about, learning a new language, getting married, or becoming a spouse or parent).