This digital object has been developed from the University of Barcelona in Fine Arts Degree context, most specifically, in Contemporary Visual Arts Subject.
Summary
Dear professor:
You asked me in your letter to explain the learning process during this course of CONTEMPORARY VISUALITIES, what do I’ve learned, the questions I’ve asked myself during and after the classes and the actions I’m going to perform with all of it. Well, now I have a moment.
In the first part of the course there was no surprises, thanks to your words, along with your presentations and videos we learned a lot about VISUAL CULTURE (“The image is not neutral.” “To know, you must know how to see.”), and a lot of other concepts, but always inside the educative logic of this faculty of us.
During the second you introduced us the concept of THE EDUCATION BY PROJECTS, and we tried to build an inquiry project about “THE VISUAL CULTURE OF DESIRE IN AN AESTHETICIZED SOCIETY”.
After some classes, lectures and conversations, we formed a group of 11 people in our case, to inquiry about THE ROLE THE IMAGES PLAY IN THE CONSTITUTION OF DESIRE.
I can assure you that this part of the course has not been easy at all, we agreed on the shape and background of the project, worked for different joint meetings and we discussed about desire and images for many hours, although there was not an absolute collaboration between all the members of the group, we conclude the visual map that we had planned.
And you question “What have we learned?” Well, I can assure you we have collaborated, shared, listened, analyzed, interpreted, decomposed and dismounted many images, shapes, and styles of desire.
We were also able to discard and group the images with the related concepts with desire. Definitely a project in common to give a visual and artistic answer to the initial question. And I understand that it may be possible this is not the way to do the project you proposed, but I can sincerely say we honestly worked it and convinced the result would be worthy.
The questions have been many, and some of them are already resolved, but I stay with some of them that I quote here:
Do I have a critic look towards the images that are disposed in front of me?
Can I consider myself colonizer or colonized?
Do I have a dualist thought? Do I realize it?
Do I settle a patriarchal attitude?
It is possible to take a while for me to answer all the questions, but I’m sure that after this course I will do it with more knowingly.
Hereinafter life continues and this means in my case I have to keep RESISTING, I have to keep CRITICIZING (but with much more knowledge), I have to learn more to RE-LIVE and COLLABORATE more in order to have a COMPLETE EXISTENCE and also, of course, KEEP DESIRING what we want and NOT what they want.
With nothing else to say, I hope I’ve helped you, receive a strong hug.
By: Alfonso Bustillo