GROUP STATEMENT- 1A

 GROUP STATEMENT- 1A

Our group (1A) is made up of Jonon Gansukh (he/him)- NYC, NY, Brooklyn USA, EST, Acting and Theater at The School of Drama, he hopes what he learns in this class can help him tackle racial discrimination and white supremacy in the Theater industry, Steven Garcia/ New York, Queens, EST/ Fashion Design, Pao Camba (she/her) / New York, Brooklyn, United States/ Fine Arts. Pao Camba is a multidisciplinary artist, she is currently focusing on Cuban interiors and personal objects as a form of familial/ historical archive, Byul Chu/ New York, EST/ Fine Arts. cByul Chu is a nonbinary Korean artist and graphic designer working and living on unceded Lenapehoking land, their art practice revolves around collaboration and co-healing in the context of trans intimacy and world-building, Max G (they/she) Dallas, Texas, Environmental studies/Jazz guitar studies, their focus is on breaking US/European hegemony through solidarity with Indigenous groups and oppressed peoples worldwide. In my part of the project I used Clyde Woods’ Blues Epistemology as a stepping stone for my own research on the insidious influences of American music globally. River Marashi Andrew (they/them) / New York EST / Communication Design and Photography, River is a white genderqueer/trans photographer and graphic designer focussing on editorial and publication design, recently they have been working on a publication on queer spaces and exploring their gender through photography.

Theme of the project 

We chose to explore the theme of US Involvement in other countries.

Over the semester, we felt that a main theme of the class was US involvement in other countries and their effects. Consisting of things like dispossession, racism in environment changes, genocide, and more. We felt that it was important to link it to race, space, and dispossession because the US has also altered the way space has been used in other countries and affected the many races/peoples living there. 

• Within this collaboration, we are tracing the US’ involvement within Cuba, Korea, (list your country) while archiving the U.S military's effect on ______ (self-determination within said places?)

• The U.S has always presented itself as a nation which “protects” freedom while simultaneously enforcing white supremacy, capitalism, inciting coup’s and dictators, destroying and murdering people on a mass scale. This project maps out U.S involvement throughout different countries and

• How has U.S involvement within “foreign” countries affected indigenous autonomy over the land

• What social conditions or power dynamics have the impact of U.S imperialism created within these countries.

“Artifacts presented” (music/ interviews/photography/etc)

• (byul) A set of resistance posters against U.S occupation and interference in Korean autonomy over their land and ecosystem. Map vectors sourced online of the Korean peninsula and Jeju Island were included within the project to ground the text used within its geographic space. 

• (pao) A digital collage about the relationship between Cuban people and their belongings, in the context of the US embargo on Cuba, and the effects the trade/travel bans have had on the people. All images used were scanned/ taken by me. 

• (river) photographs of one of their Iranian-American friends who is also non-binary, including a write up of a conversation the two of them had while photographing. In the conversation River and Rob talked about the overlaps of their identities, discussion of gender, what it means to be Iranian and non-binary, race in relation to being ethnically Iranian, and how American and Western imperialism has effected Iran and gender. All images made by me on film, using a rug and other personal items in the images. Photography was used to ensure that people such as myself and Rob are not lost, that we exist regardless of how queerness is looked at in our shared culture.

• (max) a recipe outlining how music can be used to create a monoculture as apart of invasion, imperialism, or colonization

Course material used 

 https://www.hypatiareviews.org/reviews/content/243

 “On a first level, Butler and Athanasiou suggest that being dispossessed refers to the complex processes of disowning and abjection that produce the differential distribution of vulnerability and suffering among populations in the geopolitical landscape. In this sense, dispossession refers to the loss of land and community, legal status, and the rights connected to it. But it also refers to the privation of bodily self-determination and to the experience of norms of sex, gender, and kinship that determine whose bodies deserve a livable life.”

For your group statement, ask yourself what you have learned from each other, regarding your group topic/theme and include that in your narrative.

From each other, we have learned different ways in which we can pull in our unique experiences and expressions to inform others about our topic. We are coming from different backgrounds and thinking through parallel histories of countries affected by U.S imperialism, 

What do you want your audience to take away from your group project?

We hope that from our collaborative group project, our peers can see the different ways in which we interpreted the same theme and were able to create something out of it. Not just the creative aspect but the research and context as well. The way we all thought about the United States involvement in foreign countries through different perspectives and how we have personally been affected by US imperialism.

What do you feel your group did well, given your stated goals with your group project?

We feel that we did well in finding unique, creative ways for our own contributions to the project. Each of us was able to pull in something from what we learned/are learning currently in our lives (for ex. Photo editing). And all together, it feels like a great showcase of all of our talents onto something we feel greatly about. 

We also feel that we were able to capture the effects of US involvement on an individual scale. Our projects talk about the effects on society and what a person would have to live through after what America has done to their country/land. Examples being the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam or being a Cuban after US involvement. 

What do you feel your group could have done better, given your stated goals with your group project? 

Because of the nature of the zoom class structure, It is significantly harder to do a group project completely online and we think that going forward more planning would have been beneficial since we didn’t get in-person communication.  

It would have been handy if a larger segment of the class time was spent on working on the projects together. Since for one thing, everyone has a different schedule and rounding everyone up outside of class for consistent work progress is difficult. 

What are new or ongoing questions you feel your group project has raised for you and/or your group?

We are curious as to how our work can relate to the topic of how space is being misused in America and its history of dispossession. Such as how gentrification affects BIPOC and how Native communities have been dispossessed and robbed of their land. We have questions about how our projects can have links to those topics and could also be repurposed to inform others about those problems.