[Doyi's Blog] Pilsen Impressions: Then and Now

Here's the post that I should have written in the first week: first impressions. Because it's been only a month since my moving into Chicago, the timing is still, nonetheless, appropriate. 

So, I live in Pilsen. 

I'm not sure how familiar you are with this neighborhood, but until now I sure wasn't. Assuming that you know as little as I did, here's some information: Pilsen lies in the Lower West Side of Chicago, about a 25-30 minute train ride from Downtown. Filled with Latino food, culture, and people, it's a predominantly Mexican area (although for hundreds of years it was an Irish one). 
To be honest, Pilsen isn't the richest or safest part of town. At least a decade ago, gangs and drug dealers used to hover street corners. Crime rate has long been an issue. Sidewalks and alleys aren't always clean, and buildings are not the most tall or reconditioned.

In fact, the unfamiliarity scared me a little. I'm not going to lie; at first, I didn't really like Pilsen. Among all the other possible neighborhoods in Chicago, this wasn't the most ideal place for me. I wanted a more urban setting--something more sophisticated, secured, and stylish. However, the worn-out architecture, graffiti walls, and just the entire atmosphere of the community neither appealed to me nor came across as modern. Most of all, I did not feel safe. The neighborhood's (now fairly out-dated) notoriety, as well as the fact that not many Asians and Caucasians live here bothered me a little bit. I might sound racist or offensive, but this was the truth. Pilsen was not the environment I was used to. I felt uncomfortable, and I could not call it home. 

To break my walls of prejudice, I had to spend a lot of time with Pilsen. I didn't mean to, but my daily travels and agendas pushed me to experience the area first-hand. From small trips to the Family Dollar to walks to the Damen & 18th bus stop, Pilsen naturally became the setting of my routine. And during those trips, I got to revisit the site everyday and refresh my original impressions of the community. 

First of all, it wasn’t as empty as I thought it would be. You could hear music nearby each block, for whatever occasion, from stores attracting customers to groups having a carwash. Street vendors often decorated the streets and sold clothes, accessories, and mexican food. At one point in my Neighborhood Walk assignment, I even unintentionally ended up on a block party--full of mexican flags, food, and people--when we momentarily got lost on our way. There always seemed to be something going on. Even during moments without music, my eyes were constantly kept busy. Colorful murals of people, patterns, and forms filled the walls of buildings. It felt like an art town, full of energy and excitement. Some of the wall paintings were political, strongly asserting equality and acceptance of undocumented workers and residents; they read phrases like, “we are a nation of immigrants,” and “no human being is illegal.” Pilsen’s unique identity, as well as expression of its identity, charmed me.

As I've mentioned earlier, it's only been a month since I lived in Pilsen. That means I'm still not 100% adjusted to or completely comfortable with the neighborhood. However, I am much more open to the community and its culture and characteristics than before. I realized that I've been filtering out all the positive aspects of Pilsen with my fears and assumptions, and that there's more to it the more I explore it. Most of all, I am happy to have come here and try out some authentic quesadillas :). I hope I gain more knowledge and understanding of Pilsen throughout my time in Chicago, and possibly bring 'em back home. 


-Doyi-

This is a graphic piece I did for my Art Seminar, capturing my feelings and impressions of Chicago, and specifically, Pilsen. The top consists of a Chicago neighborhood map, and the bottom, the skyline of the city. At the center is Pilsen's mural of famous Mexican women (original photo by Corey Nunn)

Hidden Things

Poems hide. 
In the bottoms of our shoes, 
they are sleeping.  They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. 
What we have to do 
is live in a way
that lets us find them. 


Before I got here, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about not being at Knox.  It's incredibly weird.  I get all the emails about events and classes and what's going on, and it's so familiar.  I thought I would either really really miss Knox, or not at all, and I'd just be like, I'm so glad I'm not there.  But it's actually this weird mix.  I miss getting food from the cafeteria and the great workers there, and Old Main, and my friends, and it makes me feel lonely in weird way to know it's moving on and I'm not a part of it.  But I'm also really, really glad I'm here, and in a way I'd rather be doing this.

Weirdly, I miss Knox the most when I drink tea that I stole from the caf.  I really love the English Breakfast, Rasberry Rose, and Sweet Orange tea that they have, so last spring I'd grab a couple packets and shove them in my pocket every time I got food to go, so now I have a stock of each kind.  And when I drink them, that's what makes me miss Knox the most. I guess it's because it's a sensory detail, like a smell, and that makes me feel like I'm there, and reminds me the most that I'm not.

Anyways.  One of the things I really like about Chicago is the people.  I've had some kind-of-weird, kind-of-awesome interactions with total strangers.   I went to a little, local camera store by the ACM office to buy a new memory card, and I thought it'd be like Target where you can just look and pick out something yourself, but everything was locked up in cases behind the counters, and an old man helped me out after I went to the end of the store and back.  He was so nice, and after asking me some questions he gave me the cheapest memory card for what I needed, he didn't try to give me something more expensive or convince me to buy something else, he just got the cheapest one, which I really appreciated.  After I bought it, he said, "Want a cookie?" And I said sure, because I was really hungry, and sure I'd trust him, and he pulled out this tupperware container from underneath the counter and opened it, and there were soo many cookies in there.  He told me he made them himself, and then he looked down at the container and was like, "I need to make more cookies."  And it was adorable.

Last week I was waiting in the Bucktown-Wicker Park library, at a table near the entrance, before my internship orientation began, and I guess I looked really sad because this random guy came by, and as he was about to leave he turned back towards me and said, "Don't look so depressed."  He asked what made me happy, and before I could reply he was like, "Where's your boyfriend at?" I said Colorado, and he shook his head and said, "Tell him to get his ass over here!" And then he left.

And then Monday, I went to McDonald's, which is just a couple blocks away yay, and I wasn't paying attention when my number was called.  The worker had to say it again, and she was like, "Number 203.  203, you sleepin?"  When I went up go get my food, she said, "Enjoy your food.  Enjoy it to the moon and back." She was so happy and so enthusiastic about my burger and fries, even though she wasn't the one who got to eat them.  You got a free small coffee when you bought something, so maybe everyone was just happy, I don't know.  But some of the people here are so friendly and cute and say the weirdest things.  They spread their happiness, try to cheer you up, give you cookies.  The people in big cities are incredibly interesting- I guess, people are incredibly interesting in general.  I've just experienced more interaction here.  There are millions of people in Chicago.  It's interesting how you get probably every personality that's out there, and we focus so much on the people who are cold to us or barely give us a second glance or scare us on the subway, that we miss people like this, who don't treat you like you're just one nameless person among them all, and interact with you on a deeper level.

As for the food here in the apartment, our 10-person fridge is getting fuller.  I still haven't found my ground beef,  but I'm proud to say that I've officially been here for 3 weeks and I've only made ramen three times.  Also, I found out that the dollar store across the street has THE BEST JUICE EVER, which is Minute Maid Fruit Punch, and which I grew up on.  I still remember the one night my siblings and I couldn't agree on a movie and my mom sent us up to our rooms and we didn't get to watch anything since we were fighting over it.  I was like five and I stared up at the ceiling and drank that juice and felt really sad.  Anyways, of course I bought some,  I would've bought like two or three cartons but there's barely room for one in our 10-person fridge.  But that's okay.  I really don't need three cartons of Minute Maid Fruit Punch.

I went to a concert last Tuesday with my friend Sarah, who did the Chicago program a year ago.  The artist was Ed Sheeran, who I totally didn't know before she told me about the concert at the beginning of the summer, and who now I really like.  I haven't been to a concert since I was a junior in high school, because I am a sad human being, and I was amazed at how happy everyone was.  People were freaking out, they were so excited.  They were willing to wait an hour in line for merchandise, they stood and danced throughout the whole concert, and they didn't care at all who saw them and what they thought.  We were all there for one thing, we shared this excitement and happiness.  We'd all been waiting for this for months.  We were… so united, in a sense. And people were so happy.   There was a girl a couple rows down from me, who probably wasn't by herself (I think she was with her mom) but stood by herself and danced the whole time.  She never looked around or talked to anyone.  It was like her whole world was the stage.  I wonder what it's like to be the artist, to be the instigator of all this craziness and happiness, the connecting thing among all of us.  It's powerful, in a way.

Some ok pictures from the concert, because my camera is not as good as a smart phone:

It was just him up on stage, and they used a bunch of hanging screens, it was really cool.

And also a random picture of the mural on the outside of The Plant (explanation coming soon).

Also, last Friday, the whole group met with Alderman Joe Moore, who's in charge of the 49th ward (and who's also a fellow Knoxie!!).  He talked to us and we were shown the room where City Council meets (I have no idea what it's officially called), and we walked up along the platform where the mayor sits.  All the chairs are so cushiony, and the mayor's chair is above the rest and all official-looking with the Chicago seal on it.  Also, they were starting a meeting (not a City Council meeting, but still) so it was kind of awkward.  But it was so cool to be able to talk to an alderman, to someone who's important, and be in City Hall, and the City Council room.

After seeing the room we could ask Alderman Moore questions, and he called on me because he had to pick on another Prairie Fire-er.  I asked him what he's done as an alderman that he's really proud of, like what's one of his favorite things that he's done.  He talked about being the first elected official to do participatory budgeting, where he turns over $1 million of his capital budget each year and they have a vote on how to spend it.  He was really proud of that, and then he talked about how nice it was to help people, and have people come up to him and thank him for things he's helped get going, or for ways he's helped them personally.  He said how cool it was to drive down the street and look at something and think, that happened partly because of me.  It was great to know he was a part of things, and to not only feel but know that he's making a difference.  He also said when he first became an alderman, he thought he'd do it for a couple years and move on, and he wanted to make it to Washington D.C. (not as President but as a Senator), but now, he feels like he's making much more of a difference here than he ever would have in Congress, and that was kind of cool to hear, that a politician could care about the small things, and what he wanted to do, when you really got down to it, was help people.  I'm really glad I asked him that question.  He kind of changed when he talked about it, he smiled more and his passion came through.  Politicians do have hearts after all.

Also last week, on Thursday, my ISP class went to this thing called The Plant.  It's what used to be a pork packing facility in The Back Of The Yards, the neighborhood where all the stock yards used to be.  We were given a tour by Joe Miller, an artist who helped paint the mural on the side of the building, where they kept the old "Peer" advertisement.  What they're doing at the Plant is keeping the old building and much of what's in it, and reusing it.  There are big plans for it; they want it to be a space for artists, and have a museum and a cafe.  When we toured, they were still in the middle (or the beginning) of renovating things; it'll take years and years to make the plan a reality, but it was still really cool.  They still had a bunch of old machines and stuff, and all the floors were tilted toward drains in the middle; when it was a pork facility, the drains were used to get out all the blood.  It was cool to imagine what used to go on in the building and what it is now, and I thought it was great how they're keeping all the old things.  They recognize the value in those old things, even if it's just an asethetic value.  They're also hoping it'll become self-sustainable, and all the waste that's produced will help fuel something else.  It's one thing to learn about the stockyards and how Chicago used to be, but it's totally another thing to be in an old meat packing facility, and see the old machines and the huge doors.  The building's essentially the skeleton of what used to be there.

I also learned, on my own when I was looking up Chicago mayors because I know nothing, that Millenium Park used to be an airport. It was called Meigs Field, and was a really small, lakefront airport.  In 1996, City Council approved Mayor Richard M. Daley's plan to convert the airport into a park, but in March 2003, he basically went ahead and started without telling them.  Construction people moved in at midnight and by morning there were large X's on the runway.  He went ahead without telling Homeland Security, the governor, the City Council, or the Federal Aviation Administration.  I was like, hold up.  The mayor went ahead with his plan to demolish the airport? Without telling anyone?  Especially the people who had private planes on the runway at the time? It's kind of impressive, actually.

Mostly it was mind-blowing to realize that Millennium Park used to be something different.  I don't know what I thought, I guess I just assumed the park had always been there and things like the pavilion and the Bean were recent additions.  I had no idea it used to be something else.  Not only did the whole Daley-doing-whatever-he-wanted thing happen when I was in elementary school and didn't care about anything, but I was nowhere near Chicago so it didn't affect me at all.  When you realize that you've come in and what you thought has always been here was once something else, it's kind of a jolt.  It makes you realize the limits of your own perception.  How you assume what is here always was, because you've never experienced anything different.

Also, I promised to put this in: yesterday the majority of us went to the only Cheesecake Factory in Chicago to celebrate Marian's 22nd birthday.   We all were super excited about the $7 cheesecake and there were so many choices people didn't know what to do.  Basically, we were freaking out by the time we finally ate them.  Yay cheesecake.

Anways.  To wrap everything up so there's something coherent to this post, a couple weeks ago for my art seminar, we watched a TED talk by Billy Collins, who discussed how you can find poems anywhere, and sometimes you can take a weird sentence you've heard or a moment and turn it into a great poem. He talked about staying at a friend's house, and his friend said not to leave matches around, because the mice might get into the matchbox and accidentally burn the house down.  We did this, a little bit, this past week with our "found poems", which we had to write for Core Course.  We took artifacts- images or objects or phrases- that we'd discovered in our first couple weeks and incoporated them all into a poem about our first impressions about Chicago.  It was a really interesting exercise, making a whole out of the parts.  It taught us too that there are cool little things in Chicago, and often the city's story can be captured in one thing or one sentence, and those things can become poetry.  There are little, beautiful, amazing things everywhere, things that have infinite potential to become poems, or become art.  You just have to notice them.  You just have to find them, like the old man and his cookies, like Joe Moore changing as he talked about his favorite things about being an alderman, or the girl dancing at the Ed Sheeran concert, or the things we all talked about in our found poems.  You have to recognize the use and beauty in things, like what they're doing at the Plant.  Beautiful, amazing, incredible things are constantly around us, and they're not things like Niagra Falls or people with perfect features or paintings at the Art Institute.  All we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.

- Laura

First Reflections

He stretched his arms out to the crystalline, radiant sky.  "I know myself," he cried.  "But that is all." 



Ok, long post time.  This is my first time doing this, and I've been here for two weeks so there's a lot to talk about.  My other posts will probably be shorter, but this one will be super long, just fair warning.

Introductions first, I guess?  That's what a lot of the other students did.  (I totally went through the blog to see what other people posted, how often and for how long and what they talked about, because I don't know anything.)  I'm a Creative Writing major from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.  I'm from Golden, Colorado, which is one of the most beautiful places to grow up, although I've never grown up anywhere else so I'm probably biased.  But Colorado is a really amazing, really beautiful place.  I'm a senior, set to graduate in a little less than 9 months, and I'm currently eating Cheez-its, which I couldn't live without.

I want to begin each post with a different quote, which hopefully will have something to do with whatever I'm talking about.  I have a huge quote wall up in my room that contains all of the meaningful/inspirational/awesome phrases I've been collecting since my senior year of high school.  I literally have hundreds of them, all on colorful sticky notes (another thing I couldn't live without).  For most of them, I have no idea who said it or where it's from, which also hopefully won't be a problem.  But all artists borrow from each other, so it's ok.  So long as something is gained from it.

I don't really know where to begin.  I have been to Chicago before.  I grew up going to Wisconsin every summer, and each summer my aunt Kathy would take my family to Chicago.  They were always amazing trips.  I know all the touristy spots, like Navy Pier and the Walnut Room at Macy's.  What I've known of Chicago has been from the outside looking in, from walking its streets for at most a couple days.  Living here is absolutely, completely different.  Of course it is.

Golden is about 20 minutes (depending on how good the traffic on 6th avenue or I70 is) from Denver.  I've spent a lot of time in Denver, but that hasn't amounted to anything like actually living there.  My whole life I've always driven, been driven, walked, or rode my bike everywhere, so probably the biggest thing I had to get used to immediately was all the public transportation.  From the first day we were riding the CTA like crazy.  So far I have a biased view that the Pink Line is better than the other rail lines, mostly because it's so familiar and it gets me home, plus it's not underground.

The CTA is really weird.  Riding it is like a social experiment.  I've heard people talk about the crazy stuff that happens on the CTA, but so far I haven't seen anything crazy.  Everything has been normal, which is just as interesting to me.  I've had to get pretty used to having no space and being up and closer to people than I really want to be.  I've experienced the moment of panic when the train is absolutely packed and the doors are closing and you still need to get on, and the sweep of relief when we reach the Clark/Lake station and it empties out enough to be able to sit down.  I'm getting pretty good at keeping my balance while standing- the trick is to just stand with your feet apart.  Seriously.  The closer your feet are to each other, the more likely it is that you'll tip over.

What's really interesting to me is that you look without really seeing on the CTA.  You do the same thing day after day.  You pass the same old boring stations on the same old boring route, and you barely give them a second glance.  You look at everyone who comes on, then look away; you avoid eye contact with the people across from you; you especially avoid looking at the person who has to stand right in front of you when it gets crowded and their crotch is right in front of your face.  All you really care about is your destination, and you pay attention enough to know when it's coming up, but otherwise you sort of slip into this void, these moments of mere passage where you do nothing, and nothing really matters until you get from one place to the next.  It's super weird.  What's even weirder is that I'm already used to it.  Also, I keep seeing people from Knox on the trains.  Like legitimately, I'm not just hallucinating, I know they live in Chicago and it weirds me out even more.  It's like worlds are clashing.

I think a lot on the CTA.  I should start reading or listening to the music, but for now I just stare past everyone's heads at nothing and think.  I think of the weirdness of it all, and of the third rail.  There are signs everywhere, on the trains, at the stations, that warn you about falling onto the tracks.  Honestly, seeing all those signs telling me not to touch the rails makes me want to touch them.  I want to see what it's like, even though I know it'll kill me.  It's just the whole tell-me-not-to-do-something-and-I'll-do-it thing, it's like I'm five.

I also always imagine that scene (or really sequence) from Spiderman 2, the one with Toby Maguire, not Andrew Garfield, when Spiderman and Doc Ock fight on top of the train (and inside it, and around it, and through it) and then Spiderman stops the runaway train, and people help get him inside and everyone totally sees his secret identity but it's all good.  I mentioned this to one of the other students, and she said that'd be terrifying.  I realized, yeah, it'd be pretty terrifying to have your train be moving way too fast and almost fall completely off the tracks, and to have a huge hole in the side of your car from an evil villain with four mechanized killer arms, but it'd be so cool to see Spiderman!  And to help him.  Maybe being in danger is worth it?  I've always wondered that, with the superhero films.  The superheroes are all savvy with their saving and then they leave, and the person who was rescued was screaming a moment ago but now they're all like, oh my god thank you, and are they traumatized or does being saved by Spiderman himself eclipse all previous experiences?  And that kind of sucks that basically in order to meet him, something bad has to happen to you, and so you're in a bad situation but here comes your friendly neighborhood superhero and I wouldn't know what to feel.

These are the things I think about while riding the CTA.

Besides the crowded, Spiderman-less transportation, one of the hardest adjustments I've had to make so far is cooking for myself.  I can make ramen?  And soup, without messing up.  My dad was a professional chef for a while, he even went to cooking school in England, and basically what I've learned from him are things he's done to rescue me, like how to add flour when the fish for your fish n' chips are falling apart, and how to use a knife with your fingers curled in so your veggies don't taste like blood.  I've never really had to cook for myself.  My dad always cooked for the family, and I had an awesome dinner every night.  At Knox, I'm on the meal plan, and I always had amazing coffee and tea and food and veggies a short walk away.  But I'm learning, slowly.  I made tacos Friday night!  I've made a salad, complete with tomatoes and cheese and meat and ranch dressing.  I'm going to try to make pasta with chicken, and wraps.  If you've got a couple essentials, like tortillas and pasta, you're okay.

I'm also learning how long things last.  My cheez-its have actually lasted me two weeks, which is pretty impressive, and good because they're expensive (which makes me sad).  The bag of chips that would exist for a couple days at home have also lasted me two weeks.  Green and orange peppers I need to eat pretty quickly, before they start getting bruised.  It's actually kind of nice cooking for one because when you're the only one eating something, it lasts a long time.

With ten people all cooking for themselves and stuffing the fridge, though, it's easy to forget what you have, too.  I bought ground beef last week and I have absolutely no idea where it went, and I found three peaches in the back of my cupboard that were definitely no longer peaches (which is probably why my cupboard was smelling weird).

Anyways.  We've done so much.  There's so much I want to talk about, but that would take forever, plus no one wants to read a really long thing, so I'll just make a list of all the places I've been to so far:

- The ACM Chicago Program Office, on Adams street, a billion times.  I'll probably get sick of going to this by the end of the semester.  Maybe not.
- Uber sandwich, a place down the street from the CP office, which has fancy sandwiches and soups and salads that are vegan and awesome-sounding if you like healthy food.  It looks expensive, but isn't.
- An architectural boat tour on the river.  The whole program did this our third or fourth night here.  It was at sunset; looking at the skyline and all the towering buildings was beautiful, and hearing the history of the architecture was really cool too.
- Milennium Park          I've been here before, and I know it's a tourist draw, but I love parks, and I love sitting in the grass while it's still warm and eating lunch or calling people on the phone.  This park is huge.  It's crazy.
- the Harold Washington Library       I have never been in a library this big before.  It seems like everything you could ever know is contained in here.  The outside of the building is beautiful, and so is the inside.
- the Chicago History Museum           Everyone went there for last Friday's Core Course class.  This museum was amazing.  I love history, and I felt like I could've spent the whole day in there.  We learned so much about the Great Chicago Fire, the World Fair, and other things that have both defined Chicago and given it reason to better itself.
- Opera in the Park            I don't think it was officially called this.  But last Saturday, I met a group of people in Millenium Park, where they were having opera at the pavilion.  The music was amazing, the view of all the buildings was amazing, the pavilion was amazing.  It was great.
- NiteCap            My roommate and I went last Sunday for brunch.  They have really good coffee, and the people there are really friendly.  Sitting there with my laptop doing homework made me feel like I was back in Galesburg, at the Beanhive.  Maybe once you've been to one coffee shop you've been to them all, I don't know.
- the Museum of Contemporary Art           My ISP met here last week, to look at Simon Starling's exhibit.  He made an experiemental film called Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima), which juxtaposed Henry Moore's monument to the discovery of the atomic bomb, and the creation of masks who I think represented both the characters in the play that was narrated throughout the film, and people in real life who had a hand in developing the bomb.  I'm not completely sure, I was confused, I'd probably need to watch the film several times to really get a sense of what it was talking about.   But the film was amazing, and it had incredible extreme close-ups of the sculptor's hands as he made the masks, and then once the film was over, we went to the other side of the screen and the masks were right there, in sharp light and surprisingly tiny.  It was really cool.
- the Art Institute           I went here with another student when we had a long lunch.  She has a membership, which lets you bring an extra person in for free.  I've never been there before, and going in for a half an hour made me want to buy my own membership.  I saw paintings there that I've only seen pictures of before.  We walked through the impressionist gallery, and it was amazing.  That was probably one of the best things I've ever done with an extra half hour.
- Young Chicago Authors        I was in there briefly for new volunteer orientation for my internship.  They host WordPlay, which is the longest-running open mic for youth in Chicago, and LouderThanABomb.  It was a really cool place to be, especially for a writer.
- The DuSable Museum of African American History      We went here for my Arts seminar, mostly to look at the exhibit they were having on African-American cartoon characters from the 1970s and the 1980s, who were some of the first depictions of African Americans that weren't blatant, misleading stereotypes, but real, strong people.
- the Punch House          this is in the basement of Dusek's, along 18th street.  It had a revolving wall that led to an extra room, a lot of flickering candles, and good drinks, I was really impressed.
- Other local restaurants in Pilsen that have great food.  One I went to last Friday with my roommate, which I can't remember the name of at all and I forgot to look before we left, but they were a tiny place that served burgers and sandwiches, and the huge cheeseburger I got was actually really good.  I judge burgers according to how they compare to my dad's, and this one was pretty good.  The two people working there were some of the friendliest I've met.

Some (hopefully) coolio pictures:

The water fall?  Water tower?  One of the water things at Millenium park, which changed colors.

Both water falls

I found this in the Chicago History Museum, by the woman's bathroom.  It's the life mask of Abraham Lincoln.  He had his face molded in plaster while he was still alive; this is exactly what he looked like.  This really creeped me  out.  

The pavilion at Milennium Park

A view of the buildings, on our boat tour

So this club is apparently where rich people who actually work out go to work out.  It's super exclusive, all I remember hearing the tour guide saying was that big celebrities go there, and I thought I 'd take a picture of a place I'll never be.

As we reached the lake, there were really amazing views of the skyline.  And amazing views of the backs of everyone scrambling to take pictures.

The amazing stairs at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  I really loved these stairs.  I used to do this kind of thing when I was in high school, but I wrote it all over one of my bookshelves.

Last night, my friend Kelly and I went to this local film showcase that was happening in Pilsen.  The first film, Fanfare for Marching Band, was a short one that followed Mucca Pazza as they ran around Chicago playing music and dancing in libraries and grocery stores, flashy and vibrant among the frozen, ordinary things other people were doing.  The second one, Maydays, was longer, over an hour, and was about two high school students who meet at a Model United Nations conference and fall in love.  Daniel's from Winnetka and comes from a very rich, very privledged lifestyle, while Alicia lives here in Pilsen.  She faces a lot of stereotyping and prejudice from Daniel's parents, and he faces some from her friends.  The film's about overcoming those things, and whether two people who "are so different, but get along so well" can manage to stay together.  It was a great film, especially considering its low budget, and since it was partly based in Pilsen (they legitimately filmed at Benito Juarez high school), the ACM should've made everyone go.

The whole point about the film thing is, I have only been here for two weeks, and already my sympathies and understanding is changing.  A month ago, watching the film, I would've taken the side of Daniel, of the privledged white characters, not the hispanic ones.  When his dad was talking to Alicia and saying how great her family restaurant was because "it's good to hear that they're cleaning things up and getting some nice things," and everyone had negative things to say when she mentioned she lived in Pilsen, I would've been like, so?  It's a bad area, right?  But already my perspective's changed.  I understood how much it hurt Alicia to have people make jokes about how bad her neighborhood was, because it isn't true. I know, I've experienced, how that isn't true anymore.  It stung me too.  Instead of thinking, so?  I was thinking, hey.  Which is something I would not have done even a month ago. 

During orientation, one of the internship coordinators, Victoria, explained to all of us this theory she has, how we all are looking through our own windows out into the world.  All we have ever seen and known and experienced is through that window, and we have to come to understand that everyone's window is different.  We walk around with a singular persepective, and hopefully at some point in our lives, we learn other perspectives and other windows too, and understand them.  She brought this up during the first week, because that's partly what the program wants to teach us; how to see the world in new ways, and to not only learn about those ways, but to experience them ourselves.

There's a book series I read by Scott Westerfield, the Uglies series, that has a thread that follows the same kind of idea.  The books are set hundreds of years into the future, and in the first novel, the main character, Tally, is out in the wild, beyond the city she's always known, and she stumbles upon this village in the wilderness.  Its people think she's some sort of god; they're living in huts and have zero technology.  They wear skins for clothing and hunt their food; essentially, Tally thinks they're savages. After a while, she realizes that the city government has purposefully built this village and used it as an experiment, to see how people used to live.  She becomes good friends with one of the villagers, Andrew Simpson-Smith, and he takes her to "the edge of the world," an area on the outskirts of the wild where there are little dolls hung up in the trees.  The dolls electrocute anyone who tries to come near them.  This is the way the government keeps the villagers in their area, and prevents them from knowing anything about the outside world.  Since Andrew has no grasp on technology at all, he doesn't understand that it's not the dolls but the electricity that's harmful; all he knows is that if he goes near "the little men" it's incredibly painful, and to him, this is the boundary of the world.  There's absolutely nothing beyond it.  Tally tells him the truth.  Eventually, Andrew escapes the village, and ends up helping Tally later on in the series.  In the last novel (the fourth?  or maybe the third?  I'm pretty sure it's the fourth, but I can't remember for sure) he says to Tally, "You must learn to see beyond the little men."  It's an incredibly powerful moment, if you've read the whole series.  It gave me gooesbumps when I read it, and that doesn't happen often.

The whole point of going into this long explanation is that Uglies has the same idea: learning to understand what's beyond your experience and perception.  There's worlds and worlds out there, you just have to be open to them.  I hope, by the time this semester ends, I'll have understood other people's windows, and I'll have learned to see beyond my little men.

- Laura

[Doyi's Blog] First Week, First Blog...But That Film Doe

Because it’s been a week and a half since my move-in, I know that it’s around this time I should be writing about my impressions of Chicago, some initial assumptions, and later reflections. But not now. There’s just something really exciting I want to share immediately; the rest can wait a day or two.

So, what’s the news? 

Well, it might not sound as striking as I’ve introduced previously, but it was one of those slow, yet increasingly deep moments of academic awakening and inspiration. It all started with my Independent Study Project (ISP). I’m taking the Arts ISP, so my instructor, Jaxon Pallas, took me and the class to the Museum of Contemporary Art. 

Here’s me, being all touristy in front of the MCA.

Anyways, we mainly saw Simon Starling’s show, who used film as the primary medium. Among his works in the gallery, I’ve witnessed the most mind blowing piece of experimental film I have ever watched: Project Hiroshima. 

A narrator would tell the plot of a “play,” which was basically about the making and dropping of the atomic bomb during World War II. But it wasn’t that direct. He told the historical moment using another story, a traditional Japanese folklore, and somehow tied it to WWII Hiroshima. The funning thing is, the entire narration was the play. Similar to ancient Japanese Noh theatre, the play was delivered solely by the storyteller--in this case the narrator. There were no actors, no acting--at least not in the conventional sense. 

The “actors” of Project Hiroshima were different historical, popular figures (I’ll refer to them as icons) that represented the Japanese folklore characters, who then represented the actual people involved with the bomb-making (i.e. physicists, politicians, etc.). These icons ranged from James bond to Colonel Sanders. It didn’t make sense to me at first. What did Sanders have to do with Hiroshima, anyway? However, little did I know that every element, every character served as a reference to Japan, the atomic bomb, devastating post-war life, etc., in a way I had never imagined. And all this was told by one man, one narrator.

Then what was going on visually? Well, the narrator wasn’t there. Instead, an old Japanese sculptor was shown in his studio, carving wood. As the narration of the play introduced one character/ icon at a time, the sculptor made masks representing them. But other than that, the film did not show an enactment of the play’s synopsis. Visually, there were little to no display of an intro, rising/falling action, and conflict.  Here’s a picture of the guy’s work:

Honestly, Project Hiroshima was overwhelming, confusing, yet absorbing. I had to watch what was going on visually, while listening to the play-in-a-play narration of historical times and stories I wasn’t completely familiar with. When I tried to focus on what was said, I kept losing what I saw--and vice versa. Even until now, I don’t remember the details of the film. 

However, what I do remember is how creatively the “play” was executed. How it challenged what a play even meant, or is. The way it showed how heavily dependent I and other filmmakers were on visual stimulus and support to deliver a message or story. Most of all, it required constant, active--very active--mental participation from the viewer in order to more effectively consume the film’s content. Overall, Project Hiroshima was an intense brain workout: physically, conceptually, philosophically. 

I think I need more of that, considering my lazy-ass nature.

I'll end with me and the other masks. 

Until next time,

Doyi