September 20, 2015 - 21:54
"These individuals are already objects of research and voyeurism, and not in control of how they are percieved or documented, even if there practices of documentation and research are executed with the best of intentions" (Meiners, 14).
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I keep thinking back to an exercise that we've done as a class as well as in our Friday book meets, about condensing your thoughts into a word or a few. Applying that practice to our Saturday excursion, I have trouble summing my experience in a single point. Enlightening? Overstimulating? Ambitious? I think I have to go with "tourist-y", close second being "voyeuristic" in line with the quote above.
Throughout our bus tour in particular I had the distinct feeling of being a child in an exhibit, poking at the glass of some animal or artifact while letting the facts and figures pour through my ears. Though rather than the childlike wonder and boredom of grade school trips, this feeling left me rather uncomfortable. These exhibits were alive, living communities and people. The constant reassurances of community involvement rang just a bit hollow in me. Who were these people with their notecards, who suddenly held the voices of so many within them? Who knew the stories behind every piece of graffiti, who had the power to decree that art and crime are mutually exclusive, who drew the line between "real" art and the unreal - mural "wanna-bes" and ""primitive"" pieces? I couldn't focus on the art as the bus parked in front of an active methadone clinic, as one of the guides cried foul against an organic addition to the transplanted canvas. I felt the stares on our bus on the street and felt the urge to apologize - for taking up their space without giving in return. It reminded me of how I felt about the weekly prison classes before they began; the difference being that, while the power dynamic in class is still very real and nebulous, there's a comfort for me in that, for all that I'm taking with me, I'm leaving something behind, too.