Response #1: Tote Bags
The definition of a tote bag is a large bag with wide parallel handles that is used to carry heavy stuff.
"Tote" means "to carry". They were mostly made of canvas and were used to carry potatoes or any other heavy thing but now days they are made in all shapes and material .
Tote bags became popular in the 40's when people traveling would use them to travel in a more fashionable way. Recently, tote bags made a big come-back.
The tote bag that I am going to talk about is a project my team and I did last semester for PK's class when we had to chose an organisation to raise funds with the designs we did.
"Tote" means "to carry". They were mostly made of canvas and were used to carry potatoes or any other heavy thing but now days they are made in all shapes and material .
Tote bags became popular in the 40's when people traveling would use them to travel in a more fashionable way. Recently, tote bags made a big come-back.
The tote bag that I am going to talk about is a project my team and I did last semester for PK's class when we had to chose an organisation to raise funds with the designs we did.
The institution we chose is the SPCA and wanted to fucus on how we should adopt pets and not purchase them like objects. We did not want to do a traditional tote bag so we did a reversible canvas Japanese knot bag (it's a mouthful). The idea behind the Japanese knot bag is for it to be a small pouch to put your money in it - you pass the long handle in the small handle then pull on it to tighten it. We tweaked the design and made it bigger. Although the bag is still small, when it get's full it becomes rounded and we could see the faces that were screen printed on them: on one side of the bag is a dog and if we revers it there is a cat - it's for people who can't decide if they want a cat or dog. The dark side is for the cat because black cats have harder time getting adopted and the dog side is white because we wanted to play with the contrast of cat vs. dog so in that case black vs. white.
On the back of the bag, for both dog and cat, we screen printed a tag: you could say that "100% WOOF - Ronronnements garanties" is the brand of this project. To add a touch of fun and humour we used the laundry symbols to advise people on how to treat their pets- play with them, take care of them, give them love and pets are NOT for sell. We finished it with the slogan of our project "Adopt, don't shop - N'achetez pas, adoptez" just in case people don't get the message.
On the back of the bag, for both dog and cat, we screen printed a tag: you could say that "100% WOOF - Ronronnements garanties" is the brand of this project. To add a touch of fun and humour we used the laundry symbols to advise people on how to treat their pets- play with them, take care of them, give them love and pets are NOT for sell. We finished it with the slogan of our project "Adopt, don't shop - N'achetez pas, adoptez" just in case people don't get the message.
Overall, I am really proud of this project; it was the first time I felt I was doing a difference in the world during my academic stay in Concordia. We made 20 and they were all sold out before the pop-up shop, people would ask us to reserve them. What is even better with this project is the cloth we used was all recycled: we bought them from the salvation army (they were part of old curtains), so we did double good with this project.
Response #2: Banksy
Banksy is known for his political graffiti that target sensible subjects in society. When I think about the discrimination issue I directly think of this graffiti by Banksy that was done in Clacton-on-Sea in the UK. It's usually where refugees would first arrive to the UK. This graffiti was controversial and was quickly destroyed by the locals.
In this graffiti we could see, standing on a line, six birds: five gray pigeons and one colourful tropical bird. The pigeons are grouped on the left side with unpleasant banners and on the right side the colourful bird is standing alone. It has been said that this mural is racist because of what is written on the banners like “Go Back to Africa” or “Migrants not welcome”.
For the observers that saw this mural they saw it as racist against immigrants and destroyed it. But what they did not understand is that this mural is not pointing fingers at immigrants but rather at people that are discriminating against the immigrants. This is just one of the many examples that portray how some people can only see what is happening on the surface without the need to dig in deeper in search for the truth. This Banksy issue is not that well covered, but we can clearly see that after one glance this graffiti was labelled racist before knowing that it was by Banksy.
The problem here is not the graffiti or the writings on it but the tension that it has caused: when people saw it they immediately destroyed it saying that it’s racist when this very graffiti is denouncing racism. Banksy is known for his provocative graffiti so needless to say that in any case his graffiti would have raised some eyebrows; but in this particular case it was totally dismissed without any second guesses, one is almost tempted to think that this graffiti was erased for political reasons by the people that are being targeted.
I watched a documentary called “How Racist Are You? - Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise” that portrayed a study by Jane Elliott that shows how some people are in denial of their racist nature, which leads to reverse racism.
In this graffiti we could see, standing on a line, six birds: five gray pigeons and one colourful tropical bird. The pigeons are grouped on the left side with unpleasant banners and on the right side the colourful bird is standing alone. It has been said that this mural is racist because of what is written on the banners like “Go Back to Africa” or “Migrants not welcome”.
For the observers that saw this mural they saw it as racist against immigrants and destroyed it. But what they did not understand is that this mural is not pointing fingers at immigrants but rather at people that are discriminating against the immigrants. This is just one of the many examples that portray how some people can only see what is happening on the surface without the need to dig in deeper in search for the truth. This Banksy issue is not that well covered, but we can clearly see that after one glance this graffiti was labelled racist before knowing that it was by Banksy.
The problem here is not the graffiti or the writings on it but the tension that it has caused: when people saw it they immediately destroyed it saying that it’s racist when this very graffiti is denouncing racism. Banksy is known for his provocative graffiti so needless to say that in any case his graffiti would have raised some eyebrows; but in this particular case it was totally dismissed without any second guesses, one is almost tempted to think that this graffiti was erased for political reasons by the people that are being targeted.
I watched a documentary called “How Racist Are You? - Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise” that portrayed a study by Jane Elliott that shows how some people are in denial of their racist nature, which leads to reverse racism.
I have watched this documentary many times and it always gives me the chills to know that people are that racist.
There are different types of discrimination also known as grounds of discrimination. Here are some examples of grounds of discrimination: race, national or ethnic, origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability.
Some people don't realize that they are racist or are discriminating against some people; some other people think that after the end of segregation in the US in the 60's racism died out, but if we look back at this Banksy graffiti we could clearly see that racism and discrimination is very much alive and present is our day to day lives.
Rousseau said: “Man is born good, it is society that corrupts him”. We are all influenced by our surrounding, which makes us question our identity and our thinking; people are so gullible into believing everything they read without questioning it and that is on of the biggest sources of creating discriminatory people. So yeah, it’s good to be open-minded and to be like pandas: they are black, white AND Asian.
There are different types of discrimination also known as grounds of discrimination. Here are some examples of grounds of discrimination: race, national or ethnic, origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability.
Some people don't realize that they are racist or are discriminating against some people; some other people think that after the end of segregation in the US in the 60's racism died out, but if we look back at this Banksy graffiti we could clearly see that racism and discrimination is very much alive and present is our day to day lives.
Rousseau said: “Man is born good, it is society that corrupts him”. We are all influenced by our surrounding, which makes us question our identity and our thinking; people are so gullible into believing everything they read without questioning it and that is on of the biggest sources of creating discriminatory people. So yeah, it’s good to be open-minded and to be like pandas: they are black, white AND Asian.
Respons #3: Islamophobia
On the afternoon of 17 August 2017, a man drove a van into a crowd in Barcelona killing 16 people and injuring at least 160 other. In response to this attack, the famous satiric newspaper Charlie Hebdo put this caricature as a cover. Being a muslim and all I was offended just by the fact that my religion is confused with this abomination called extremism and terrorism.
Let us go back to the 7th of January 2015 when two madmen went on a killing rampage and massacred the employees at Charlie Hebdo; all this due to the degrading representation of the Prophet Mohamed (who is the most important figure -after God- in Islam). The thing people should know is that in Islam there is no pictorial representation of any Prophet -including Jesus- so that there is no "icon worshiping" it's more of the idea that is worshipped. But illustrating the Prophet Mohamed like this tainted his image (and when I say image I mean reputation) therefore it also tainted his ideology and that's what made people mad.
I am not saying that going on a killing spree is the way to deal with it -on the contrary: in Islam it is said that God may forgive any sin except the sin of killing of a fellow human- but if people of different backgrounds would sit down and explain what is wrong and what offended who and for what reason it may not have come to this at the end.
This brings us to the main subject of this response: Islamophobia.
When something is not understood by the general public they tend to label it as "that" thing and ignore everything that has to do with the understanding of it.
For example had I not told you why Islam does not depict its religious figures would you have known why they were insulted? Or that Islam does not promote violence at all? Yes in the Coran there is a lot of killing and bloodshed but so does the Bible and those are stories to learn from other peoples mistakes and to gain a moral from, they are not to be read in a literal way (this is what the extremest do by the way, they just see the first level and go with it without understanding the meaning).
So whenever there is a terrorist attack my family and I would sit in front of the TV placing bets if the attacker was an Arab or from arabic heritage (because yes for a lot of people Arab and Muslim is one and the same). Most of the time it's a Muslim Arab -if not then a poor radicalized persone OR a mentally ill white guy- and my dad would start cursing and saying how now the whole world would blame it on all the Muslims. The next day newspapers and chronicles like Charlie Hebdo would start doing illustrations putting Muslims and Terrorists in the same boat (like in the cover above).
It's stuff like that that feed the Islamophobia mentality in people.
Mosques vandalized, women wearing the hijab attacked, muslim people being yelled at to "go back to their own country"; all this is Islamophobia.
I watched a standup comedy by Hasan Minhaj called Homecoming King and he was talking about how his childhood was in America being the son of a Muslim immigrant. It became dark and real when he talked about the events following 9/11: people would come and vandalize their car by breaking its windows, anonymous calls were made telling them that they would come and kill them, kids at his school bullied him.
Recently I saw an uprise of people against Islamophobia and that gives me hope in humanity: people who have nothing to do with the religion or the culture are standing up for the minority who even if they try to explain their point of view in a pacific way are disregarded and put into the terrorist "category".
But hear me out: what about the KKK? Are they not Christian? Are they not neo-natzis running around beating and killing -for no reason other than their appearance- African-American?
Why are they not terrorists? Why don't we say "OMG KKK they are christians therefore ALL christians are killers and racist"?
Christianophobia is not a thing, why should Islamophobia be?
(Yes I had to create a word for it because phobia of Christianity is not really a thing).
Let us go back to the 7th of January 2015 when two madmen went on a killing rampage and massacred the employees at Charlie Hebdo; all this due to the degrading representation of the Prophet Mohamed (who is the most important figure -after God- in Islam). The thing people should know is that in Islam there is no pictorial representation of any Prophet -including Jesus- so that there is no "icon worshiping" it's more of the idea that is worshipped. But illustrating the Prophet Mohamed like this tainted his image (and when I say image I mean reputation) therefore it also tainted his ideology and that's what made people mad.
I am not saying that going on a killing spree is the way to deal with it -on the contrary: in Islam it is said that God may forgive any sin except the sin of killing of a fellow human- but if people of different backgrounds would sit down and explain what is wrong and what offended who and for what reason it may not have come to this at the end.
This brings us to the main subject of this response: Islamophobia.
When something is not understood by the general public they tend to label it as "that" thing and ignore everything that has to do with the understanding of it.
For example had I not told you why Islam does not depict its religious figures would you have known why they were insulted? Or that Islam does not promote violence at all? Yes in the Coran there is a lot of killing and bloodshed but so does the Bible and those are stories to learn from other peoples mistakes and to gain a moral from, they are not to be read in a literal way (this is what the extremest do by the way, they just see the first level and go with it without understanding the meaning).
So whenever there is a terrorist attack my family and I would sit in front of the TV placing bets if the attacker was an Arab or from arabic heritage (because yes for a lot of people Arab and Muslim is one and the same). Most of the time it's a Muslim Arab -if not then a poor radicalized persone OR a mentally ill white guy- and my dad would start cursing and saying how now the whole world would blame it on all the Muslims. The next day newspapers and chronicles like Charlie Hebdo would start doing illustrations putting Muslims and Terrorists in the same boat (like in the cover above).
It's stuff like that that feed the Islamophobia mentality in people.
Mosques vandalized, women wearing the hijab attacked, muslim people being yelled at to "go back to their own country"; all this is Islamophobia.
I watched a standup comedy by Hasan Minhaj called Homecoming King and he was talking about how his childhood was in America being the son of a Muslim immigrant. It became dark and real when he talked about the events following 9/11: people would come and vandalize their car by breaking its windows, anonymous calls were made telling them that they would come and kill them, kids at his school bullied him.
Recently I saw an uprise of people against Islamophobia and that gives me hope in humanity: people who have nothing to do with the religion or the culture are standing up for the minority who even if they try to explain their point of view in a pacific way are disregarded and put into the terrorist "category".
But hear me out: what about the KKK? Are they not Christian? Are they not neo-natzis running around beating and killing -for no reason other than their appearance- African-American?
Why are they not terrorists? Why don't we say "OMG KKK they are christians therefore ALL christians are killers and racist"?
Christianophobia is not a thing, why should Islamophobia be?
(Yes I had to create a word for it because phobia of Christianity is not really a thing).
Response #4: Awakening
I have always been fascinated by the impact of images on oure everyday lives. One image or one headligne could shape the way we see things, and funny enough we trust those things and go with it as if they were all true.
This class reminded me that not everything that shines is Gold because not everything we see is the true representation of our world, we are the one that decide what to show and how to show it.
For example when we are trying to fined a visual identity of a company, we are the ones deciding how the company is going to be seen: who is the target of the campagne, what it sells, the color scheme, the feel of the visual representation and so on. If a person identefies with this visual representation then they will be more responsive to its marketing campagnes and so on.
Same thing goes with trends: some big shot decides what is cool or not and people just follow it blindly without understanding why. I could also say the same thing about news and how media is manipulated to make you see what THEY think is most important.
I realized during this class that I don't want to feed into this blind culture of following the leader; I want to break the mould and show how there are some flaws in everything (a bit like I did in my final project). It was fun doing research and learning new things and of course there is always this satisfaction of proving people wrong with all the fact checking (I should work for the White House but it won't happen because I am Muslim -yes that was a really bad joke).
I want every person who looks at something to look at it in a sceptical and critical way, not just a "ah ok that's cool, let's move on" kind of way, but more of a "really? I didn't know that, I'm not sure, let's check it out on the World Wide Web" kind of way. That is what I am aspiring to do with my future work (it will most probably not work because the world does not want to be reminded of how messed up it is and that is not going to pay the bills so yeah... sad... but I will try that's for sure!).
In conclusion, I really loved this class. It awoke in me this critical thinker that was snuffed out by the mould that we call society. At the end, you do you, and you think as widely as you want, that's what's most important. If you see something you don't like, voice out your disagreement but is a respectful way to the people around you, because everything is based on respect.
This class reminded me that not everything that shines is Gold because not everything we see is the true representation of our world, we are the one that decide what to show and how to show it.
For example when we are trying to fined a visual identity of a company, we are the ones deciding how the company is going to be seen: who is the target of the campagne, what it sells, the color scheme, the feel of the visual representation and so on. If a person identefies with this visual representation then they will be more responsive to its marketing campagnes and so on.
Same thing goes with trends: some big shot decides what is cool or not and people just follow it blindly without understanding why. I could also say the same thing about news and how media is manipulated to make you see what THEY think is most important.
I realized during this class that I don't want to feed into this blind culture of following the leader; I want to break the mould and show how there are some flaws in everything (a bit like I did in my final project). It was fun doing research and learning new things and of course there is always this satisfaction of proving people wrong with all the fact checking (I should work for the White House but it won't happen because I am Muslim -yes that was a really bad joke).
I want every person who looks at something to look at it in a sceptical and critical way, not just a "ah ok that's cool, let's move on" kind of way, but more of a "really? I didn't know that, I'm not sure, let's check it out on the World Wide Web" kind of way. That is what I am aspiring to do with my future work (it will most probably not work because the world does not want to be reminded of how messed up it is and that is not going to pay the bills so yeah... sad... but I will try that's for sure!).
In conclusion, I really loved this class. It awoke in me this critical thinker that was snuffed out by the mould that we call society. At the end, you do you, and you think as widely as you want, that's what's most important. If you see something you don't like, voice out your disagreement but is a respectful way to the people around you, because everything is based on respect.