Hypochondriac
Originally uploaded by Snapatorium.

This girl's art spoke to me about how the bombardment of pop-culture often leaves us feeling fractured. Putting on our fractured masks pretending everything is fine. I think her art also reflects the absurd extravagance of our commercial culture. A lot of her work seems to combine 50's looking magazine pics with modern paraphernalia-expressing the evolution of an era and perhaps some of the confusion as we transition from one period to another. Interesting stuff...

I've been planning on making some artwork for my classes along the same strain. Of course, I don't know what it will look like until I'm done. But I think I'm going to combine family pictures and try to modify them to express the "fracturedness" I see in our generation and in myself. That's probably why I was intrigued by her work.

I was reading an interesting article about muli-culturalism tonight. The author was arguing a point on a subject I'm very much still formulating my thoughts on. I'm still sifting through my experiences and setting mental ground work to start the serious labor on the subject. But hearing him argue a certain point of view helped me better understand the parameters of the issue and it helped to know what academia is arguing about concerning this subject.

I've stumbled upon the issue of multi-culturalism vs. assimilation kind of through the back door. I'm white, low/mid-middle class. Went to private Christian schools. Why would I think about it?

Living in other countries has made me think a lot about national identity. For example, Koreans have a strong sense of Koreaness and after a while of living there you get tired of being on the outside.

I also have a lot of second-generation friends. The kind of people that grow up understanding two cultures and yet watching them from the outside I think they grow up with a stronger sense of identity. True-they often complain about the inconveniences of being a minority and I understand. Yet as I ride with in the car with my Mexican-American girlfriend and listen to her talk about her life I wonder, "What am I really?" Am I the absence of culture? The leftover, white, watered-down culture? I'm Czech, German, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. But I don't know anything of these cultures or their languages. I guess ultimately it doesn't really bother me. But just when I see the cohesion of my second-generation friends' communities it makes me wonder about assimilation.

With thoughts like these back-loaded in my brain, this article definitely added to the list of things to think about in this respect. He actually argues for assimilation.

"Multiculturalism distorts the past, deforms the present, and diminishes the future. The best of America, says Ali Hossaini, shows the world a better route to a free, unified society: its name is assimilation."