User:Emma Rijk

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Emma Rijk



Hi! My name is Emma Rijk, third year student Spatial Design and minor student Digital Craft. On this Wiki page you can find my project from quarter 7 about Making Is Connecting on the bottom. The work on top is quarter 9 about Meme's, this project is currently being developed.




Black Lives Matter

Meaning and Impact

The meme 'Black Lives Matter' is founded by Alicia Garza in 2013. This happened after Garza wrote a comment under an article that involved police brutality against black people. Garza was soon backed up by her future co-founders Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi who helped creating the hashtag and gain popularity.

The goal of the hashtag and meme 'Black Lives Matter' is to raise awareness of police brutality against black people. It has come to attention that an alarming high amount of police officers have not been sentenced or received a mild punishment for their brutality during work hours.

The movement started in USA when a police man called George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. Martin actually did not have a gun or any other dangerous tool with him. Because of that fact, Martin did not cause direct great danger and so, the shot fired by Zimmerman, the police was unnesecary.

This year the aruban man Mitch Henriquez was put in a 'neck grab' and sat on by 5 police men. Henriques passed away in The Netherlands, The Hague for no clear reason. The death of Henriquez brought the 'Black Lives Matter' movement to the Netherlands. This resulted in riots and protests on the streets in The Netherlands and mostly the area of Schilderswijk, The Hague.

Spreading the word

When searching in google for 'Black Lives Matter' it instantly becomes clear that most of the people spread the word through the computer. Sometimes the message stays true to the original message and sometimes it differs to racism and lines such as: 'White Lives Matter' and 'All Lives Matter'.

The part that caught my interest is the way people bring the message out in different ways then digital. The following images show some examples that proof there are other ways to get the message out:

Inspiration


Exhibition Black Lives Matter

Floor Steinz and I make the group supporting the 'Black Lives Matter' meme. Together with a few other students we have created the group 'Abuse of power'. The 3 duo's creating this group have all communicated on the 3rd of september about the theme and approach. Rens van Pinxteren came with the recent news about refugees. Right now the news is mainly focused on all the refugees that flee overseas and eventually drown, or get send back. Our group wants to focus on this topic from the point of view from the politics (from the meme Women In Binders), a group covering the violence and lack of respect from authorities (the group with meme; pepper spray police), my own group will be covering the racism and inequality of value of these lives.

Floor and I brainstormed about the subject racism and inequality. We came up with the idea to take the symbol of a scale to communicate the distortion in value of lives. We have made a few sketches to find new ways to make a scale. We decided to make the scale partially 2d so Floor can use her Illustration background. The other part of the scale will be spatial so I can use my background.

To bring our meme of 'Black Lives Matter' in our piece we decided to print two hearts, one white and one black. Both hearts will be poured in a epoxy weight so they float. The black heart will be in a small weight representing the value of the heart in the context. The white heart will have a bigger weight and communicate 'more weight, more worth'. This is obviously not how we think of black and white people, but we hope this will bring consciousness to the viewers of how absurd the situation is.

The standard of the scale will be a sticker designed by Floor. The stand of the scale is not the most important part of the installation but will support the message so we decided to make that part 2d. The hearts in weights will be spatially put up in a position were the scale will point the heavier heart lower and the lighter heart higher. This part will come forward so the attention will be on the hearts.

Inspiration

Spaghetti

Oven

Folding

Pasta dough

Machine