UNRAVEL THE MEME - PEPPER SPRAYING COP - FACE IT

UNRAVEL THE MEME

The pepper spraying cop is a meme based on a event during an occupy movement demonstration at the University of California. The UC Davis pepper-spray incident occurred on November 18, 2011. After asking the protesters to leave, University police pepper sprayed a group of students as they were seated on a paved path in the campus. The video of UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper spraying demonstrators spread around the world as a viral video and the photograph became an meme. In October 2013, a judge ruled that Lt. John Pike, the pepper sprayer, would be paid $38,000 in worker's compensation benefits, to compensate for his psychological pain and suffering. Apart from the worker's compensation award, he retained his retirement credits. After the incident, large protests against the use of pepper spray occurred on campus. UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi apologized to the students, saying that the police had acted against her orders for there to be no arrests and no use of force. A public debate about the militarization of the police and the appropriate use of pepper spray on peaceful protesters took place in the media, with questions raised about the freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

ABUSE OF POWER

After reseaching our meme, we got together in groups with other memes in the same category. We discussed and found out that we could put all our memes under the topic: "Abuse of power". If we look at what happens in the world right now, there is one big, and important issue that can be connected to abuse of power, the refugee crisis. The situation for the refugees is a problem that we can not overlook, we wanted to make a project about this because it is affecting so many people and everyone has something to say about it. It is also one of the really big crisis of our time, and therefore a very relevant topic. But it is important not look at this as a superficial matter, it is after all concerning millions of human destinies. Therfore we discussed our approach to this topic a lot. I really wanted to work with this, but I also had some trouble with it, because it is a situation that should not be taken lightly. And I didn't want our thoughts to be misunderstood.

FACE IT

People tend to outer their meanings very freely online. A lot of people seems to think that they can wright whatever they like in social media and in comment fields, without it getting any consequences. While the situation in Syria has escalated, and people had to flee their home country, the racist and cruel comments and outings online has grown rapidly. There are even many communities online that has only one purpose, to spread hatred, threats and gruesome opinions against refugees. We wanted to confront people with what they wright online, and also to show people what is being posted out there. Simply make people face it. Our concept was to put a face on the comments. So we found comments that people have written with full name and picture of themselves, and for everyone to see, took their profile picture and placed their horrible comment over their mouth. People may look like a totally normal person, but when you read what they have written you may be surprised. In this way we created a new meme. The simple way to screenshot a comment, taking their public profile picture and placing the comment over their mouth, is easy for people to do themselves. The idea is that when people see a racist comment they can very simply confront them and posts this picture. By placing something over their mouth, the focus becomes stronger on the eyes, which is said to be the window into our soul. I think this way of ridicule people sent a strong message to viewers. Our main goal was to create reactions and start a discussion, something that our project definitely did.

EXHIBITION

The final work of our project where exhibited on "Kunst in het Witte de With Festival". Our project would be nothing if we didn't show it to people, so this was a really import part of the process. Here we got to see peoples reaction when they looked at our big poster, and discussed the situation.