I saw that picture of Joe Biden finding two coins on the ground again today. His face in it is so haunting man I have no idea what emotion he’s experiencing
Just pure rapture
what now, son? what are you going to do now? im here to tell you that ive taken your tokens. i have both of your tokens, boy, and you know where im going to take them? two words: skee ball. you don’t even know how powerful i am, you don’t even know the powers i possess with this two piece of silver. ancient magic, son. ancient magic- don’t mess with ancient magic, or you’ll get the horns. just an old phrase from back in scranton. jill get in the car
Instead of “live laugh love” or “home is where the heart is” my (wonderful, progressive, very accepting) dad put up the racism sign in the foyer
whats the racism sign?
The racism sign, as I like to call it, is from an art piece I made halfway through my first semester of art school:
It reads “any attempted theft will be reported to the police” in the 15 most commonly spoken languages by immigrants here other than English or other western european languages (in descending order).
This sign was only half of the art piece, the other half was the most stereotypically Icelandic painting I could think of:
When the piece was shown the painting and the sign were hung on opposite sides of the room, making the sign more of an afterthought for those who don’t speak any of the languages written on the sign. Standing out just enough for them to notice it and maybe wonder what it said, but ultimately not giving it a second thought for the most part.
I wanted to highlight one of the most common ways racism and xenophobia present themselves here as well as the comfort of ignorance. The sign doesn’t cater to you, you ignore it it, and you don’t care what it might say. You don’t have to think about it because it doesn’t affect you.
For those who can read the sign though, or bother to translate it, this is just yet another reminder of people’s ignorance and double standards. My inspiration for this piece came from my old workplace, where they had this sign hanging on one of the doors:
The main things that stood out about this to me were that
It was the only sign on the premises written in anything other than Icelandic and/or English
All of the additional languages (Vietnamese, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian) specifically targeted minority groups that already face discrimination here
The location of the sign. We only had 1 of these, and they chose to put it up somewhere where only staff would see it rather than the customers. In fact, it was right next to the break room so you had to walk past it every time you went on break. And it was a sign reminding people not to steal. Big win for inclusivity here
People love saying that we’re not racist/xenophobic here even though we very much are. The problem is just that so many people don’t take the time to look when it doesn’t directly affect them. I was very happy with my piece because people actually came up to me and asked what the sign said because they wanted to know, it started a conversation and made those previously unaware of this issue more aware. I wonder if these sorts of signs would be anywhere near as commonplace as they are if more people looked at them critically and asked “why is this the thing we bother translating?”
Anyway, all that aside I love my dad and I like the way this art piece turned out but also I am slightly worried about giving people the wrong idea when this is the first thing they see when they enter our home 💀
Well if you want my permission to show it then you have it :))
with great regret i must inform you that there is a typo in the Latvian translation, so it actually says “any attempted theft will be reported to poland”
I found out while working on this that it is extremely difficult to get 15 fully accurate translations into languages you don’t speak in the span of a week but this is killing me 💀
“We cut a trough into the set, and we put a piece of rigging that goes under the set and into the mother’s stomach. It’s a little creepy, I know. But it allows us to slide her along the surface of the sand, and every time she reaches out and claws into the sand, that’s all a plasticine or clay surface that we have to carve into and move a frame at a time. We’d have little bits of sand that were flying up in the air, so we take these little bits of foam or clay, we put them on bug pins or wires or little bits of fishing line, and we have those elevated and move them a frame at a time to make it look like it’s bursting out of the ground.” - Travis Knight
literally impecable. Im losing my mind
And it all happens so naturally that you never question how it
could happen
I’ve never seen the piece of media this is from, but I’m blown away. Even beyond that bit of technical wonder, just how expressive the doll is. The anguish and pain shows so clearly, without being almost comical. A lot of stop animation (even ones I love!) rely so heavily on sound to make the scenes emotionally charged.
this is from Kubo and the Two Strings and the whole film is this stunning
Kubo and the Two Strings is a criminally underrated masterpiece, the uncontested best animated film of 2016 and probably the decade, and is available on Netflix. Please do yourself a favor and watch this movie it is so beautiful and so, so good. You are guaranteed to cry. Everything about this movie was perfect. This is a ten star movie on a four star scale.
PLEASE WATCH KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS.
Warning: this movie will make you cry. Like a lot.
