FMP Collaboration Week: Creating

Fig. 1 Oppression Box I (author's own)

Fig. 2 Oppression Box II (author's own)

Fig. 3 Oppression Box III (author's own)

Fig. 4 Oppression Box IV (author's own)

We started to put the items together. I wrapped a box with newspaper and made specific words stand out, such as, 'darkness', 'sense', 'feel it', 'pain', 'strike', 'price', 'guilty', 'threat', etc. This was the initial idea for the final piece, but then remembering that one group member's topic is music, we decided to look up rap lyrics which are quite misogynistic, but not the type that refer to women as sexual objects, but the type that in someway tell women to "shut up and sit down", lyrics that create a hierarchy.

The plan is to wrap the box up with plain white paper and project these harsh lyrics on to it. The mouth of the bottles are taped with red strips of paper in order to symbolise mouths, the flaps of the box are spray painted red for the same reason. All the red sections are representations of female lips.

Here are a few examples of some of the rap lyrics we have selected for projection:

• "Slut, you think I won't choke no whore, 'til the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more."
• "Beat your bitch in her mouth just for talkin' shit"
• "Bitch I'ma kill you, you ain't got the balls to beef!"
• "Take them mothafuckin' panties off, you ain't no nun."

We have decided to create a short film, we created a melody and then 4 other melodies to harmonise with the original one. The idea is to create a sound per bottle. We recorded our voices (female voices only), when each bottle is recorded being placed into the box (by a female hand), a voice will enter, and this will continue happening for each bottle. The bottles symbolise the women and each voice is the representation of her sound. After a while, a male hand (to illustrate the behaviour some men show to women in society) will come in and stuff a sock into the bottles one by one. As he does that, each voice will fade away until you hit silence, and this is when the rap lyrics would be projected onto the box. The voices will fade to show that the male is silencing the females. This whole film is based around physical symbolism, and I really enjoy coming up with ideas on how to make it work.

 It has become a bit of a feminist project which works perfectly for my topic. The idea of using random items rather than direct messages seems like a rather interesting way to go about exploring a topic. I may adapt this approach within my personal project and see where it takes me. Maybe not with items but a play on words. words that do not relate directly to my subject matter.