116 Reading Response

1. Identify the article you have selected and why you chose it.

I chose the article "The Lure of the Local, Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society" by Lucy R. Lippard. I chose this article based on the title. Lately, I've been very intrigued by the idea of local things. I traveled out west for the summer, and I stayed at a random Co-op for a time where the people there (over twenty of them) strove to eat only local food. They would personally meet and know the farmers they would recieve their food from, and would not buy anything imported from out of the area (like bananas and coffee). I've also been intrigued by the idea of the local because of the community it brings. I hate how impersonal our country has become because everything is imported from another place. It makes it so we don't care where or how we get the things we want, as long as we get them. This rant is basically why I chose it.

2. What are the main points of the essay?
This article talked a lot about this idea of home, and brings up the question on whether home is a community or a place. It talks about the ambiguence of the concept of "home" or of "community."

"Home changes. Illusions change. People change. Time moves on. A place can be peopled by ghosts more real than living inhabitants." (Lippard, 23)

The article also talks about how the home is viewed as the "center" in many communities, like the world revolves around it. It talks about the fifties and how the home became a fortress and a place for a family and about the suburbs.

It talked about the suicide rates in those times, and how though the suburbs were good places to come home to, they were not good places to be stuck in.

It talks about mobile homes and RVs, and about how people stopped viewing home as a place as much as just a structure, something that could be mobile.


3. How are the ideas or arguments in this article relevant to your own practice as a media artist?

"A starting point, for artists or for anyone else, might be simply learning to look around where you live now. What Native peoples first inhabited this place? When was your house built? What's the history of he land us around it? How does it fit into the history of the area? Who lived there before? What changes have been made or have you made? ... What is divergent from when you were young? ... What is your house's relation to others near it... " (Libby, 25)

Lucy Lippard goes on listing things to practice and research to get to know your local community better. I think this is all important, especially to a film artist, since projects usually take a large amount of collaboration. Local communities have always intrigued me and still do. I believe the world can and is constantly changed by them, and that if any movement or revolution in this world starts with a solid, local core base.