SPECULATIVE FICTION

1st Semester, 2013

 

 

In the fall semester of 2013, the Pat Holder/Paul Lopez team took on the Speculative Fiction project. We explored science fiction stories, social movements, visual and audio art. We asked ourselves how science fiction- or speculative fiction, as we like to call it- comments on the problems in present day society. We each wrote a research paper on the social movement we chose to study and later used our knowledge of these movements to inspire our very own short speculative fiction stories. We then created soundscapes and collage art pieces that represented both our original stories and the movements we researched.

 

I explored the Riot Grrrrl movement, a feminist punk rock culture that emerged briefly in the 90s. Riot Grrrrl was a fusion of punk culture and second wave feminism. It began roughly around 1990 and was led by what remains to be one of the most influential girl punk groups in history, Bikini Kill. Front woman Kathleen Hanna was considered the queen of Riot Grrrl. She embodied the movement. Most who lived through the Riot Grrrl years remember the punk girls of the time for their jarring appearance: choppy hair, leather, dark lipstick and lots of black, but Grrrls were so much more than that. Kathleen Hanna, for example, was an activist for women’s rights, a spirited musician and an extraordinary poet in her own respect. Riot Grrrl music adopted the sound of 70s hardcore punk rock, yet the subject matter was always along the lines of the power of young, spunky women who owned their bodies, brandished their sexuality and fought to smash patriarchy as a whole. Grrrl power was promoted in every aspect of the culture: music, poetry, zines, etc.

 

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of owning oneself. What does it mean to have the right to your own body? What power do I as a woman have over my own body? My social movement was all about taking ownership of oneself, completely owning your own body, loving and cherishing yourself. Unfortunately, this is not what girls in the real world are taught to believe. Women’s bodies are commoditized by men all too often. I knew I wanted to exaggerate the way women are perceived in the present by stripping them of their worth and portray them as purely sex objects in the eyes of men. In a way, I wanted my story to serve as a metaphor for sexual assault. In my story, the main character is taught to believe that her purpose in life is to grow up, fall in love and , since she is one of the few women who still can, produce children. Her concept of love is completely skewed by the society she lives in. When she finally gets to the place where she believes she will find it, instead she is treated as nothing more than game on a hunting ground. She represents every woman who’s concept of love has been skewed by the media and the notion that women have one purely physical purpose. She represents the one in five women who were, in their own ways, also hunted.

 

 I knew I wanted my art piece to effectively represent both my social movement and my story. I decided that the piece would be sort of an inside look at both the mind of my character and the minds of the Riot Grrrls. Aesthetically, black and white represented Riot Grrrl and the zines that were passed out at punk shows. The text sprinkled throughout is meant to represent the girl in my story and what goes on inside her head throughout her journey.