We spend a great deal of our childhoods– our whole lives, even– within the confines of a schoolhouse. What effect, if any, does the concrete presence of our school rooms have upon us? Do our physical, literal surroundings help shape the person that we become? How do schools instill us with ideas about class and mold our personal values? Photographer Lissa Rivera’s study in the territories of academia, Places of Education, raises these questions without providing any easy answers. Gazing into these eerily still images of empty school buildings is like stumbling upon a polaroid of an old dream. Rivera’s images reaches through the blur of primary education and pull out sharply detailed representations of our collective forgotten past.
Capturing an intimate look at China’s first ever elementary school class election, Weijun Chen’s 2007 documentary Please Vote For Me is a surprisingly enthralling and emotional little film. Thankfully avoiding the easy route of superfluous historical exposition and grandiose politicizing, the film focuses not on the nation of China but on three very different children who have been thrust into an unfamiliar political framework.
While each candidate struggles for power, they exhibit familiar dark human impulses that are somehow rendered shocking in their tangibility. These are children old enough to think complex, sometimes manipulative thoughts, and yet too young to be covert about them. As a result, we’re treated to a brutally honest peek at the mechanics behind human relationships, and a portrait of childhood that’s at once adorable and disheartening.
If you have a Netflix account, Please Vote For Me is available to stream instantly for free.
I remember a few things from 6th grade science class. One, it was the first year in which we were permitted to dissect animals. The first animal we dissected was an earthworm. The next was a frog. The third was a fish. My fish–or rather, the fish assigned to my partner and me–turned out to be afflicted with a disease that turned its insides into spinach-colored mush. I quietly put down my scalpel, walked to the girl’s bathroom, and barfed. The teacher allowed me to sit out future dissections.
The second thing I remember is learning about Carl Linnaeus, also known as the father of taxonomy. Linnaeus was the country-born scientist responsible for constructing the foundations of modern taxonomy. His innovations allowed future scientists to classify the natural world with greater ease and efficiency. Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered Linnaeus the greatest man on earth.
From Linnaeus comes many things: our system of binomial nomenclature, the fact that we call ourselves “homo sapiens”, and now, this: an exhaustive taxonomy of graffiti courtesy of the Fondation Cartier. Explore the exhibition online and make your own conjectures about how the graffiti alphabet came to be– the compilation provides a fascinating account of public art and private mischief.
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