TATOOS AND GANGS

deviantart.com by Umert

www.endganglife.ca

www.endganglife.ca

I think more and more people wear tattoos to remember where they came from, what they lived, what were thier choises, to have a reminder of persons or moments. Because wear a tattoo is telling a story of a life time or just a crazy moment. Because some people want to remember something, somebody, or anything, for ever. It's true that in today's society, tattoos have become a new fashion. But it's true that if you want something that you are happy enough to be permanently commited or tied for the rest of your life, then go ahead and get it. People don't just want to have a tattoo like a physical representation of something that left a scar on their heart but also for aesthetic reasons. We like to change, to take decissions, to build our personallity. And fashions, are also part of our life. And if somebody decides to have a tattoo done and then they stop liking it, this tattoo remains a reminder that you have changed and that you have to be proud of you.

It's not that unusual for young people to join a gang. Often the more excluded in society for any reason like being south american or afro-aferican, or they have family problems,etc. They want to feel they belong to something, they want to feel that they have a family or rather a surrogate family. They look for love or appreciation but usually that is not the result. One other reason why young people join a gang is the extreme facility to earn money by selling drugs or guns because of their high prices and the quantity of people that consumes or buy guns. Be in a gang it's be feared, stop following rules that are not your gang ones, have a social status and the most important, have easy money each day. 

In the gang society tattoos have a lot of meanings. Usually a gang member has a black teardrop tattoed just bellow the eye to represent the number of persons killed or how times you've being in jail. Ganster usually get plenty of tattoos, usually with the name of the gang or portraits of their family members because it's usually difficult keep the contact with your family and gang members really appreciate family ties. The more tattoos you have means the more money you have and for example with the teardrop tattoo, the more respect you have. In gangs when a person have no moral guilt or conscience it's when he starts being more respected and the tattoos can be a sign of the respect that the other gang members should have to you and often an identification mark.

The draw of 'Dead Town'

Go there for a full version of the Newsweek article given out in class.

1-Gabriel Hinojos is a young man who is trying to leave the Florencia 13, "one of the largest gangs in Los Angeles". Gabriel Hinojos has been several times in jail, more precisely in the Folsom State prison were he got his teardrop tattooed just below the eye. He is very well known for leaving behind the gang life as "a kind of poster child" says Suzanne Smalley in her article.

2- "Ya Stuvo" is a "Tattoo removal center". In Spanish slang "Ya Stuvo" means "that's enough, I'm done with that". This is not the exact meaning of "Ya Stuvo" because the more exact translation is "it was already" but it is however a good translation because it is a tattoo removal center and what it is expected when you go there is to delete something of your skin you don't want to be there anymore, that's why it is called "Ya Stuvo" and why Suzanne Smalley and Evan Thomas translated it as "that's enough, I'm done with that".

3- Black teardrop is the tattoo done by some gang members when they have been in jail or when they have kill someone. This black teardrop is the center of the article because Gabriel Hinojos is trying to remove his black teardrop (done in the Folsom State Prison), a way to erase his past. There is in the whole article the comparison of "Getting out of a street gang in L.A. is about like getting a tattoo removed: slow, painful, scarring."

4- This sentence shows that Gabriel Hinojos keeps trying to remove his tattoos but also to amend his past. If it is the 45th session, we can think that he is completely cover of tatoos of the gang Florencia 13 and that he wants to completely rectify his life, present and future with no trace of his dark past.

5-"Getting out of a street gang in L.A. is about like getting a tattoo removed: slow, painful, scarring." l.16-17

6- "In street lore, a gang banger can never leave a really brutal gang (...) In practice a gang member can get out of a tough (...) if he has served time in prison and "done the work" But escaping it's extremely difficult." l.18 to 22.

7. In definitive, leaving a gang in very difficult, but it can be done, in theory. What the gang wants, in this case the Florida 13 is to have the work done. What means that even after being in jail you must finish your drug dealing or whatever mission the boss of the gang wants you to do. So you must hace served time in prison and finish your assignment because escaping is extremely difficult.

8. Escaping the pull of gang life is extremely difficult. Being a gang member it's being part of a collectivity. If you stay in the same city, your mates will always perform a pressure on the ex-member, because it is a style of life and these guys are used to adrenaline, to wield a gun, to be respected and dreaded and a person can't leave easily this way of living.

9. Gabriel started to be kind of famous because of his reputation as an ex-ganster. He is celebrating his achievement with luxury and elegance in the White House where he is with Laura Bush, the first lady celebrating this change with white wine. But has we have explain, leave a gang it's almost impossible and three days later Gabriel Hinojos returns to jail because of his mates or his works as ganster, we suppose.

10. In this photograph we can see Gabriel Hinojos in the tattoo removal center "Ya Stuvo" removing a tattoo of his neck. He is wearing protective glasses to prevent the laser hurting his eyes. We can see that it is a painful process because of his facial expression . His skin still covered in ink and the doctor is trying to remove all of it. This image illustrate very well the article because as I have explain in the third question, the fact that he is removing a tattoo is the center of the article. Suzanne Smalley and Evan Thomas compar leaving a gang with removing a tattoo (slow, painful and scarring) and that is why the article starts with this anecdote and why this photo was choose as cover.

'Pop Art Myths' and the 'MYTHS AND HEROS' Notion

Equipo Crónica - Guernica  1971

1- Pop Art movement can be related to a belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or ocurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal. But it can also be related with the representation of a character with noble qualities who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, displays courage and the will for self sacrifice that is, heroism for some greater good of all humanity.



2-This painting is the second part of the series "Guernica" made by Equipo Crónica in 1971, during the dictatorship of Franco. They demythified a mythical spanish paintor like Picasso to show instability in Spain in the 70's and their opinion against the dictatorship and against the repression system. They changed the lugubrious colors or actualy they covered them with very shinning colours, red and yellow, representatives of the mythical superheroe's comics and they also highlight this idea of comic with the onomatopoeia "WHAAM!" an element that remind us to the pop artist lichtenstein. Even if Equipo Crónica demythified this painting they continue with Picasso's idea of violence of the composition. The horse in the painting of Picasso symbolize civilians, it is injured because of the attacks. The brutality of the italians and germans in June 1937 is depicted by Equipo Crónica with less lyrism, more explicit.



3-Personally I pretty like Pop Art, I think it is original and I particulary love the historical pop art paintings, their different meanings, the demythification, the way they changed an art into another. The use of explosives and shinning colours makes me feel surprised at every artwork I see. I appreciated this kind of art and artist.

Why can we connect Pop Art with modern mythology? Not all mythology dates from the days of ancient cultures. People around the world continue to create new myths and to embroider or rework existing ones. Modern technologies such as publishing, movies, telecommunication, and the Internet allow folktales, rumors, and newly minted myths to travel faster and reach more people than ever before. One distinctive feature of some modern legends is that they originated as artistic creations, although their creators may have drawn on earlier themes. This is shown in Pop art with the representation of music myths for example, enlarging them and converting them in semi-gods for some people. They have become myths like the american dream or the 27 club.

Pop Art Myths

There are various topics in Pop Art.

Thanks to the Interactive Magazine of the Thyssen Museum of Madrid, made during the exhibition,"Pop Art Myths", that took place from June 10 to September 14, I am going to present the main themes of pop art paintings.

1961, Popeye - Roy Lichtenstein

1-Collage advertising  comics:  Pop Art was the successor of cubism and dadaism (among many others). It inherited from the two mentioned the tradition, but it added an alteration in the allegorical component and content. British Artists like Hamilton and Peter Blake, were pioneers in the introduction of comics in art. Roy Lichtenstein and Warhol turned comic strips into large format paintings.

Andy Warhol- Campbell's tomato soup
1962

2-Emblems: Everybody knows that in the middle of the 20th century, advertisings became aggressive. It inundated society, from television to the walls of the streets. Brands, logos and slogans invaded us. Coca-Cola's cans, Heinz ketchup, Brillo soap, Campbell's soup,etc. were everyday objects that turned into art when pop-artists like Hamilton or Warhol painted them. 

Peter Blake - Beatles 'Love me do'
2004

3-Myths: Hollywood was at the time a super important industry of the seventh art. Celebrities were not just famous people but Myths. People benerated them, converting them into idols of the culture.

Tom Wesselmann self portrait while drawing
1982

4-Portraits: Pop Art reassessed the way of making art. That reinterpretation came also until portraits. Their first objective was to me original and for it they remolded reality to make their own perspective.Warhol even fades his image to "become" or being seing as a virtual character.

Roy Lichtenstein - Still life with palette
1972

5- Landscape interiors still lifes: Artists decided to paint contemporary urban milieus, not just private and domestic but public and commercial spaces. In the consummer society, objets had a central position and pop artists recovered and reinterpretated the traditional genres of paintings: landscapes, interiors and still lifes.

Allen Jones-Stand in
1991

6-Urban Eroticism: Sexual freedom encouraged a lot of artist to paint eroticism. Norms and social attitudes changed. Seductive women and men were almost like adds, they were everywhere and caught our eye. Lichtenstein made the new Venus (symbol of love, sex, beauty and fertility)

1975
Equipo Crónica - Serie Negra

7-History Painting:  Personal opinions, reinterpretation of events, historical paintings with a hide meaning are not new. But Pop Art is a movement that gives a lot of importance to images in a moment of history (Cold War, Franco-era, etc) that changed the world.Major historical figures like Mao or Kennedy were protagonist of a lot of works. Historical painting in spain was very important after Franco's death beacause it reflected with irony the amnesia of society that afflicted all the country. 

8-Art about Art: Pop Art tries to change our vision about the old genious artist's paintings in our world. They versionated paintings made by Velazquez, Botticelli or others to create a new vision and sometimes to demythologize for a political denounciation.

Equipo Crónica- El intruso
1969

MYTHS AND HEROES

Here it is my 'Myths and Heroes' worksheet

Quantity vs Quality

www.seia.org (solar energy industries associations)
 2011

wordlesstech.com
 2011

Is for everybody well known that pollution is a big deal that we are trying to treat. 

The first document shows how the United States evolved creating more P.V. Installations (Photovoltaics (PV) is the name of a method of converting solar energy into direct current electricity using semiconducting materials). There will be 8.000 pv installations in 2016, and the sales, as the document shows will be of 14%.

Despite of these numbers is this enough progress? 

One type of pollution that is not very well known is LIGHT POLLUTION and it is also not taking always considered because there's almost no social conscience about it. Despite generating large and damaging consequences such as wasted energy, the greenhouse gases resulting from their production. It makes also harmful effects on humans and animal's health, difficulties in the air and maritime traffic, difficulties in the study of stars and in general a loss of perception of the universe. It's likely that many of the negative effects of light pollution are not known yet. If we compare the two documents is obviously that the measures took by the United States are not enough, they are insufficients. The solutions will have to take a larger scale because as the document 2 shows, the majority of the United States of America will surpass between 100% above the natural brightness level and 9 to 27 times the natural brightness level. 

Every country in the world must take care of all kind of pollution and they can't forget light pollution. Even if the governments and the associations are trying to reduce the pollution and the greenhouse effect, the solutions still not deep enough to stop somehow the danger we face.