create.change media

#projects #tbt still haven’t quite mentally put this one...

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:23:31 +0300

#projects #tbt still haven’t quite mentally put this one to bed. Think it will have to have a Phoenix like rising. Commissioned @daddydarkrdc to work on this with me but the financial crash happened, funding fell through and we both moved on to other things..

#famfoods after #spartanfamwest for @roadcasting cos she smashed...

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:43:05 +0300

#famfoods after #spartanfamwest for @roadcasting cos she smashed her training #ahooo

Found this amazing school farm . Every school should have one,...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:54:18 +0300

Found this amazing school farm . Every school should have one, every child should learn to grow their own food #realfood #growyourown #famfoods @chakabars next year shall we get a #spartanfam allotment ?

#projects #film today was so much fun. Swimming & filming -...

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:42:00 +0300

#projects #film today was so much fun. Swimming & filming - what’s not to like ? Oh and @vitacoco of course. Me & @peigh began our #wildswimming project today. I just need to get my wetsuit and it’s fully on! Follow our progress at www.createchangemedia.com and www.itspeigh.com

#spartanfam #swimdemcrew @peigh 1 hr 20 !!!!

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:24:40 +0300

#spartanfam #swimdemcrew @peigh 1 hr 20 !!!!

#spartanfam #triathlon #swimdemcrew 10 minutes to go !!!

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:15:09 +0300

#spartanfam #triathlon #swimdemcrew 10 minutes to go !!!

#spartanfam #swimdemcrew pure excitement! @peigh goes...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:15:08 +0300

#spartanfam #swimdemcrew pure excitement! @peigh goes in !!!

#Tbt screen grabs from a storyboard I was working on for my...

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:58:36 +0300

#Tbt screen grabs from a storyboard I was working on for my cinematic language MA in 2009 - illness stopped me completing :(

#spartanfam made the new class video this weekend #ahooo...

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:34:21 +0300

#spartanfam made the new class video this weekend #ahooo #justforfun #jokes #training

Me choreographing the Look Sharp fashion with @chakabars . I was...

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:46:02 +0300

Me choreographing the Look Sharp fashion with @chakabars . I was trying to teach this girl how to be #josephinebaker to Chaks #cabcalloway . She wasn’t having any of it …

All coming out now - the joy of having a camera when your kids...

Mon, 13 May 2013 01:14:04 +0300

All coming out now - the joy of having a camera when your kids are young 😃😃#dance #blackstyle #v&a

#spartanfam as @chakabars can testify, I’ve been...

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:48:51 +0300

#spartanfam as @chakabars can testify, I’ve been encouraging kids to do this for a loooooong time. This is Turkey 2001 , a little Turkish boy in the village I was visiting #activekids

#newyork #bboyabstractions #rocksteadycrew #rootsman

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:44:02 +0300

#newyork #bboyabstractions #rocksteadycrew #rootsman

Almost finished the edit. Social lives are for the weak...

Sun, 12 May 2013 04:56:06 +0300

Almost finished the edit. Social lives are for the weak 😜😳#editing #whatsaweekend #grinding #spartanfam #ahooo

#newyork one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen on a...

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:27:50 +0300

#newyork one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen on a street corner - a shrine to a girl who had passed away from asthma right on the family’s stoop. She must have been so adored . #bk #love #loss #grief #streetphotography

#spartanfam making the new class video . Una fit yu know

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:56:52 +0300

#spartanfam making the new class video . Una fit yu know

#V&A took mum out today - cool exhibition on theatre - my...

Thu, 09 May 2013 23:06:52 +0300

#V&A took mum out today - cool exhibition on theatre - my first love in life & first career. Still feel more at home in a theatre than anywhere else

spartanfam: It is official the Spartanfam workout mix vol 2 is...

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:33:52 +0300

spartanfam:

It is official the Spartanfam workout mix vol 2 is dropping on the 7th of June.
The single most wicked free work out mix ever!
Mixed by @djdanhills ;) if you want to hear the last mix> soundcloud.com/danielhills/spartanfam
Who is excited? AHOOO!
#instadaily #igdaily #love #spartanfam
#fitness #fitspo #inspiration #igdaily #ahooo #strength #athlete #instagood #l4l #shoutout #fitsporation #iphonesia #deadyourexcuses #spartanfamwest #igers #bodyweight #beauty #motivation #health #natural

spartanfam: I am down at Westminster inter schools competition...

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:33:33 +0300

spartanfam:

I am down at Westminster inter schools competition scouting talent for the #spartanfamyouts :)
I want to take a athletics team to the London youth games.
If you have a young person you want me to train 11-18 send them down to paddington Rec on a Wednesday 5-6pm.

Athletes aren’t born they are created ;)
@bitbeefy on the #vitacoco #poweredbycoconuts

#spartanfamyouts
#instadaily #igdaily #love #spartanfam
#fitness #fitspo #inspiration #igdaily #ahooo #strength #athlete #instagood #l4l #shoutout #fitsporation #iphonesia #deadyourexcuses #spartanfamwest #igers #bodyweight #beauty #motivation #health #natural (at Battersea Park Athletics Track)

The Construction of Interethnic relationships in Soap Opera’s constitute and perpetuate the Myth of the British Identity as White, thereby denying the existence of other non-white British Identities, particularly those of Dual Heritage - in response to http://laurenjobson.tumblr.com/post/49804028774/raising-a-biracial-child

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:56:46 +0300

Dear Lauren

Being a bi-racial child, i chose to write my undergrad thesis on the subject - the subject - The Construction of Interethnic relationships in Soap Opera’s constitute and perpetuate the Myth of the British Identity as White, thereby denying the existence of other non-white British Identities, particularly those of Dual Heritage

here are some quotes:

Throughout my life, I have been repeatedly asked the same question – What are you? The question refers to one subject, that of my ethnic origin. I usually answer by referring to the four countries I know my ancestors originated from in the last three generations: Chinese, Jamaican, English, Scottish, or if I feel like increasing the perplexity of my inquisitor – Euroasianafrocarribbean! The most interesting part of this little ritual though, is the process of interpellation that people have tried to engage me in. I first noticed this as a young child, and it has fascinated me ever since, leading me to write this. I discovered that ‘what I was’ in other people’s eyes, was dependant on their view’s on ethnicity, on what they considered their identity to be. Therefore, to my white friends, I was white, and vice versa with black friends. The really interesting part of the equation was the attitude of people who didn’t like me, who reversed the position, so I became white to their black, or black to their white!

I never felt any personal investment in these judgements; it just exemplified to me the invalidity of categorisation. However, although I haven’t assigned myself a positive identity position before, I was definite about one thing - I wasn’t British. Even though I was born and raised here, and both my parents are British citizens, I felt politically and socially disenfranchised enough to reject what should have been the most natural identity position to adopt. So why did I feel that way and why, since researching this dissertation, have I changed my mind?

………

“Racism, of course, operates by constructing impassable symbolic boundaries between racially constituted categories, and its typically binary system of representation constantly marks and attempts to fix and naturalise the difference between belonging and otherness.” 13

British identity is based on colonialism, on an underlying ideology of instutional racism and white superiority. To assure them of that authority, particularly in the era of mass communications and globalisation, when there are so many potential messages communicable, requires the making invisible of anything that can challenge the validity of that position.

The growing amount of people defined as dual heritage, mixed race, or what else you choose to categorise them as, question that position more than any other ethnic group could. Their existence challenges the essentialism of identity, especially British identity as being located in race.

Hall says, “Britishness must always mean whiteness.” 16

They prove that it is possible to ‘have’ identity without having a defined racial one or despite having many.

The problem of terminology itself emphasises the issue. What is the appropriate term? What can accurately describe a group of people who can be totally disparate in ethnicity? Again their identity is being defined as other. Before the days of political correctness the term most commonly used was half-caste, which denoted literally that they were only half human, worthy, meaning of course half white. Then came the term which largely still persists – ‘mixed race’, which is a complete misnomer because biologically there is only race, and ‘mixed’ is a word that connotes lack of purity. The most recent term, ‘dual heritage’, although not derogatory in its connotation, also means nothing more than someone who has two parents. Everyone has a dual genealogical heritage, so even though the term race, colour or caste is omitted, it is still implied and at the same time nothing specific is denoted about the individual’s heritage. Once more all that is communicated is difference. The ineffectiveness of the term is increased by the lack of recognition of the possibility of more than two ‘heritages’ and also discounts the fact that most people descend from a combination of nations, particularly the British!

The relevance to my argument is thus: if the classification terminology is so difficult, does this prove the anti essentialist theory? Should classification be necessary or even relevant in contemporary Britain, within in its own nation’s population? The definition ‘British’ should be enough. In my past when I have been asked ‘what I am’ and I’ve replied “British”, the response is: “ no, I mean where do you come from?” Which of course, has the same answer. However the difference that is being marked, and fixed is colour, after all white British people often have East or West European, first generation immigrant parents, but their whiteness renders their ethnicity invisible.

So if cultural practices are part of the ‘suturing’ process of identity formation,how do the invisible, and indefinable achieve that?

“Racial representations in popular culture present a most urgent concern in a society as relentlessly bombarded with visual images as ours. Visual symbolism has begun to rival spoken or printed words as the medium by which our sense of cultural tradition is to be carried forward.”17

Media, and television in particular, are a major discursive influence on that process of interpellation and articulation, and without representation within the medium, that process is limited, not only to ‘the other’ but to the dominant population. People of no determined colour will continue to be ‘exotic’, not only are they alien, but also they are displaced within this society or any other. While privileging of racial purity still pervades, there cannot be any belonging for those who identifiably have none. The answer is not to simply say ‘race and colour don’t matter’ because to most people they do, as does cultural belonging, which is mediated and articulated through symbolic power and myth. Patricia Williams, in her book “Seeing a colour blind future” , reflects on this:

“The globally pervasive manipulation of the vocabulary of visual images is why I think that talking about our differences, or ‘conversation’ by itself cannot begin to be adequate. It can’t work in this age of television of film, if for example, proceed to converse about crime say, our words are neutral as can be – yet at some deep, collectively unconscious level, share a vision of a black but not a white criminal, or vice versa”18

The answer is to acknowledge cultural heritage, and diversity while examining what impact that has on the discursive practise of social and personal identity formation.

“ For white people, moreover, racial denial tends to engender a profoundly invested disingenuousness, an innocence that amounts to the transgressive refusal to know.” 19

By ignoring race, Eastenders ignores the power of the dominant ideology over the minority, and thus helps, hegemonically, to sustain it.

“We are beginning to think about how to represent a noncoercive and a more diverse conception of ethnicity, to set against the embattled, hegemonic conception of “Englishness”20

Could brown babies represent the New Britain? Not in terms of ethnicity, but as a symbol of fluidity of identity, the ‘anti essentialism poster child’? People have to be seen, not because of our colour, nor despite it, but for whom we are as individuals. In the age of wider global communications, many appropriate their culture via the media rather than through their parents or nation states’ dominant culture. Patricia Williams explains the problems of the invisible:

“Black or white, invisible or conspicuous, English, raced or nationed, embodied or alone…. Who we are when we are seen but not spotlighted, when we are humble but not invisible, when we matter but not so much that the mattering drives us mad”21

To escape the constraints of stereotypical representation, or worse, the representation of absence, cultural practitioners need to engage in privileging of discourse, rather than the fixing or unfixing labels. Meaning, says Raymond Williams, is not fixed. Neither are identities.