[Remote Year] Battuta Pitch Night

Tonight we had our first Remote Year Battuta Incubator Pitch Night, and five members presented ideas. Three of us had more general ideas that we wanted feedback on & advice about next steps, and two had more formal pitches for specific businesses that they’re ready to move forward with and had “asks” for help from the group in addition to our general feedback.

We had about 30 people show up to listen & support — Dave & Jason (our RY Battuta staff managers), Trish (RY Operations), and about 30 members of RY Battuta (designers, developers, marketers, consultants, analysts, and more from the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe).

We rearranged the chairs in our hotel lobby (in La Paz, Bolivia), plugged our laptops into the RY projector, turned off the lights, and spent two hours talking about our idea babies.

I was in the general idea soundboard group — I didn’t (and don’t) have a name for my idea, I have little idea what form it should take — it’s very much in the R&D phase.

My questions at the end to the group were essentially asking for references of similar platforms / services, if it’s interesting, who the audience might be, how they might like to engage, etc.

It was an incredibly rewarding experience — partly to present and talk to a group of 30 smart people in different fields and from different backgrounds about something I’m really passionate about — just the act of telling people about the thing that we care about is a huge hurdle & accomplishment.

Secondly, I got a lot of good suggestions, insights, and supportive comments to help guide me through the next phase of more research and decision making.

So what was my idea? Well, I’ll walk you through my presentation.

When Kim Kardashian wanted to “break the internet”, this was the image she used:

You’ve probably seen this image before, for better or worse.

Why this image? Why this pose?

The original inspiration image next to Kardashian’s. (credit: The Frisky)

The image on the left is a photo from a 1983 book published by photographer Jean-Paul Goude — many images feature Grace Jones, his girlfriend. He was also the photographer for Kardashian’s “internet breaking” cover.

Here’s one response (of many) to Kardashian’s picture:

“It’s worth noting that both PAPER covers are done in the iconic style of photographer and illustrator Jean-Paul Goude — a humorous, illusory style he has perfected since the ’60s when he was as an art director at Esquire.
Complex

According to that quote, this is a stylish, potentially funny image — playful perhaps — done by a photographer who has been perfecting his style for decades.

Then there’s this perspective:

“So, the photographer who exoticized, hypersexualized and objectified his Black girlfriend and other Black women for art, while openly admitting to his fetish for Black women, has now recreated his work with Kardashian posed in a similar fashion.”
The Frisky

While the Frisky quote applies on the basis of analyzing the images alone, what I intentionally neglected to mention was that the 1983 book this photographer published of his girlfriend (and mother of his child) was entitled Jungle Fever.

To be clear: Jungle Fever is a slang term that describes an attraction by a white person towards a black person. I was surprised that few articles about his book or these photos barely batted an eye at the term, referring to the book’s title and contents without any acknowledgement of the complexities in their relationship.

But we could write a thesis on this, and that’s not the point of my presentation. Next slide.

Screenshots from Beyoncé’s music video, Formation.

What do we see when we look at these images of Beyoncé in Formation?

• Beyoncé sitting on top of a sinking New Orleans police cruiser in a flooded neighborhood
• Beyoncé in elegant black funeral wear, covered in jewelry, flanked by black men in suits on the porch of a plantation-style home
• Beyoncé in a luxurious, red, puffy shouldered leotard with lace thigh-highs and pearls dancing between bookshelves under a chandelier
• Beyoncé and other black women in white lace antebellum dresses in a dimly lit, formal parlour

Beyoncé released the video the night before performing the song at the SuperBowl halftime show, wearing a Black Panther and Michael Jackson inspired costume, flanked by dozens of black women with afros. It was Black History Month and Trayvon Martin’s birthday.

“The potency of Formation doesn’t come from its overt politics: it comes from the juxtaposition of lyric with the images, which organically present black humanity in ways we’ve haven’t seen frequently represented in popular art or culture.”
The Guardian

In spite of spending hours looking at & listening to this video and reading about 30 articles about it, my presentation didn’t dive too deep into the many opportunities for analysis of Beyoncé’s Formation except to say this:

You better believe Beyonce, her directors, her costume / set designers — everyone involved with making her videos and image — know about visual history & the power of representation.

So what does this have to do with my pitch?

I picked these two examples because they popped into my head first and are powerful examples of imagery & meaning in modern culture. They aren’t boring, unheard of pieces of art locked away in foreign galleries gathering dust. Kim & Beyoncé are household names. Everything they do makes the news.

These analyses of what they do and how it looks and what it means is exactly what art history is.

Art History has a bad reputation of being boring, academic, institutional only. (Even President Obama has made fun of Art History majors in his speeches.) Who studies ArtH except for upper middle class young women at east coast liberal art schools?

I want to figure out a way to take art / art history / art education OUT of that realm and INTO the modern world and everyday life.

Millions of people are constantly engaging with visual media though instagram, snapchat, facebook, twitter, and many other sites and platforms.

• Why do you post one selfie but not another?
• How do you frame a photo? Pick a filter?
• What’s the difference in how we view a sponsored post versus a personal one?
• What photos should you use on your website?
• What’s a good professional headshot for LinkedIn versus a personal one for Facebook?

It goes beyond social media — people invest hundreds of hours playing videos games and watching movies and tv, ads are everywhere, all the time, around the world…

… all of which rely heavily on the same principles of analysis that art history uses.

Building on what came before, understanding visuals, playing with references — that’s how we create content and sell ideas & that’s how audiences understand what they’re seeing.

The intro ArtH class syllabus at Williams asserts that:

“a major purpose of the course is to teach you to think visually. To extract meaning from a work of art, you have to use your eyes as you probably have seldom used them — to analyze visual material.”

In my major at Williams, we learned to look at almost anything — a building, a sculpture, a painting/image — and analyze it to better understand what its purpose was through materials, style, subject matter, etc.

Learning this analytical approach to the world around me helped (helps) me better understand:

• religion
• different cultures
• historical eras
• advertisements
• technological advancements
• how political power + economics + health/illness work together to make societies succeed and fail
• essentially everything I see and encounter

So, my goal is:

Share these principles of analysis & connection with others.

Help people actively engage with & consciously understand what they see.

Behind-the-scenes, I will be following the methods of art history, but not through the traditional academic & institutional organizations and methods:

TRADITIONAL: Antiquity –> Modernity

Instead: I want to start with familiar, contemporary imagery + popular methods of visual communication.

Get people engaged with activities & challenges.

Trace back the roots of popular visuals into history and other cultures.

But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. So what I’d like feedback & advice on is:

• How to move forward?
• What is the best way to engage people and gain an audience?
• What platform do I focus on & what content do I share?
• (some of my concerns are legal issues since art is not mine)

Also:

• What already exists?
• What are competitors or possible collaborators?
• What platforms are already being used for similar purposes?

The group spent about 15 minutes doing comments & questions after my presentation, which included some of the following takeaways and suggestions:

• I want to make the art history of right now — which even includes photoshopping asses all over Kim Kardashian (something someone apparently did to the aforementioned Paper image)
• to reach target demographic of teenagers: create my own course, upload so teachers / classes can use as coursematerial or people can study on their own
• use gamification to engage & teach
• start with instagram, build brand & audience & interest, then create courses or apps or whatever final product
• start with the market that I know then work backwards to reach younger generations
• References: mental floss, thug kitchen, i fucking love science, buzzfeed quizzes

And that was it! I got to spend the afternoon and evening in teacher mode again, share my passion project idea with my peers, and get some helpful feedback.

I would love to hear about other references, similar platforms, feedback about whether it’s of interest & what would be a good starting point, and/or questions. Comment below! :)

Katherine is a digital nomad, working remotely while she travels the world — living on the road since June 2014. She’s a member of Remote Year 2 Battuta, living around the world with 75 other digital nomads from February 2016 to January 2017.

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