Documents: Deconstructing Homophobic Signifiers

In Schools:

On December 12, 2003, a special installation of Documents was created at Park Day Elementary School in Oakland, California. In place of strictly homophobic words, the students used words that they personally have encountered in situations of verbal assault.

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Video Footage: © Todd Rising, 2003

This collaborative, community art project allowed the students to directly confront their experiences with name calling and bullying. The goal of this creative process was to bring awareness to the hurtful nature of harassment and stereotyping, and to help deconstruct the negative impacts they have on children. In the end the students get to “walk on the art,” thus destroying the words as a symbol of their wish to remove them from their playground. The result is a beautiful salt painting created on a “ritual site” by the whole community.

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