Author: DIYORJON

I live in Kensington, Brooklyn and I have noticed neoliberalism takes place within my community and the neighborhoods around me. In the apartment building I live in there used to be mainly just Russian and Uzbek people that live here, and my family and I have been living here for 16 years. And as the time passes and years go on, I’ve seen a lot of people move out and I noticed a lot of young Gen Z people have been moving in. There are Russian and Uzbek people that live here but not nearly as many as there used to be. And there have been a handful of new restaurants open up and it seems to be directed towards younger people like Gen Z. They look so modern and I could see why these restaurants appeal to them. I normally see these restaurants packed with Gen Z people almost all the time. The area around me is changing and bringing in different people. It shows neoliberalism because the area is starting to look something like Williamsberg which is really gentrified. I can relate it to Dickinson’s argument because she spoke about graffiti and how the police are trying to get rid of graffiti so the city of New York looks safe. And they do this for the middle and upper class people because that’s who they care about the most. And I feel like the same thing is happening here in my community because the rent is rising, new people are moving in, and the neighborhood around is changing into something that appeals to the new people. And it’s used to attract them. The meme means that being different is seen as a bad thing because it doesn’t ‘fit in’ but if it can be used to get something like money, it will be exploited to get money from it.

For my remix, I am going to be using my research paper on Drug Addiction and Mental Health. I’m going to make a PowerPoint because I want others to see and visualize what I’m trying to convey because I know that most people don’t want to read a paper and it would be easier for them to understand it through something like a PowerPoint presentation.  My audience would be everyone because it’s a topic that affects a lot of people and I feel as if its important for everyone to understand. I will be discussing music artists and how their mental problems coincide with drug addiction. I’m trying to convey the idea that drugs aren’t the problem and that antagonizing artists for using substances to cope with their mental illnesses won’t help anyone. It is more important to help artists than to criticize them for using substances as a coping mechanism, because it’s easy to judge but no one really knows what they’re going through. I will describe my argument with photos and videos. I will include lyrics and parts of their songs  for the audience to get an idea of what is going on in the minds of these artists. Making it a multimedia piece will change my project into a visual representation of my topic. I feel like it would reach more people this way because it is already a topic a lot of people can relate to and turning it into a PowerPoint and presenting it can really speak to them more than a research paper.  What’s lost is some probably just a few small details, but what is gained is that more people will want to know more about it. My personal motivation for tackling this project is that I can relate to this topic and it has effected my life.

The artworks I’m choosing are multiple artworks from different artists, which all highlight the same topic that I want to highlight. ‘Hellboy’ by Lil peep, which  is a mixtape that that express how the artist felt nd the things he had been going through such as depression, suicide, and drug abuse. ‘XO Tour Llif3’ by Lil Uzi Vert, which is a 3 time platinum record that talks about a heartbreak which caused the artist to abuse drugs and fall into a deep depression. And lastly, ‘Good Bye and Good Riddance’ by Juice Wrld which is an album that is filled with drug use and some people can be seen it as a glorification of his use of drugs but that’s not really case.
All of these three artworks share the similarity of the ideas of depression, suicide, and drug addiction/abuse. They aren’t glorifying these issues, which most people believe they are, but they are expressing how it affects their lives. They are conveying a problem within the music industry that many people tend to ignore. This is the reason I want to write about these artworks, to spread a positive message.