Charlie Hebdo Shooting Response
MEDIA IS MY WEAPON & ART IS MY BULLET
Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly newspaper that features cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication is irreverent and stridently non-conformist in tone, is strongly secularist, antireligious, and left-wing, publishing articles that mock Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and various other groups as local and world news unfolds. On January 7, 2015 at about 11:30 local time, two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Armed with assault rifles and other weapons, they killed 12 people and injured 11 others.
THE RESPONSES:
After hearing the tragedy of the Chearlie Hebdo shooting, 14 fellow students and I brought 15 illustration boards, markers, highlighters, oil paints, duct tapes, shredded magazines into the class. We used the materials to express our feelings (mostly about sad and anger) on to the boards. Each of us spent 1 minute on one board then passed it to the next person and continued until we worked on every board at least once. We drew, sprayed, splashed, scratched, taped, and even stepped on the boards. After 15 minutes, we got 15 very different collage posters on anti-terrorism. From these collages, I developed some posters to express my feelings towards terrorism.
“What is freedom of expression?
Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie
April 10, 2015