Week Four: Annotation 4 (Ongoing…)

Reference:

• Title: Soapbox sculpture
• Author: Jasmax

Where did I find it;

• Initially found on best awards
• Then searched Jasmax website for more information and reasoning behind it

Keywords:

• All women team
• 125 years women’s suffrage in NZ
• A platform for empowerment
• Speaking platform
• “reinfoeced” concrete
• Soapbox
• Interactive and contemplative
• Observed

Summary: 70 words

• Your annotation needs to include a summary of the key ideas of interest to you in the text you have read. Consider the following when writing your summary:
  • What topic(s) are being discussed?
  • Can you identify the author’s key contexts? (historical, political, social…)
  • What are the key ideas/arguments being stated in the text?

This sculpture has been designed and build to act as a structure to acknowledge the 125-year history of women’s suffrage in New Zealand. Designed and built by an all women team this Soapbox Sculpture optimises the strength that women in numbers can have and this idea can be mirrored through the reinforced concrete material that has been used to create the sculpture. The main goal of the soapbox is to create and give a space for people to speak. However in his case the main goal of the sculpture is to highlight the history of womens suffrage in New Zealand but his soapbox is anything by exclusive, even though it only had a temporal lifespan the sculpture aimed to give a space that everyone could come to speak from, observe, stand on and even sit on.

Assessment: 100 words

• Assess or evaluate the importance of the text by considering the following questions:
  • Is the information reliable?
  • What position does the author take in the text? How might you determine if this text is biased or objective?
  • Did you find it an interesting text, if you did, identify why it was of interest?
  • If you did not agree with it, why not? (You are not required to agree with the author, a text might be useful to your Contextual Review because it presents an extreme position you can argue against or because of the controversial nature of the text.)

This information is very reliable but highly subjective as it is right from the mouth of the designer, and what the designer intends the design to be isn’t always how the design ends up being seen and used. However, in this case the designers intentions were utilised as they played on the temporal aspect of the design and used this to run speaking events on the soapbox. Even though the physical happenings of the soapbox were only temporal the ongoing consequences of the sculpture will be ongoing. In the words of Kate Sheppard “because women are endowed with a more constant solicitude for the welfare of the rising generations, thus giving them a more far-reaching concern for something beyond the present moment”

Reflection: 120 words

• Written in the first person this reflective statement should identify your understanding of the text and its relevance to your research.