I first started thinking about tattoos after our “what is your story” in-class free writing assignment. The first thing I thought of was my Snapchat story at the time- a picture of a tattoo I had gotten the previous day.The tattoo reads “Go placidly” followed by a quarter rest symbol. The words are borrowed from the first line of the poem “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann: Go placidly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.
I first encountered this poem when I moved in with my housemates into an off-campus house in New Brunswick. It was painted on a wall in a bedroom that the luck of a [lost] coin toss would grant me. Walking up and down Easton Avenue multiple times a day, I bore witness to the city’s rapidly developing commercial economy and the university’s Rutgers 250 memorabilia. I felt a tension between the vision of the future promoted by local giants like Johnson&Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson and the tradition and historical heritage of the campus. At the same time, my background in public health drew my attention to those who have been marginalized in this process. I began meditating on themes of permanence and impermanence as I saw the landscape changing around me.
I felt the tension between the past and future more acutely when I found out that the street we live on is a target for further commercial development. I began to wonder about the memories that we made in that house- and during my time living in that house- after the physical structure is leveled.
Tattoos, for me, represent stories we’ve lived or one day hope to. These are stories of our interactions with the world around us at a particular moment in time- a moment that, as with Easton Ave, is likely to be lost in the (re)construction that the future demands. I found that, unlike the built environment, the modified body isn’t forced to juggle the past and present in an awkward dance of temporal linearity but rather can embrace these aspects of selfhood.
Rather than interviewing my tattooed friends, I wanted to engage them in a discussion about their relationships with their tattoos. Although it was interesting to hear about the stories behind their tattoos, I wanted to honor a degree of privacy regarding these intensely personal stories. In addition, I felt that most people in the audience already understand that tattoos bear a certain significance and history to the body it occupies. Discussing tattoos more broadly, as such, allowed the discussion to emphasize more universal themes that hopefully resonated with the audience more than stories of specific tattoos would.
I used Snapchat filters to capture the impermanent nature of the built environment as it is contrasted with the unapologetic indelibility of tattoos. Perhaps the great irony of my work is that I decided not to show any of the tattoos despite, or perhaps because of, their glorious permanence.
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
stormborns
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
vaporwave
