acne has been an issue i’ve dealt with since i was 10 years old.
i remember my first pimple on my nose for picture day. my mother helped me pop my first one.
a strange memory.
since then it continued to worsen.
i’ve tried every acne solution under the sun.
nothing…
it’s genetic, i’m told.
my grandpa, my father, even my uncles suffered with terrible acne and eventually scars.
for so long, it has blocked my confidence and self perception. i try and smile through the pain of wanting and wondering what it would be like not to have acne scars.
i spend a lot of time staring into mirrors for someone who doesn’t like their own skin.
so i dressed my scars up with little stickers to make them seem beautiful and not ugly for today.
Two things: 1. this is powerful and I can tell the concept means a lot to you. Thank you for sharing 2. stickers or not your scars are beautiful, don’t tell yourself overwise!
I resonate with your statement a lot. I have a cycle that I too want to break. It’s not that it’s a bad cycle, it’s just monotonous and I’m ready for a change. Hopefully this is the summer for our cycles to be broken. Good luck!
I decided to paint the mountains from the courtyard of my apartment building. I let my friends choose the colors from the 10 I had. The idea behind this was that even though I was the one painting it felt like everyone’s art. I didn’t think one minute of this showed enough of the process so I sped it up in order to show the multiple friends come and go throughout the day. Our courtyard faces the mountains during sunset and I’ve always wanted to commemorate all of the days spent watching the sunsets from our courtyard together. We collectively decided on colors and mountains and spent the day appreciating the mountains and brainstorming this piece. Will definitely be doing something like this again.
It’s the end of the semester, and I’m quite tired.
I love art, but I’m so tired.
When I’m tired I like to go home and snuggle in my Comfy!
When I’m sad… I snuggle in my Comfy.
When I’m sick… I snuggle in my Comfy.
Getting in the shower to be renewed - and just feeling weighed down by what makes you comfortable. However silly, it’s relatable … we all know what mentally this spot feels like , even if we don’t actually perform this act.
What separates everyday performance art? Performing acts of grief, depression, happiness, and love all look so different.
Thinking of a performance in 1 minute, I almost went mad - so many possibilities of things to do. However that is where my comfort lies a lot of the time - talking , saying a lot. What if I just make myself more miserable on the outside? Then theres some kind of sense that whats on the inside will just be better than sopping wet clothes in the cold.
I took my comfort, I disregarded it, and in the process… I didn’t die! Not much happened either - and when it was done and I snuggled in bed I was able to reflect on how much we can grow by safely throwing away what makes us most comfortable in our own everyday performances.
Such a fun idea (and definitely uncomfy). As uncomfortable as this was to watch, I bet it was 10x worse actually making it. I appreciate “the comfy” and the uncomfy, and how well that relates to your whole concept behind the video. well done. Also, I love the way you made the cuts in the video
For this project, I was interested in using repetition to explore a meditative state. I lost track of the minute--which quickly turned to three--as I watched paint pool in varying opacities. I wanted to allow mistakes and unevenness. At times, my hand lost the pattern of the grid. The unpredictable end result became a part of this meditative process, a reminder to call in a lot of ease--a tenderness I believe we could all use as the semester winds down.
Lastly, here I am reminded that "repetition is a form of change." While I can resist routine, favoring a little controlled chaos, I must remember that no single effort is ever the same as the last, and that often it is by staying true that we may continue to evolve into greater and greater versions of ourselves.
The lighting and the subtle music in the background definitely evoke a meditative state for the viewer (in this case me) as well. And I appreciate that you added in the end result photo
*I recommend watching this with headphones, so you can hear the white noise, as well.
Forced to Look
Everyone has heard the phrase, “Eyes are the window to the soul.” Therefore in this piece, I wanted the focus of the performance to be on the eyes as if we were staring at each other for one minute straight. Staring often makes one uncomfortable like you’re being judged in some way or another. However, looking into someone’s eyes can tell you a lot about them like the quote above mentions.
The performance itself was uncomfortable for me, but I wanted to try to do something I’ve never done before and that would be interesting. Either way, both artist and viewer participant in the performance and face discomfort through the continuous staring.
Occasionally breaking the direct eye contact added a lot to this in my opinion. That’s such a natural thing for people to do while trying to maintain eye contact, because it’s uncomfortable to never break it. I like the concept behind this in terms of the window into the soul idea
I was kind of lost as to where to go for this project, but I wanted to something about gender performance. I realized a really fun and simple way to talk about that was makeup. I am non-binary and I find a lot of joy in picking out where on the spectrum of gender I fit for the day, and really expressing that. I love putting on makeup when I’m feeling extra feminine and its a super fun practice for me. Makeup has turned into a lot of different things for a lot of different people, but to me it’s an incredibly useful tool to help me feel like myself sometimes. This is just me having fun with it!
I love your video and the context behind it! Your makeup looked great btw. I’m glad you’ve found makeup to be such a great tool to help you feel like yourself and your best self when you’re feeling extra feminine!
So, I have Tourette Syndrome, and multiple occasions I've been told by friends, an art professor or two, and my sister that I should do a video and/or art based on my tics. However, I have always disliked being in videos or taking photos because they almost always capture a tic or two and I hate the way they look. I avoided the idea of filming. my tics for a while because it felt weird and a bit personal, but I continued coming back to the idea and decided to go for it.
I placed myself in a white "box" that I created and dressed in black. I intended for the lighting to be more direct and shine mostly on my face, but I struggled to achieve this with the supplies I had at home. The goal of the white box, black clothes, and lighting was to capture how it feels for me to tic in public. Most of the time people hardly notice, but it feels like everyone saw or heard it. Now, I know about the spotlight effect where we have a tendency to overestimate how much other people notice about us, but tics take that awareness to the next level for me. As my tic disorder from elementary school developed into Tourettes my freshman year of college, I began to cope through humor (healthy humor!). It's made life with unintentional stretching and shaking, occasional cussing and random sounds much easier. Additionally, it always feels like a bit of a taboo subject for others to talk with me about, and I want to break that barrier. So in my performance piece, my goal was to not suppress my tics, and also not laugh at the bigger ones like I normally do (I slipped up a few times, but that's alright). I filmed myself for about 5 minutes, and then cut the video down to the "best" segments of my tics. (however, the video is sped up to get close to the 1 minute mark)
Although I only have a few at the moment that you can see in the video, I have a whole array of tics that aren't displayed here. In my attempt to become more comfortable with my tics and normalize talking about it, I'd like to share a few with you!
I used to click my tongue with my mouth closed
sometimes I pound my phone screen kind of hard with my fingers while I type
for a while there my right hand would shake like I was doing jazz hands
my vocal tics tend to circulate around words with the sounds "st" or "t" (hence the words in the video shit and just)
luckily, for the time being, my tics aren't hindering my day to day life, but I have one or two that makes eating very difficult
oftentimes, I'll copy a word or phrase that someone says to me after they say it (this one makes my sister mad lol)
The tics in my video include:
I'll clench my stomach a few times in a row
touching the tip of my nose
a weird throat sound?? (i hate this one!)
some words
stretching my neck
and blinking weird
Thanks for reading this far and watching my tic attack video :)
Coco Fusco - "The Other History of Intercultural Performance"
After reading this article by Coco Fusco, I found myself wanting to see the actual performance instead of just imagining it as well as watch people’s reaction to it. If you have the time, check out the video a. You can hear people ask questions and listen to what the two “guards” say about the exhibit. Knowing the intent of this exhibit - creating discussion and exposure around the disappointing and disgusting history - did not make it better to read about or watch. Reading about the sexual motivated reactions of various men and women was unpleasant, and reading that many people who found that it was a performance piece criticized Fusco and Gomez-Peñia for doing the piece. After all of this panning and their tour, to read the end where Fusco states, "After years of interrogating the implications of the ethnographic gaze, our having to suffer the legal implications of having someone claim to have “discovered” us has been the most painful and ironic lesson of the Guatinaui world tour" is truly disappointing. Although I did not do more research on the responses from others to this performance art, I hope more came out of it, than just the law suit, for other's and the discussion around performance art history.
Roselee Goldberg - "Performance: A Hidden History"
"Although performance is now becoming generally accepted as a medium of expression in its own right, relatively little is known about its rich and extensive evolution". I can understand why people find it hard to accept this art form. Sometimes, artists choose to do crazy things for performance, and if people know about the history, it just adds to the discomfort behind and around performance art. This does make me question why it is such an uncomfortable thing however. I think about theater plays, circuses, and some solo artists, and how often performances happen in front of an audience. Why are art performances not more widely accepted then? The idea of acting is still in play for certain performances. Regardless of my confusion here, performance art is now more generally accepted as an art form, and I believe will continue to grow and become more popular. As Goldberg points out, "Today, performance is as varied as its own history" alluding to the idea that the there is much room for expansion and acceptance.
• The couple in the cage video •
Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña: The Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West // December 10, 2018
In considering what I wanted to do for this project, I seemed to be super drawn to adding the imagery of flowers into this in some way. I didn’t know exactly how I wanted to depict them or what message I wanted to send so I did some research on some key words, flowers, life, nature. After doing this my ideas expanded, and I remembered a song that is dear to my heart for many reasons that I wanted to depict in this project as well. This song from Porter Robinson named Lifespan shares an instrumental of the waves of life in excitement and somber. This beautiful soundtrack makes a perfect background for the floral display of this project. Displaying the life and beauty of flowers and their birth was the goal. So, the final product of this piece shares a compilation of flowers growth and existence focusing on the beauty of each specific flower. The name of this project is derived partly from the song as it is in an album called Nurture by Porter Robinson, additionally the “nature” part being self-explanatory pointing toward flowers.
Supercuts always seem to speed through clips of phrases or themes, but yours takes it’s time. Relaxing music paired with blooming flowers was a great take on this, and really lovely to watch
If I'm being honest, I got stuck with this as a project idea. At first, I did instantly think of this as an idea but kept looking all over youtube and thought about what could make for a good project, but I couldn't figure anything out. Eventually, it got to the point where I just had to start collecting all of my footage and put it into Adobe Premiere Pro. Now, I still think this is fun, but it doesn't have as good of a point to make as some other project ideas. However, I did think of these clips because of how interesting it would be to see the concept of time, although, I may have messed this up a bit because I did try to order these clips from oldest to newest but I ended up having to use so many clips that I got lost in the process. Another reason I liked this idea was because of the question that it poses, in general, I like asking myself weird and obscure questions like this because it's questions like this that allow us to learn new things, this could even be a way for someone to learn more about art. This project was really just a way for me to have fun with the concept of time and show my appreciation for experimenting and asking questions by using clips from the Good Mythical Morning youtube Will It Playlist.
Yay I loved this! My partner watches GMM all the time, and often drags me in with him. I’ve come to love watching them, and especially their food episodes. We just recently watched the episodes where they run through their food from the last however many years, and then you post this supercut! I always like coincidences lol. Great subject choice for your video and well executed
Trigger warnings: suffocation, stalking, enclosed spaces, wildfires, snakes, and spiders
I decided to look up the top ten fears people have, as well as base some of these clips off of my own fears and my friends fears. At first I was originally planning to have creepy music with it or some white noise, but after watching the video with the original clips sounds I preferred it without the music. Having sound at the beginning and then kind of abruptly going silent made it more jarring, especially when it came to the clips where you’d expect sound. I also liked the title at the end, because again it was more surreal and jarring that way. I definitely don’t recommend watching if you have some of these fears, I’m not trying to cause anxiety or panic attacks or anything, just wanted to provide a goosebump kind of feeling. I’ve always been fascinated with what goes bump in the night and fear and I have a very peculiar relationship; I definitely think people don’t realize that adrenaline junkies like me can still have fears too.
Credit to the original videos creators (not in any particular order):
Fear of Snakes: https://www.pexels.com/video/snake-crawling-on-a-ceramic-head-bust-8458572/
Fear of spiders: https://www.pexels.com/video/a-spider-building-a-web-5645597/
Fear of disease/sickness: https://www.pexels.com/video/a-young-cancer-patient-in-the-hospital-6011520/
I love the concept behind this video! When I was watching, I couldn’t tell if I preferred if some consistent eerie noise would have been playing or if I liked it silent. I think this discomfort adds to the video. It’s like I wanted there to be something else but there simply wasn’t, and that made me super uncomfortable… Which is what you pointed out in your artist statement so mission accomplished.
This video is intended to serve as a modern vanitas painting, or momento mori, reminding viewers that even abundance turns to rot. Video clips were sourced on YouTube and paced to a section of Andy Stott's album Luxury Problems, adding an additional layer of interpretation to the imagery shown. We may revel in life, we may take its simple gifts for granted, but as sure as the clouds shift and the river runs to sea, all things will change and fade away.
works cited:
https://youtu.be/DWrtHaKMlRw
https://youtu.be/BAnEBxoExT8
https://youtu.be/EwTCdcs8gGg
https://youtu.be/Xz4SYkwSxTM
https://youtu.be/loB0kmz_0MM
https://youtu.be/zm9Gh8Fpy0c
This is super cool. Your explanation of the video adds to the experience of the video as well. I watched it once before reading anything and then after I had read what you wrote I went back and watched it again. The repetition of food - the rotting videos and the women walking on it - plays really well into your momento mori concept, and I really appreciate how you used the clouds and rivers running to sea and a grounding method.
This is so fun! One of my first thoughts was which came first - the theme or the song? I read your artist statement. In hind sight I guess the song coming first is the only way that makes sense, unless you’re just that lucky! I loved all the clips in this video, especially the one from Friends and the one with Jackie Chan!
After watching this, I immediately went to go read your artist statement for clarification. I’m glad I did because I felt exactly what you wanted the viewer to feel. The video captures that idea, but the music and sound effects really tie everything together. Great work here
