PROJECT STATEMENT AND REFLECTION:
PROJECT STATEMENT:
My work was based around the systems of adolescence, self identity, social media and journaling (through an electronic medium). I wrote a poem/song I had previously conducted when I was out of high school on old overexposed FujiFilm instant film. Originally, that was it. The two systems being a poem and photography.
As I asked myself what ways I could engage the audience more, I considered playing the original song, but it didn’t feel enough for me. I asked myself what led to the song, and came to the conclusion that it was my inability to cope with the fact that what I thought was a dense, saturated reality was simply the thoughtful thinking my parents warned me about in high school. (ie ”Your friendships in high school won’t last forever” “don’t trust anyone to be there for you”) I originally thought to choose what I would deem to be the quintessential photo from my old self, to compare to my self that exists today. Still, that didn’t seem to quite push it far enough for me.
I took a screen capture of myself scrolling through my old tagged/me photos. To get through all of them, it’d take about 30 minutes, so I decided to cut the video down to a digestible size. I ended it on a snapshot of my failed Kinsey test to both imply my arbitrary sexuality, as well as to propose the idea that I either lied on the test about myself, or, am an unusual person.
I wanted to push it one step further. I wanted some cadence to set the tone. When typing out an independent piece, I decided it would be interesting to write commentary as the video went on to indict the work as a performance piece. I’d start by simply trying to type the song out, then, as the conversation progressed, I’d make subtle hints to what I was trying to get at.
REFLECTION:
To be honest in my reflection, I consider this work yet another failure. Not only due to the distracting nature of the photos I’d taped to the projector, but also because of my lack of a core message. There was no moral to what I was showing. I was simply showcasing something I feel that’s haunted my core self since I graduated three years ago. I wanted to share my sorrow, my guilt, my loneliness, not so much to illicit a response that would allow gratuitous attention, but simply to share. I wanted to, in a short amount of time, tell a story about a girl who doesn’t know who she is anymore. A girl who doesn’t know what to say. A girl who doesn’t like looking at herself, not because of vanity but out of shame. I guess if I had to chose a message for the piece, I’d be “fake it till you make it,” because in my experience, most everything fades away.
I ended up overloading the audience into a jumbled, poorly constructed mess. It seems my poor performance reflected my pathetic status.