Visual Documentation

It is my worst habit: touching my face and hair often, usually without realizing it. By using globs of paint on each of my hands, I was able to have visual documentation of the accumulative nature of repetition. Television-watching during this performance represents a passive activity and passage of time; it also serves as a realistic focal point in my life. I find it rather exciting that my face and actions, rather than the television, serve as the focal point in this performance because unconscious, usually-undocumented scratches and face touches create an asymmetrically-balanced and visually interesting composition between color, energy, and quantity.

Belongings in a Box Grid

All of my belongings that I use in a typical day are packed into a box off to the side of the box grid I create, making an unexpected focal point. The shadows created by the lighting replicate the forms and bring even more attention to the items that collect on the ground. The overall coloring of the whole video is predominantly analogous, unifying the whole. In addition, the concept of the box grid forms lines in a grid pattern that results in an aesthetically-pleasing arrangement of the moving boxes.

Cardboard boxes have many different associations to different people. They can connote moving or they can connote homelessness: with each of these opposite-spectrum associations, the concept of personal possessions and quantity is still central. If this is a diary of all the things that I use in a day, how would the quantity differ if I examined what I use in a week or a year? What would I do differently if I only had one box to fit my life into? The most interesting realization I had through this performance piece was that my life revolves around my belongings. Yet, at the same time there was something liberating about treating them with almost irreverent disregard (except for the socks, of course).




Mom said there was too much damn cereal

b o x

 
Rectilinear shapes are the most common and universally aesthetically-pleasing geometric shapes in existence. At least, I find them extremely pleasing and useful. In this performance, I attempt to reconcile my organic form with the geometric form of the box. Doing so toys with the concept of scale and also that of containment: my body becomes differentiated from the surroundings when I step into the box container; the act of attempting to pack myself down into the box creates humor because the viewer sees the difference in relative size, and does not clearly see a way for me to fit inside. The linear pattern in the background compliments the linear sides of the box that are continually shifting with my weight and futile struggle of repetitive actions to contain myself in the small space.