Silent Date
This project was to construct a 2-minute real time video in which time is not compressed. The duration of the story is the same as the duration of the video and continuous time plays a role in the narrative.
My Concept
I am really inspired by people, vulnerability, and human connection, so for this project I wanted to pay tribute to Marina Abromovic. I was inspired by her work The Artist is Present, as well as other artists and creators that confront these themes.
For this video I sat two of my friends, who were complete strangers to one another in chairs facing each other. On a small table between them I placed a milkshake with two straws. I asked them to stare into each other's eyes and try not to break eye contact for the entirety of two minutes. I asked that if one of them decided to sip the milkshake that the other followed suit simultaneously, bringing their faces closer together. The only rules were to not speak, not break eye contact, and mimic the act of drinking if your partner chose to.
The milkshake represents romance and intimacy, referencing the common images found in the media of couples romantically sharing a milkshake on dates. Along with the unusualness of holding eye contact with a complete stranger, the milkshake in this scenario played an additional challenge for the actors’ comfortability with intimacy and proximity. I wanted to capture the evolutions of fluctuating responses to being in an unusually intimate scenario with a stranger. I used time as a part of the challenge as well as a tool to examine the actors' changing responses and expressions. The setting was a fixed and static one, allowing for the actors to be the unpredictable and changing factors.
The narrative arc of these continuous two minutes was raw human emotion in real time. As such, nobody truly knows how they would react if placed into this scenario until one is actually experiencing it. There were other takes with different individuals that spent the entirety of the two minutes trying to contain uncontrollable explosive bursts of laughter. With viewing this experiment I want viewers to place themselves in the position of the actors, imagining what it would be like to stare into a strangers eyes and silently share an awkward milkshake together. This hopefully leads to thoughts and discourse about personal intimacy and comfortability levels. Concurrently, I wanted this work to be enjoyable and inspiring to viewers. Human emotion and experience is so interesting and can be beautiful to watch.
More Human Emotion
(Stills from other takes)
Again
A video using a multi frame narrative to depict a personal experience of surgery.
My Concept
My intentions for this video are to share a personal experience of being injured and having the same surgery a second time. I want the audience to experience the discomfort that comes with not feeling whole, with being broken, and with being surgically operated on.
In this video, I wanted to replicate the invasive nature that is surgery, as well as the invasive state of mind that comes with being anxious, immoble, and in constant extreme pain. To do this, I utilized a multi-frame narrative in a sporadic yet interconnecting manner. The overwhelm of shots filling the screen interact to reflect true experience and the cyclically busy state of mind I have not been able to escape since being injured. The ways the shots appear are also interacting and responding to factors and themes like pain and the loud sounds of an MRI scan.
My installation will include projecting the video onto the ceiling. I will place viewers lying down upon thin paper, similar to that on a surgical table. This immoble position will simulate my body during surgery and during the weeks of recovery, while inundating viewers with the large and imposing view above them.
Ceiling Installation
