For this project I plan on facing my fear head on....
Step 1.
Will to actually sit inside a box. My goal is to do 30 minutes. I am not sure that it will happen as I usually freak out after a few seconds.
Step 2.
To sit in a room where there is nothing to look at in an imaginary box. I will do this by taping out the dimensions of a box on the floor. The theory is that even if you are confined by lines that the room will enclose in on you and that you will feel the same effects.
The box:
I am going to use a cardboard box mainly because when I did a test run with a wooden box it got hot and with a cardboard box i can put some small air holes that will not distract me from my task.
Documentation:
My partner gets the fun job of photographing and videotaping me while I am doing my thing.
Yinka Shonibare was one of the artist that stood out to me in class this past week. I first of just enjoyed looking at his work. At first I was just drawn to the bright colors but as he began to speak about them I became even more infatuated with them as a whole piece. So I decided to do a little more reserch on him....
Shonibare examines in particular the construction of identity and tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe and their respective economic and political histories. Mixing Western art history and literature, he asks what constitutes our collective contemporary identity today. This is shown a lot in his headless sculptures that wearing Victorian style clothing that have African prints on them. "But actually, the fabrics are not really authentically African the way people think," says Shonibare. "They prove to have a crossbred cultural background quite of their own. And it’s the fallacy of that signification that I like. It’s the way I view culture it’s an artificial construct." Today the main exporters of 'African' fabric from Europe are based in Manchester in the UK and Vliscofrom Helmond in the Netherlands. I personally loved how he was taking the things that he knew about history and art and mixed them all together to come up with these striking clothes. He also mentioned how he recreates scenes using these sculptures. I think the other element that I really like are the headless sculptures. I think not having a head allows you to picture yourself in the place of the person or to envision on your won what they will look like.
Blog Post #9
Today in class we talked about David Byrne. I thought that his work was interesting.I really like when artist make musical pieces that are interactive. To me it gives the viewer the feeling as though they are a great musician and are making the music that comes from within them come alive.
Guitar Pedals is an interactive piece in which the audience is able to walk on 96 guitar pedals and make different sounds come alive and be amplified over and over. To me it as though David has a young soul in which he connects to all the wonders and noises that go on in kids heads.
I also really enjoyed his Playing the Building. Part of the reason that I enjoy installations that make noise is that it takes a lot of time and understanding. You not only have to understand how sound is effected by space but how to manipulate the sound to get different noises. It is truly astounding. The other reason in which I loved this pieces is the fact that it all starts with a piano and moves outward to fill the entire room, and that you don't just hear the piano, he has incorporated other instruments like a flute. I would love to go there and compose my own little song.
Then we watched Stop Making Sense. I was blown away by this mind boggling show. At first I was not sure that I was going to like the video. The opening made me feel like I was watching a wanna be rock star at a high school talent show. However as the songs moved from one to the next it was clear that we were watching a genius. Even though it was done in the 80's I feel that today's generation could get into it and see the beauty that they presented. I think some of what made this video so amazing was the filming style of Jonathan Demme. I think that his lighting technique made it come alive in a whole new world. I also like how he had the change from one song to the next, by adding and taking away different people and elements of the stage. It made it more than just a concert but an art form. To me it was not just about the music but convey the emotion behind the music and making the audience apart of the performance.
We as a group decided that we wanted to do something that couldn’t be done here on campus. So from there we thought about the words on the project outline: time, space, and the human presence. It hit me and steph that a continuation of her senior seminar project fit those words all too perfectly. When Melissa saw her photos she agreed that it was perfect. We thought about what we could do as zombies that would bring to life the realization that we dwell on death all too much and that we as humans tend to do the same things day in and day out with conveying emotion. Then from there we decided on a location. A GROCERY STORE. From there we had to choose someone that could keep a straight face while getting quite close to a stranger and never breaking character. That was how I landed with the job. I knew that it was going to be hard to break out of my normal character and get as close as I could to a person in a situation in which you often don’t get supper close.
My first taskin this group project was to a test run. I was kind of nervous to do this dressed as me and not as the soon to be “zombie marie.” However after I got to the store I discovered that it was not as hard to take on this persona of being in someone else's special bubble. It was most definitely uncomfortable and people were rather rude or looked at me like I was some complete moron. I ended up only doing a few people because I was way out of my comfort zone. After I left the store I was feeling pretty confident about my experience and was interested to see the difference in my experience as a zombie.
Our second taskwas to record how I felt while doing my test run. Which is where my partners learned of my personal experience and how I felt. They reassured me that I could do this. Then we sat down and thought about which store we were going to use. We couldn’t do Walmart because too many weird people go there that already violate your space and make you stop and stare. We finally decided on Foodlion.
Zombie time! Task Threewas to turn me into the walking dead and head to the store. We had to make a pit stop at the doctor’s office for steph eye appointment. While there we decided that we should do a test run. We decided that it would be great because the people in the room had nothing to stare at or to distract themselves from me. This actually turned out to be more uncomfortable than the grocery store. Do in part that I too was trapped in this room. I felt more aware of the stares and how uncomfortable I was making the people I was sitting across from. From there we went to Foodlion. It was not quite enough people so after I did my thing we headed to Harris Teeter’s to do another run. This time we found lots of people for me to get close. We spent about 45 minutes at each store if not longer. We did not have a set time. It was just until I felt like I was done or we ran out of people.
Finally, task four. Put it all together. We then sat down and I did a testimonial on how I felt the second time through. Along with My testimonial Melissa and Steph also described how they felt during the process and what they saw.
Observation #1: People act out more around normal people than they do when you are dressed out of the normal or act in an un-normal manner. When I was dressed like I would on any other day people were not afraid to give me weird looks, ask me what I was doing, or just plain run away from me. But when I was dressed like a zombie and walked like one too people were polite. They moved out of the way, they said sorry and over all tried not to stare at me. I have decided that people do not want to act un-normal around un-normal people because it is considered rude, but if you act un-normal and look normal people are not afraid to be on guard.
Observation #2:When you stop thinking about your self and start paying attention to the world around you, things come into the clear. My first run through I was to concentrated on how I was feeling and not as much on how others were acting around me. The first few people I stood next to were a blur, I was too consumed in my own inner thoughts. As i got my head straight I was more aware of how they acted. Then on round two I was barely thinking about how I felt and was more concentrated on my surroundings and how others were acting. It was definitely an eye opening experience.
