Discard 1: The Declarative Sentence - I don't want you., 2011.
dis·card
–verb (used with object)
1. to cast aside or dispose of; get rid of: to discard an old hat
Discard— abandon, abdicate, abjure, cast aside, chuck, desert, dispense with, dispose of, do away with, eliminate, expel, forsake, free of, give up, have done with, part with, reject, relinquish, remove, renounce, repeal, repudiate, scrap, shake off, shed, sweep away, throw away, throw out, toss aside, write off
Discard 1: The Declarative Sentence - I don't want you., 2011. (Close-up)
Discard 2: The Interrogative Sentence - Where did you go?, 2011.
Discard 3: The Exclamatory Sentence - I still need you., 2011.
Discard 4: The Imperitive Sentence - Come back., 2011.
Discard 4: The Imperitive Sentence - Come back., 2011.
Untitled, 2011.
The moment is fleeting. Crippled by a distress for the future, I seek to preserve moments in which this distress is so potent everything surrounding me becomes distorted. The beauty in the physical world becomes meaningless and banal. The content of these photographs initially did not represent the anxiety of the inner state during the moments from which they were created. As these photographs developed they became less representative of outward reflections and more representative of the inward state, often filled with turmoil, discontent and self-doubt.
There Is No Story Here, 2010.
"Miracles play.
Play fairly.
Play fairly well.
A well.
As well.
As or as presently.
Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches."
- If I Told Him: A Competed Portrait of Picasso by Gertrude Stein (1923)
This poem by Gertrude Stein is a literary precursor to my piece. It epitomizes the construction of a purposeless scene seemingly devoid of any significant meaning. It is in this illusionistic void of meaning where meaning lies. While the words of the poem are random, disjointed, and unfamiliar in a narrative sense, they are vital to Stein’s engagement and critical analysis of language as a form of absolute construction. Thus, it is in the state of being meaningless that the poem is in itself epistemologically meaningful.
The Icelandic band Sigur Ros developed their own form of meaningful meaninglessness with the 2002 album
(). This album consists of eight untitled tracks with lyrics written in their constructed language, Volenska, also known as Hopelandic. This language consists of nonsensical syllables with resemblance to the sounds of the Icelandic language. Sigur Ros did this to create movements for the listener to receive and interpret into their own meaning and emotions; meaningless songs were created in order to produce meaning on behalf of the listener, for in all music it is the listener who creates meaning rather than the writer. Roland Barthes would be proud.
In his essay, "The Death of the Author," Barthes asserts that the death of the author is simultaneous with the birth of the reader. Upon this inclination, he insists that art does not exist on behalf of the artist, but due to the interpretation of the viewer. Perception then creates. While Barthes wrote this in regards to reading and writing text, one could interpret it in regards to visual art and music as demonstrated by Sigur Ros.
My hope for this image is that anyone can create meaning from it. I hope to shift the perception that art finds meaning in the artist’s intentions of a piece towards the viewer’s interpretation of a piece. For the viewer, I hope that instead of them searching futilely for the intended meaning, they create in this image their own meaning, which is in itself the works intended meaning.
Miano: A Pink Night for the Snowmen, 2010.
This piece is a representation of the void within the landscape genre. Often times this genre is dismissed by postmodernism as devoid of any meaning or progressive thought. I chose to focus on the idea of the void and photograph what I interpret as void space. Atomism, an area of natural philosophy, contends that in order for the movement of atoms there has to exist void, or empty space. Essentially, for being to exist, the void must be considered a vital part of existence. For everything to exist, nothing must first exist.
I found this to be an exciting way of interpreting physical forces; there is a possibility in the void, for within this nothing, everything comes into being. Being is a product of nothingness, thus nothingness is the possibility of being.
This theory is parallel to the work of Kasimir Malevich who utilized simplicity of geometric forms, which one may interpret as nothing, in order to persuade the viewer of possibility. His piece, "Black Square," from 1913, is emblematic of this conception of fullness and emptiness; emptiness in that the piece is completely non-representational, but fullness in that being non-representational, the work presents the endless possibility to decipher meaning. It can mean everything and nothing simultaneously. To Malevich, this movement is about imagination. Possibility becomes a revolutionary force within his work.
The title of my piece is a reference to both Malevich and his use of the literary movement of Zaum and its departure from reality, as well as to ambient music, another form of culture which I would consider to represent the possibility of the void. The title is a song by an ambient band, Casino Versus Japan. Ambient music is atmospheric. It presents nothing to create something. It presents tones of varying sounds in order to produce a being of absolute zero, a state at which endless possibilities can be obtained. Its goals are similar to Malevich’s: to create pure feeling, pure sensation, and pure perception through the incorporation of the void.
This piece is a site, a vacant lot, where nothingness exists. I accept that there exists this nothingness in anticipation of existence. Without nothingness we have nothing, for within this nothingness is the possibility of everything.
After Mike and Rhonda: Seemingly Random European Landscapes, 2010.
I found myself immersed in this concept of knowing without experiencing, which seems to be the biding state of society in the present sense. Why is it that we can travel to a completely different continent and feel like we have been there before? Could it be because mass media has bombarded us with images of how the world is, and that that is how the world has become; the image of reality has become reality itself.
This concept is theorised by both Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard. Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the Simulacrum suggests that culture, particularly film, TV, news media, and the internet has provided the masses with a simulation of reality. Furthermore, he suggests that these simulations are neither less nor more real than reality itself. Our image of reality, arguably, then becomes reality itself.
Guy Debord’s writing titled The Society of the Spectacle suggests that there is a degradation of the quality of human life due to the construction of reality through images provide to the masses via the spectacle, or mass media. He further suggests that authentic living has been replaced by the representation of life itself.
This series explores these concepts through the means of travel photography. All the photographs are re-photographs from an album of photographs taken by my parents on a backpacking trip around Europe in 1977. By representing a specific reality as one’s own, this series represents the demise of authentic living to a world of images, representations of the truth without knowledge or understanding.
Postmodern ideals are also present in the series by claiming universal authorship of highly photographed subject matter through making claim to the images by my parents. This is done through Sherrie Levine’s technique of re-photographing photographs, while also recycling her form of titles, making the same claims with the use of the word "after."
DES-O-LATE, 2010.
-adjective
1. barren or laid waste; devastated: a treeless, desolate landscape.
2. deprived or destitute of in habitants; deserted; uninhabited.
3. solitary; lonely: a desolate place.
4. having the feeling of being abandoned by friends or by hope; forlorn.
5. dreary; dismal; gloomy: desolate prospects.Memories can leave you feeling so used up, let down, and desolate. When important relationships are destroyed by fallacies and deceitfulness, resolve becomes unobtainable due to the loss of the capability to remember the good times. Although they may be sparse, they are certainly nonetheless existent.
There is always a fear of producing a dark work that provides the viewer some insight into your emotional state. Vulnerability. I would say that I fear being vulnerable. In the past my vulnerability has often been my destruction.
This will be my first piece that I will have a deep emotional connection to. I don’t know what I desire from this experience. Perhaps this connection will breathe life into my work which has typically been static and essentially dead.
This piece will demonstrate the carnage left in the wake of destructive relationships. It will also demonstrate the uniquely human capacity to reticulate the past into an image that is a piece of the truth, but certainly not the whole truth, turning good memories into twisted painful moments that leave a sour taste on one’s tongue.
All That Is Was Never Always What It Has Been, 2010.
You Feel Like Claymation in Flouresenct Lights, 2009.
