The more-ing and lose-ing and maybe-ing
Date
2021
Description
Thinking about self-portraits and performance and secrets and echoes and overlaying embarrassing yous and hidden keepings until you form something you remember as yourself / something you could share (a construction? A glitch?).
I wanted to explore the idea of the self-portrait- the attempt, in it, to see myself for a moment. In doing this – I jumbled videos and sounds I had captured of myself – originally made without any intention of being shared. Most of the videos were either taken during lockdown of last year or when I had Covid at the beginning of this year. They proved to be a digital – walking talking – diary. In completely alone moments - as I experienced when I was in quarantine- they brought comfort in their mirroring. In this I mean, ‘aloneness’ became an activity – proof of being. And the more I looked – the more the self blurred in its ‘more-ing’- in its echo.
Going through this archive - I saw myself as both watcher and performer- due to the nature of photo booth- it became a tangling of the two. I was interested in looking back, at examining this dynamic. A dynamic that has seeped into my moments of self- a curiosity in: performance, in perceiving something (myself) conscious of said perception and in the translation of this scene entirely.
In this exercise and using the act of glitching, I am able to reflect on this data through different means. All together – these images and sounds cramp – mostly occurring at once – presenting like one long shout!