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memory contiguous constructions boundaries biography being |
There’s a thread of commentary among artists and other critics that says the emergence of digital composite work produced using photoshop enables us to now irrefutably point to the unreliability of the photograph as the purveyor of truth or reality. I understand the position, and might even argue for it at a dinner party, depending on who’s there and what’s being said.
But reality itself is a composite. And probably truth too. Humans certainly are. And so, to me, it’s precisely with digital compositing that we grow close to the promise of capturing and conveying reality—communicating what lies under the surface of images, and at their borders: it’s the thoughts, the perceptions, the tales that are the context—the hors-diegetique intentionally (and finally) invited into the frame to coexist; to enhance; to interact with what is commonly, and incorrectly, regarded as the whole story. Because the unbidden and the hidden are as crucial to the making of a story as to its understanding. Reality is a subjective space—it's a psychological thing, dialogical; it's memory and perception; a somatic thing, and a semiotic one—its interiority shaping its experience and its interpretation.
That’s what interests me: how we perceive, construct, and engage in reality, which is something akin to what we call life. I'm aware that our interiority is largely lived on the outside, and it's the interplay between these two spaces that captivates me: the porousness of time, of person, of place. How do perception and memory operate? What informs one's take on place, and self?
So, that's what this series is devoted to exploring—reckoning, or reconciling, with the improbability of any one fixed moment, free and untangled.
This work is called, Reality, the making of it
But reality itself is a composite. And probably truth too. Humans certainly are. And so, to me, it’s precisely with digital compositing that we grow close to the promise of capturing and conveying reality—communicating what lies under the surface of images, and at their borders: it’s the thoughts, the perceptions, the tales that are the context—the hors-diegetique intentionally (and finally) invited into the frame to coexist; to enhance; to interact with what is commonly, and incorrectly, regarded as the whole story. Because the unbidden and the hidden are as crucial to the making of a story as to its understanding. Reality is a subjective space—it's a psychological thing, dialogical; it's memory and perception; a somatic thing, and a semiotic one—its interiority shaping its experience and its interpretation.
That’s what interests me: how we perceive, construct, and engage in reality, which is something akin to what we call life. I'm aware that our interiority is largely lived on the outside, and it's the interplay between these two spaces that captivates me: the porousness of time, of person, of place. How do perception and memory operate? What informs one's take on place, and self?
So, that's what this series is devoted to exploring—reckoning, or reconciling, with the improbability of any one fixed moment, free and untangled.
This work is called, Reality, the making of it
me'an Simone
NB: I used to always say me’an Simone, and Grammy would then correct me, gently chiding as she inquired as to why I would want to call my friend “mean”.
Reality
My Selfie - What is it?
How do I take a selfie? As the term suggests, it is of the self, so don’t I then need to know what self is, or where it is? How do I find it, and how do I know when I have?
In an effort to locate my self for the selfie, does my search involve looking for what’s made this self, what’s informed it up to this point: where I’ve been, where I come from, what I do, what I don’t (or did and didn’t), who’s been there along the way and now—what counts, and what’s cut out?
What does self encompass? What’s the formative stuff that matters? Can I even know this? There’s the obvious stuff, and what I believe is significant, but there’s also all the subterranean stuff that I’m not aware of—all those known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. Does that count?
And what about what’s to come? All the stuff self has put in motion that has yet to happen? What I want and hope for, where I want to go and be—is all that part if self too?
How do I take a selfie? As the term suggests, it is of the self, so don’t I then need to know what self is, or where it is? How do I find it, and how do I know when I have?
In an effort to locate my self for the selfie, does my search involve looking for what’s made this self, what’s informed it up to this point: where I’ve been, where I come from, what I do, what I don’t (or did and didn’t), who’s been there along the way and now—what counts, and what’s cut out?
What does self encompass? What’s the formative stuff that matters? Can I even know this? There’s the obvious stuff, and what I believe is significant, but there’s also all the subterranean stuff that I’m not aware of—all those known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. Does that count?
And what about what’s to come? All the stuff self has put in motion that has yet to happen? What I want and hope for, where I want to go and be—is all that part if self too?
