In direct response to the passive-prone prose of meditation, I build on stress into a storm within; a wave of physical exertion crashes in a calm.
Do you see
Can you see through me
From within
For this project, I felt the need to explore breathing, focus, and effort, all under the guise of meditation. In comparison, this is not a walk or a line map. This is a journey to place that is pain. This is a place to go through that and to fight on. This is also a revealing image of relief, that reflects presence.
I chose to use the bicycle as I was best able to exert myself there while blocking my vision with the camera and not crashing. I knew I needed my eyes, in the shot, looking around as I suffer, but I added the glasses to reflect my moment and provide further depth to the image. The sound was critical as well due to the wind and bike noise I needed, but what was critical was my breathing. That took further experimenting beyond the camera placement and the microphones.
My route was planned and tested as I hoped to be isolated and give the viewer an open beautiful space around me. I also chose mid-day as I want the view to be in the cave of my shadow with harsh light surrounding me. While the oppressive part is key, I also feel that being in the shade with one another provides a moment of shared refuge.
The mantra changed as I did runs up the high mountain pass, but this run and phrase felt best, so that was the rare change in plan that worked out.
I also curated the outfit not to grab attention as it reflects the sky with the blue top and brown shorts for the earth. Thought I did switch from a black helmet and black glasses as I felt the white helped with the viewer looking more around the image as I moved. Yet, they also seemed more natural in the frame too, as it helps not separate the body from the clouds and, in the end, connect with the rest of the outfit idea. I am just used to using black so as not to reflect in images.
The second camera was a concern as I was on the fence about seeing it as this was planned to be a single shot. I tried it both ways and went back to the other camera in the frame as it helps distort the viewers’ idea of where the camera is. It was also representative of others looking into your own space as you seek a meditative moment.
The aftermath of this shoot was sadly a trip to the hospital, as the efforts did bring me into an asthmatic episode. I shot this early on but have been recovering since. I had my rescue inhaler and am more than fine now. Yet I must give credit to myself and others in how we can push too far when finding place, finding peace, or finding feeling in a moment in space time.
Thank you for reading, and please look at my proposal for credit to my influences and the planning behind this project.
Thank you to anyone who looked at my work this semester.
As I read about the Infernal Noise Brigade, Jennifer Whitney, who wrote Infernal Noise: The Soundtrack of Insurrection, her excitement is palpable, and her expected outcome is overbearing. While preparing for gassing and possibly fatal injuries, she practices for a marching band disruption to the WHO protest. This noise and madness are to break up and move the protest, yet to further the protest by not letting the police seize control. They feel the power and want to continue the disruption as they succeed, yet she does not let the idea of mob mentality come through in her writing. This causes the reader to question what action is too much and what is not enough.
The lasting effect of rebellion is crucial, and in Projection: Krzysztof Wodiczko, we see the interaction and responses of the people seeing these massive projections on monuments or buildings. Creating an image and laying it into a political realm or assumed space with an absurd image projected over it changes the meaning of the space as well as its representation. This action, like the microphone flanked by a gun and a candle representing prayers, has powerful layers to the political action we take for granted. With the building representing the institution and the images of the face or politician not represented yet, the actions are clear in leaving the viewer with a new image to invoke questioning on their perception.
While standing in protest and marches are critical, my voice asks about the risk and the effectiveness of the pseudo marching bands disrupting effect unrealized or misplaced while a leader is focused on two people protected in hotels. Where a projection work questions a broad sense as an item that does not deface the institution or the people but resurfaces a vision and opens up the mind to push in new ways that loud noise and pain seep to the point in far different ways. Maybe the writer and art historian leaned on righteous actions, such as how she cycled between places, left her corporate job, and first disrupted the working class at Starbucks. In this the reader can find her point diluted, and a more self-fulfilling or reassuring image arises. Where Wodicko is using other artists to make sure the image is just right, the concept is clear and stays on each issue that he focused on. With staying out of the personal nuanced additives, the noise of others, or the mob mentality. Politically Krzysztof’s work is the stronger longer-term difference-maker to the people.
In my ripped Jorts on a twelve-thousand-dollar bicycle, I am freezing in a “Sun Valley Mountain Guides” official yet super old-man-style biking shirt; picture a polyester version of your dad’s favorite flannel. I look ridiculous on my first day with the kids’ mountain bike camp as I meet the other guide for our day’s adventure. First impressions are important, but I did not miss the opportunity to implement our walk assignment into what is mostly walking my bike with kids. Intersubjectivity arose as I would not share any information about myself and left large pauses between the information, I do tell them so they can know that that information is false.
As the lupin line the fields and the streams dominate the audible tone. Smiling kids fight their heavy bikes up the perfect dark brown paths that crisscross snow-capped mountains that tower over the large fir trees, bringing the kids to an even smaller perspective. My experiment rolled with only one hiccup. Joey, the other guide, did not ask a single thing about me. We worked from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon with two one-hour drives where we took the kids to the best trails our valley offers. This activity made me listen well during the whole period as twelve-year-old girls talked about Haloumi salads and the housing market as forty-year-old women would on their bike rides. They also argued over who could eat more French fries and who would lead the downhill sections. I helped them go fast, brush off from crashes, and kept them positive. I did not expect they would interact with me in the way the intersubjectivity plans I may have hoped for. But what surprised me most was that my partner in work out there told me all about his life and how his daughter sought to be a professional bike rider. He spoke of his family, his struggles, and even down to what he had for breakfast. I never jumped in with my feedback or information, nor did he pause and ask. I was agape as we tried to understand how his daughter could grow up to be a pro with the issues in our small town. I did not volunteer any information, but he knows I have gone through that exact journey. He only shared, aired out his feeling, and expressed himself, not needing any feedback.
I sat back as the kids ate ice cream in the green field as we waited for parents to arrive, questioning if I am unhealthy in feeling the need to give him my insight and pondering if it is more mature of him to express and need nothing back. The kids played Mafia in the grass during the ice cream finalé; they sought to tune into who might be bad and good for the game while a grown man voices to another man, his mind to find his standing in place.
This pdf. Is a color representation of Joey and I observing the kids playing a game with an absurd reduction to labels beyond color psychology. I saw this moment as we sat together higher than them on a hill as the kids played a game below us in a circle.
My project will bring myself and the viewer uncomfortably into my face as I face my struggles. I will show the awkward, questioning, wincing, ugly, and determined faces I go through while I am trying to focus my mind on place. I am seeking place within my mind through meditation; here, you will look at my mind and glimpse at my physical presence while I move through space. As I put myself into such an unattractive and unrestricted place, I aim to inspire others to push themselves well beyond their comfort zone. This video project will cause the viewer to question yet, most importantly, laugh as I am to show the joy in going through these struggles on the must surfaced level while connecting to and commenting on the superficial level of social media that we mostly consume.
Artist Statement:
do you see
can you see through me
from within
Background Information:
Marina Abramović and Francois Bourgeois are my inspiration for my final project in finding place. I must say that my performative video for my first project is what pushed this ball rolling as well. The camera angle for that and my next project is inspired by the famous trainspotting TikTok star Francis_Bourgeois43. Here is a link to his Instagram https://www.instagram.com/francis_bourgeois43/?hl=en
For reference. While Marina Abramović’s 1975 film Art
Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful has been my guiding light since I first witnessed it. Though I find her work at the front of my mind after reading Wanderlust as she goes through a mantra while torturing her body to create art. See a YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kXnrVDxtyc
This will be my fourth performative video as I am leaning into myself to create the works. I will attach the last three to this proposal.
I find Francois’s videos where the unattractive angle of his camera translates his train obsession down to what is joy personified as we are placed into what becomes a part of his joy without the need for the actual train to absorb his expression. My goal is to create videos and video here that explores a deep thought within myself that translates to others but with a severe moment of joy to disrupt it. Marina and Francois’s videos are the end of the spectrum that I want to unite in finding my place. In my videos, I have struggled to light a cigarette and made a cut to the lip or overall silly actions to bring that joy in a moment within my work. More recently, I acted as if someone was chasing me from their garden.
In this work, I want the ridiculous angle of the shot to be a base layer of silliness while having my deep reflection during the struggle bring the view to a questioning point beyond the silly or uncomfortable face that centers the image.
I hope this work to be defined by others in their unique way. I want the viewer to see a moment they can relate to instead of defining what this place or moment means to me as my own way to put that onto the viewer.
Methods,
Over three days, I will commit myself to bringing this camera to all my workouts that do not have others in the background. I am most concerned with my eyes showing effort and contemplation. For this, heat, cold, and exhaustion will be critical. I will find a mantra for each day and say it in the video as I move. I hope to find a single-shot moment that covers my mission. Without that moment, I will have three days of footage to translate the mission.
I have the memory cards and the computer to process the footage, but that is around $3000.00 if I did not have the equipment already.
This will be processed on PremierPro and Adobe Software that the school provides but does cost $20.99 a month without the much more expensive tuition fee to The University of Arizona.
Time will be extensive as I will do many sessions to test sound and image, then have long sessions to create the transitions in my face. But the equipment of shoes and other exercise equipment is omitted yet are recognized as privileges that enable the project.
I plan to use the three days before the project’s due date as a focused time to experiment and execute the project but not under a specific schedule. This capturing of meditation in movement cannot come to a precise second without giving time to allow the moment to happen.
Image of Marina in her film as inspiration (pain)
Francois Camera Angle for Inspiration
Marina creates diverse responses in singular situations as Inspiration
Image of the creator that inspired me and his camera equipment that I will also utilize.
The main video reference.
A past work that I plan to build on with this project.
Project #1 that I refer to here as a key reference
A section of anther work I plan to build on as well
I asked my mother what was on her mind with the prompt in front of us. Currently, she is in the hospital in Phoenix for pneumonia in both of her lungs due to being bedridden from a complication from surgery a week ago on her chest. In this complicated, sad, and in my words, sketchy state, I predicted she would send me on a walk thinking about drugs or depression.
Barbara Streisand, oh wooo oh woo oh woo, or however that funny song goes came up. In actuality, she said her name and went on to say to raise awareness of her women’s heart foundation. The foundation she started and the namesake of the hospital that she is a part of a study for her microvascular disease that mainly affects women. See their mission statement below. I could recognize my mother in this struggle with a simple walk up the mountain above the house we lived in when we last lived. She wanted a single shot of the Prayer flags on the flag up top. My mother asked for nothing more than to apricate others the freedom to move outdoors while I do that same. Comically she said not to bother others as that would ruin her own walk.
On the walk, I mostly remarked about how much easier the hike felt compared to when I was younger. That was until a point where it was so steep that its relative difficulty was apparent yet again. The location of this mountain is near an area I only visited during the times I lived next to it. It is as if I have avoided it. I walked and thought of why immediately, the struggle of our lives at that point. But this was about her current struggle, so I thought of what seemed like endless years of struggles for her. Her health has been on the life-and-death edge since we lived in a house near this mountaintop you see below. Her diagnosis of serious illness back then has only transformed into a longer list of such issues. I have the painful weight of the last phone call with each call, and each year it goes on, thankfully. I get to the top as she is in the ICU; I text her the photo with only a crying emoji paired with a thank you.
I have raised tens of thousands through various charities on a whim as I can make the physical effort and thrive in organizations, yet this one, I could feel the effect on my mother as we both internally processed a time while she can appreciate that I can at least continue the adventures of our family.
The Study she is a part of at Cedar Sinai has covered her hundreds of thousands of dollars in ER trips for chest pain treatments, most recently having her a part of a study that has had huge progress in reducing the pain.
These flags were put up when the Dali Lama Visited our valley. I was able to meet him while my mother was at work, I wish he had blessed her instead.
Here is the digital mapping with the route planned and and blue with the orange line of my path and the mini photo mark showing where the photo was taken above.
< About the Women’s Heart Alliance >
Heart disease and stroke are women’s #1 killer, causing more deaths than all cancers combined.
“It’s time for change. It’s time for equity.
1 death every 80 seconds. 1,080 deaths a day. 400,000 deaths a year.
Our Vision
A world in which every woman can achieve heart health.
At the Women’s Heart Alliance, our mission is to prevent women from needlessly facing and dying from heart disease and stroke. That’s why we’re focused on an area long neglected in research, prevention, and care: The differences between men and women.
Many people are still surprised to learn that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in the United States (US). In fact, heart disease kills more women in the US each year than all cancers combined. And women are at greater risk of dying in the year following a heart attack than are men: 1 in 4 women will die within one year of their heart attack, compared to 1 in 5 men.
When it comes to heart disease and stroke, women and men are not the same. Women’s hearts are smaller. Their risk factors can be different. Their symptoms can be different. Their response to therapies can be different.
Yet, most of the research on heart disease and stroke is conducted on men. Most of our diagnostic tools were validated on men. Most treatments were tested on men. And often, health professionals are unaware of these disparities — and many patients are, too.
We at the WHA draw attention to these sex differences and promote activities that raise awareness and drive change. We are a unique collaboration between two of America’s leading medical institutions — the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Through our focused, strategic efforts and our innovative awareness campaigns, we aim to dramatically reduce the number of women suffering and dying from heart disease and stroke.
Our Mission
Stop women’s cardiovascular disease — the No. 1 killer of women in the United States today — by promoting gender equity in research, prevention, awareness and treatment.
We want to change research practices, so that women are equally represented in the lab and the clinic as research subjects and as investigators.
We want to improve the sex-specific quality of care women receive for their heart health — so that every woman can access the support she needs, and every health care provider knows how to provide it.
We want to empower women to take their heart health into their own hands — especially younger women and minorities — through access to screening, detection, treatment and prevention measures. Eighty percent of heart disease and strokes can be prevented by preventive therapy such as treatment of high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes. Quitting smoking, eating a healthy diet and physical activity also help. For those women who do suffer a heart attack or stroke, we want to increase their odds of survival.
We want meaningful policy change to make all of these goals possible.
With so many women’s lives at stake, we have to make this a priority — for the mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and friends we love. It will make for a better, healthier future for us all.”
My friend slips her air pods in as her father talks to me. I seek the detachment she found on this coffee date more than I seek noise as I walk for an hour on chilled paths. Without sunglasses, a phone, some light clothes, and some overkill running shoes, I stride on task. Yet I am looking for the sound of a car that can come and run me off the road as I walk down the dirt where the prairie dogs have the same ears, yet to my steps. I giggle as they sneak back into their nest, I do not miss the audio comfort, but I do feel the same unease in my concern over awareness of passer byers. My mood is of pleasure as somehow my mind gives credit to the task of simply moving without the crutches of music in my ears. Plus, natural light hits my eyes unobstructed, on top of freeing myself from the radiation from my phone, a hippie lover of years past that ingrained this into my ideals. I fall into my body, and I am focusing on my movement but keep looking externally as the question for this project are asked about what I witness outside whilst beyond that, I feel I am meditating. Quickly that meditation breaks as I notice there is a woman running way up the road. I drop my eyes down and act as if I am so focused on the texture of the dirt as if it is what is propelling me forward. I cannot look at this woman as I do not want to be perceived as a creep as she goes past. “Hey,” I then must look; it’s a friend, another ex-athlete that has had many surgeries to keep her body together after overtraining for years for her passion. We check in on each other and if we are all in one piece. Whilst subtly acknowledging that our eating disorders and escapism from long past abuse are conquering what was once our profession that never let others see that deep. I linger on that envy of abs as I grow fat while she envies that I can still perform my sport while she lusts for simple movements. I take my mind back to place and observe the wind begging me to head back again.
I found joy in my discipline of being free of the phone, but I plugged in, put my shades and a hat on, and then to another journey. I go back to a song from months ago that helped me through some hard times and click to the acoustic Flowers by Miley Cyrus; I cried to it many times as I screamed my way to class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but a few months ago. Sure enough, it starts, and my mood goes back. I feel the hurt inside and grow sad though I had felt way past those painful moments. I listen to the album, and starting from the last acoustic song, it goes straight into the studio version at the beginning of the album, so I hear the same song with different tones. In the car, I yell a bit louder. On the streets, I walk quietly with my head down as drunk men in white cargo shorts, pastels, the smell of cheap beer, and expensive habits laugh on by. I could care less about walking in either place or finding myself on a map of my existence in this place. I am an insider on ability this town identifies with, yet I am the scum that lives above a garage in a studio with his mother until she leaves him at fifteen. I went to Tucson for the opposite of home, yet now I am finding place at my traditional home that I chose to leave yet lust to be able to afford to live in yet again. This map leaves me with dots on a huge map and myself in my head, not caring about my feet as Miley plays on, as I seek to understand what society, this bubble, and the future mean to me. This will let me transcend a place on a map.
The most direct comparison in No Dead Air! The iPod and the Culture of Mobile Listening, written by Michael Bull in 2005, and the Documentary Film from 1983 Style Wars, is the subtle revolt against oppression through a resurfacing of the façade in the space that is planned and designed by those who have power. While Hip-Hop culture, including the subcategories of break dancing and graffiti included in the film, creates change. The changes in a perceived surface and environment through the iPod or mobile listening device in those spaces create a personal interaction with space that can also be put on to us.
As one individual studied in “Dead Air” stated that he imagined different people on the subway singing different lines in a Talking Heads song as he listened and enjoyed his trip to work. Here he creates a different surface level to what can be a disturbing environment. Another woman in the same study shared with us that the scratching noises and the interactions with people made her uneasy. She needed the music to escape where she was and feel secure in her own space. This connects directly with a graffiti artist to me who is redefining a space that was created by a higher power, mostly without their say. Plus, when they “Bomb” in that they create an identity in the space that is one held high yet is oppressive. In the construct as it is opposed on to the user out of the situation where the need is to be transported from home to work in order to earn a living wage. As we see the plain white subways later in the film Style Wars this tagging, murals, and or bombs create a different façade from the capitalist, industrial, dominating space of government infrastructure. The sounds of hip hop flows through these spaces as another kid can and is shown breaking/dancing on cardboard on the streets. These materials and spaces take new meaning when they are used in this way, as it is clearly shown then and now that a houseless population some using cardboard boxes for homes and the sidewalk journey making users then and now uncomfortable. As the listener listens to music expressing what they feel inside, they too can dance or be quiet in, creating a barrier to experiencing their surroundings. Hip-Hop culture, I believe, goes in a clear stance of expression and, at its best, stands against oppression. At the same time, isolation into ourselves can take us away from creating a change that is needed in these spaces. You can look at this as an evolution from radical obstruction in the system to acceptance. Where I am looking at this combo of video and literature as letting the powerful design a space where we can be further controlled while they are free and letting the tragedies in our system continue as they multiply their benefit.
In my local newspaper, there is a section called Miscellany 2. In last weeks paper after my walk where I collected a mix of flowers there was a comment in this famously hilarious section of our paper for a town of less than two thousand people that stated how upset a person was as some man came and took her flowers from her garden and that she was calling the cops on these people whilst making a warning to others to not pick flowers anywhere! While it was not I who would be said culprit, I thought I must do something in response to such a silly thing. Further inspired by Goldsworthy I wanted to interact with the environment and let the environment have the final say. As reductive as I could be with that was to put some seed in the ground. As I like planning and doing performative acts I thought I better sneak around in the night and find some of my favorite little wish makers. Remember blowing on those nice puffs that were once dandelions to make a wish, or as I was told a wish for each seed that came to life. I love that idea of putting a wish into something and letting it grow. I feel this connected to the ideas of the Goldsworthy as he has to have trust in nature to interact with him to make art. Where as I go into a yard where I would get in trouble for picking flowers and do my best to blow each and every seed off of the dandelions as so I may come back to thick bushels of them in the future. I wanted to expose myself in an ugly angle, and create a stressful tension in the environment. Yet I balance the act with focus on my breath, then an exhale to a dream. There is a chance for art to grow in that moment where I am not sneaking around and just letting hope into something else but for me the whole experience is a planned, experiential, expression leveraging nature and nostalgia.
As I documented my hang out as a kid I wanted to show the signs of the area and what they meant to the user that may not be accustomed to it. Yet I am annoyed but the class of people that takes this all for granted and I am really not taking it for granted as the whole place is under construction. Obviously destructive traits came out and I thought I should map a little journey of how one could get in trouble and or take advantage of this space.
Andy Goldsworthy, the Peace Pilgrim, and giving way to faith. “I walk until given shelter, fast till given food. it is given without asking…” – The Peace Pilgrim. As Andy Goldsworthy in his film Rivers and Tides shares how uncomfortable he is traveling, and in Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit where the Peace Pilgrim story is shared, the desire is found to connect these two. At the same time, distracted by the religious quotes, the pilgrimage of faith, and the writer’s ability to jump from religious passage to AIDS non-walks. Seeking a desire to relate how the faith of nature to intervene becomes the intersection of these two, plus the idea of pilgrimage that should be looked at.
With meditations in direct relation to walking in the Buddhist understanding and connecting to the uniform idea of walking, yet each step is different, while often being a struggle. This meditation paired with walking is just another slowing down of focus; while breathing is mostly involuntary, walking is the next step and the closest way to move forward from breath. The Peace Pilgrim walked twenty-five thousand miles for peace and continued on past that mark as she sought the movement in meditation to seek change while she had surpassed a traditional life in her journey. While Goldsworthy shows how grounded he is in his movement as he not only shares his displeasure in travel but as he goes out and makes subtle connections in the natural environment and the art that comes to him. He communicates his work with photography, but it captures a moment in the natural world that he has let come to him. Time, presence, and patience are overcoming factors for both of these people as a tide washes away work and as a woman goes on to talk about her quest for peace. These journeys are taken in observation or in movement, but time and nature persist in all of them overall. This comes to mind mainly to both give credit and discredit the faith-based pilgrimage as god or gods direct interaction due to a journey or discipline taken as an action towards the betterment of the individual. These two show that nature will interact and inspire, especially as we quiet our minds and work with an objective. “The river has an unpredictable to it that has its own cycles… We are talking about a flow, a river of growth that flows through the trees and land.” – Andy Goldsworthy. In a way, the Peace Pilgrim is the flow she needs to move and express while Andy lets the flow come to him as they both have faith that the world will interact with them in unexpected but positive ways.
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