unalike; unalive
Recently, my artistic practice has hit a hard and thick wall that continuously challenges my ability to move past it. I’ve felt uninspired and as if my practice is forced at times, and at others I’ve felt incredibly inspired but unable to make any work I truly care about. I usually find myself wandering around, internally, and externally, with a camera around my neck to explore these regions. Sometimes I keep to the center and photograph the typical, the explored, and the done, however, I do occasionally venture into the dark corners to navigate the rough terrain. I’ve struggled to do either during my time abroad. This struggle has accumulated so much weight that, a few weeks ago, I found myself having collapsed to my student floor under the pressure of producing something I care about.
How to Disappear Completely actually turned out to be the project I would focus my efforts on for the remainder of the semester as well as the answer to my devastating questions about my practice. The answer: just give up. This work focuses on the way we drag ourselves through areas of life with so much care that we end up uncomfortably strung out between rocks and hard places. The answer seems to be to just give up; to leave; to disappear. However enlightening this realization may seem, the unfortunate irony reveals itself in the inability to completely disappear.
Try and disguise yourself as a rock; you appear infantile as if engaged in a game of hide-and-seek against the universe who needs no eyes to differentiate the skin from mineral. Submit to the landscape and watch your ego hang eagerly above. Mimic a leaf only to recognize its absence in your hand. Vibrate in a state directly between holding on and having let go. Treat your body as a set of tools; hang them up after a long day.
What is it like to feel misunderstood? Intrinsically misunderstood; to feel unalike at the core. I’d imagine it feels a bit like putting all your effort into painfully morphing yourself into circles and squares just to fit into a box with another set of shapes to incorrectly fulfill. Like only ever seeing the absence of other things in yourself. The only way you understand yourself is by understanding what it is that you are not. Apparently, the mind works in positives… not negatives. Uneloped, unalike, unalive.
This feeling of difference and of unlovability develops a distance between the people around me and myself. These feelings manifest an environment that makes the feelings stronger. It’s a depressive negative feedback loop. I feel that if I talk about it I will only be met with toxic positivity. Responses like “no you’re not”, and “how you could think that? There’s no way”. While the intention behind these comments may be whole-hearted, they fail to recognize what it is that I am feeling and effectively suppress the emotions.
The way I see the people around me interact with one another always fosters these feelings. All I see in these interactions is what I don’t have with these people, or anyone, for that matter. I see a closeness that I don’t recognize, a level of connection the depth of which I’ve never descended. Maybe it’s because I keep myself at such a distance from everyone I meet. I will always have elements of myself that I hide, that I will never show anyone. Events in my past that create an area of my personality that will always affect my relationships.
I think all these feelings can be found somewhere in my images for this project. I see myself only for what I lack in a recognized absence.
hung out to dry
The way I separate myself and put them in different places in hung out to dry shows the way I suspend these parts of myself that beg to be seen and separate myself from them.
a resting place (diptych)
A resting place represents the constant state of the in-between, limbo, and the moments after leaving and before arriving. Really the inability to rest, to relax, the strain of momentum, and the lack of non-momentum.
a rock-like desire
A rock-like desire represents the drive to melt away into the simplicity of a rock, lacking even the ability to be in a state of movement, yet the absurdity and irony of the contrast between the body and mineral develop a comedic way to laugh at the stupidity of the desire.
it hangs over
It hangs over, I think, is among the most successful images in the series because of the mixture of technical and conceptual. The misty substance seen hanging over the body is a result of the open shutter as I approached the position. My body caught ambient light and was recorded as information while I got into position. This matter hangs over the body even though the body appears to be inactive; be it asleep or unalive- it’s seemingly always there. It could be the ego, the inner-narrative, part-x, looming thoughts- anything one actively tries to avoid. As I mentioned earlier- the mind works in positives, therefore the attempt to remove something or actively suppress it results in that thing’s inevitable presence.
The resigned body introduces and represents a great deal of tension in the work from a technical and compositional sense, as well as an emotional and physical manner. The obviously suffering composition drives viewers’ eyes outside of the image. It pushes the viewer backward in the series and almost prevents them from moving forward. The physical contortion of the body contradicts the title and derives a similar sense of paradox as the diptych in a resting place. This body seems nothing like that of a resigned one. While the connotations of resignation may be somewhat negative, this body appears youthful, strained, uncomfortable, and tense; each of which is antonymous with resignation.
