I'm wide awake, it's mourning

So much of my work looks at emotionally loud parts of life in visually quiet ways, but still hoping to touch some part of the feelings that run just under the surface. In my exploration of the labyrinth that is grief and its relationship to sleep, I tried to keep myself as a solid component of the work. This isn’t to say that I think my emotions any stronger or more special that anyone else who experiences grief, but rather that I feel the only way to honestly attempt documenting a feeling is by examining your own. My work (including the photographs) was all a sort of performative action. The pain of loss and sleep are both such personal elements of our lives I felt it only appropriate to make myself the center object of my work. That said, I don’t feel that my work is solely self evaluation or therapy purely for my benefit, but is more about the sharing of myself. I am interested in using very personal experiences and trying to establish some sort of connections from it.

I am quite comfortable with the level of romance and high emotion in my work. I always hope for my pieces to have (at the very least) hints of light and warmth, which is fitting given the motif of candles, matches and body heat. I want my work to speak to the viewer on a level of compassion, empathy and a connection to them rather than just shoving myself at them. I feel that the soft, non-abrasive quality is well suited for the subject. In all of my pieces I tried to find a balance between quietness and frustration, which I feel are two main components of grieving. There is a stillness to sleep and grief, and a sense of timelessness in both states. In sleep, and in grieving it seems I am simultaneously hyper aware of time passing and unaware of any sort of future. I tried to capture suspense; not in the sense of a psychological thriller film, but of actually being weightless, timeless in the air in your dark bedroom.

The titles of my work are different medical terms. The photographs are entitled euthermia, which means one trying to achieve a healthy body temperature. My video is called dyspnea which is the medical term for short breath. My performance is called Anticoagulant which is a medication that breaks down plaque in the coronary arteries, and my final performance entitled hyperthermia which is another term for a fever. In choosing these titles I was hoping to tap into the bodily and scientific aspect of sleep and depression. I don’t intend for the medical aspect to be the primary subject, but I did think it was important to reference. The terms can, of course, describe medical issues, but they also pertain to the bodily reactions one has to grief or high emotions.

Dieter Roelstraete’s “What is Not Contemporary Art?: The View from Jena” states that culture doesn’t necessarily form art, but that it is art that forms culture. This assertion gives me the greatest hope that my work is relevant. Because although I can’t easily imagine a room of the general population loving an eight minute long video of almost pitch black, I have the hope that such stillness and quietness may eventually touch someone. And if we can use art as a means of shaping culture, then I think that this warmth I am trying to accomplish is an even more important goal.