Consumed Birth / 2021

Single channel, moving image, 6:06

The work represents a cycle of identity and life. The artist was inspired by nostalgia, culture, and identity and authors like Mark Fisher, Gary Cross, Frederick Jameson, David Alderson, Jonah Peretti, Todd McGowan, and Elisabeth Wesseling. The artist included images of their parents to note their origins and differences. As well as the senses like taste, touch, and sight and how these are very early on built into how we understand the world around us. The work represents the creator as fragmented and shifting in forms between human and muppet.

Is this muppet oneself, or is it a separate entity entirely? Should they give this entity, or part of me, compassion or brutality? The use of the muppet alongside other media forms overlaid on top and within the video represents a saturated self were commodities, media, and consumerism take hold, the isolation, and distortion that can be felt from that. In the end, it's more about how this kind of cycle continues as they consider it, if they have kids what is the world I will bring them into and who will they become under those pressures? Or in other words, how will future generations continue to build culture amidst everything?

Exhibited in:

  • 2022. D.A.N.C.E. Video Screening. YO-Talo, Tampere, Finland.

Consumed Birth (Installation) / 2021

Two-channel work, moving image, 5:17, installed in a kitchen oven, chocolate cake, waffles, and birthday candles.

Fragmented / 2021

Single channel work, 3:54, Insta360 camera, iPhone footage, 360 VR capability.

The video also attempts to interact with the past & nostalgia by involving a large stuffed Mickey Mouse. The work was also inspired by Jacques Lacan’s idea of the mirror stage that conceptualizes infants’ ego formation with either literal or metaphorical mirror that shows the infant that they are one entire being and recognizes themselves in the body they see in the mirror. Other theorists and writers have discussed how the mirror stage is used to induce ego formation in marketing, advertising, social media, etc. This ego formation, many times can be built and then deconstructed just as quickly. This piece tries to see through those different egos by looking into one’s self (as if the camera were another ego, observing everything) and seeing how different those parts interact (suicidal feelings, nostalgia, being overwhelmed, etc).