Solomon's Super Cool Style Blog

This is my installation on Futurism.

Futurism is a style characterized by an emphasis on technology. An artistic movement that began in Italy in 1909 that violently rejected traditional forms so as to celebrate and incorporate into art the energy and dynamism of modern technology. Launched by Filippo Marinetti, it had effectively ended by 1918 but was widely influential, particularly in Russia on figures such as Malevich and Mayakovsky.

This is my installation on Female Playwrights.

Female Playwrights are an invaluable part of the theater. They give insight to and challenge societal norms in ways men can’t, despite the theater being male led in most societies for the longest time. Once more and more women became writers, the theater was forever shaped by their influence.

This is my installation on Horror Theater.

Core components of Horror Theater include sound design, scares, uncomfortable topic matter, suspense and gore. It makes the audience scared, which then gives them catharsis at the end when they subconsciously realize they’re still alive. 

This is my installation on Magical Realism. 

Fun fact: The unicorn in this picture is named Stain. I took him in from a broken home and gave him a slightly less broken one.

Magical realism shares lots of themes with realism. The characters have agency, they overcome things, they have deep inner lives and worlds, and the topics often focus on politics and gender. Where magical realism differs though is that something unrealistic and magical can happen in these worlds. The setting may be completely normal, except the one element that makes it magical in some way. The audience must then suspend their disbelief.

My installation captures magical realism because while the Unicorn is a symbol of magic, it is being choked and strangled by the colorful lights of reality. Something magical is happening, but it is dying and being crushed by the gritty realism that life is often known to remind us it has when we start to dream too much. 

Don't worry, Stain was not hurt during the shooting of this picture. He has been hurt by far worse in his past. 

This is my installation on Naturalism.

I’ve picked this photo of trash because I absolutely despise naturalism and everything it stands for. 

BUT ALSO I think it really captures the main tenets of naturalism.

Core components of naturalism include pessimism, characters with no agency, urban lower class environments, and a failure to escape their situation. Naturalistic productions also feature “slice of life” elements. For example, if the stage directions say to cook bacon on stage, an actor will really cook the bacon on stage. Instead of implying set, a naturalistic play will have the set explicitly.

My installation captures naturalism because it is a dirty, hopeless feeling urban environment. I feel like a character from a naturalistic play could live amongst the trash as they fight to overcome their situation but ultimately fail. Because in naturalism, no one wins except the people who run the system. Everyone else is trash to them. 

The first assignment was to do an installation on what my style is to me, but I terribly misunderstood what an “installation” was, so here’s a video of my style instead. 

The installation itself is a compilation of stuff I’ve done in the past. What’s interesting is that this stuff I've made is from a time of my life where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to make, artistically. So I made a BUNCH of stuff, artistically. Songs, dances, animations, theater pieces, films, monologues...all of which to find my style and what I wanted to do.

So the Solomon-ism style I’ve found is still not set in stone, but here are some of the defining features of it currently:

-Usually comedic instead of dramatic

-Incorporates color

-Incorporates other forms of art into it

-Usually uses music

-The subject matter will often be political

-Often has some level of magic

-Doesn't take itself super seriously.