Probably Making Art Somewhere

Here she is, in all her glory, my final mapping project!

I believe that everything that has occurred in my life has led me to this point. This past year has been one of self discovery. I became obsessed with the art of drag. I admire the courage drag queens, kings, and other queer performers have in expressing themselves in “unorthodox” ways. Their fluidity in gender expression has opened a door for me. It validates my expression and identity, and has helped me articulate my feelings about myself. I have become enveloped in the art and culture of drag. While at the university, I have attended many drag shows, and through these experiences I have made many friends and shared many memories. Combining this journey of self discovery, and my experiences in Methods of Inquiry, I came up with my mapping project. I wanted to make a hexagonal enclosure, where each wall would have pictures of me in different looks: “normal” me, hyper masculine me, and hyper feminine me. Keep in mind, this is the first time I’ve ever worn makeup. The photos reflected that no matter what I look “like”, I’m still enjoying myself, being me. Each look did emphasize different aspects of my personality more than others, but in the end, it’s still me.

Progress of my mapping project... it’s getting there. Also, I took pictures of myself inside the hexagonal pen for scale. I made sure to include the carpet :)

Group Photos Reflection

Twistagrambookchat was a creation based off of our interpretations of AIan Bigelow’s poem This is not a poem, René Magritte’s This Is Not a Pipe, and social media. This idea of portraying something that isn’t actually there led us to social media. The interactions on social media are superficial. A more sustained relationship exists through actually experiencing things with other people, not passively liking or commenting on random posts. The idea of connecting beyond our generation’s idea of “connection” was to show the imperfections of our interactions on social media. Even the game mat was a reflection on the overuse and glorification that society gives to social media. The style of the mat takes the pristine facade of social media away. It is no longer on this metaphorical pedestal that we (as society) need to upkeep and maintain. This is further evidenced by us leaving our footprints on the mat. We all could agree on one thing, we are more than social media, and we can function fine without it, even if it provides for good entertainment.

We wanted the extension to be a representation of art in itself. The curves and sharp edges were planned in order to appear unrecognizable to the audience. We didn’t want the audience to know which pieces were supposed to connect, so each extension had similar visual traits-- curves, block shapes, and triangular shapes. These edges served to emulate the social media logos themselves: Facebook is blocky, Twitter has triangular shapes, and Snapchat has curves. The thickness of each piece was 12 sheets of cardboard in order for them to have a sense of grandness and a touch of modernity. While the texture itself was an important aesthetic of the cardboard that we wanted to embrace and bring attention to with our extensions. We each decided the location of our extensions. We were inspired by the politically incorrect and 5 minute sculpture by Erwin Wurm, homework assignments. Those “warm-ups” made us comfortable enough to be in the positions required to play our game of Twister.

Video Documentation Reflection

The true factor in Twistagrambookchat was that it was realistic and okay to fail to connect. There is always a failure of connection through social media and even when there is, it isn’t genuine connectivity and interaction with another human being. Playing twister was a way of connection when we were younger, the intimate and embarrassing situations that Twister forced us to do is what we needed to bring the connection back.

Because the project revolved around social media, we thought we should livestream the performance on Facebook. We decided to live stream the performance on Facebook to complete the social media aspect. The live stream allowed for there to be spontaneous viewers, comments and even allowed for there to be a internet crash. The goal is to be able to connect and form the social media logo imagery, despite the spontaneity introduced through Twister. We were only able to properly connect once. That represents how you CAN make meaningful connections on social media, but that’s not guaranteed, and it requires actual effort. Once we accepted the possibility of failure, it was easy for us to let go and have fun playing the game.

We took most of our inspiration from Alan Bigelow’s poem This is not a poem, and René Magritte’s This Is Not a Pipe. This idea of not actually being what is presented resonated with me. Something that came to mind instantly was social media. Its purpose is to connect you with other people, but by itself it physically can’t do that. To convey this idea visually, I thought of each of us having a section of a social media logo attached to a part of our bodies, which we would then come together to form an image. In this way, we would be connected to each other through our extensions, without touching each other, similar to how social media works. After our mid-process critique, I was trying to figure out how to further complicate this idea: we all knew where we had to stand and position ourselves in order to come together. This led me to the game Twister. Twister randomizes your position. We took the concept of Twister and applied it to our body extension presentation.

Courtesy of Endi, these are some pictures of our final body extension project. The first picture is us in the process of connecting to form the Facebook logo. We were able to accomplish this while playing the game, as shown in the second picture. The third and fourth pictures are of our Twitter and Snapchat configurations, respectively. We were not able to successfully connect to form these shapes in the game, but we still wanted to show the class the extent of our project.

Body Extensions in action

Final iterations of my body extensions + the spinner