Project #4: “University”
***Disclaimer: This handle of vodka was actually filled with water! No need for concern as I refused to deal with hangover this would’ve brought or trying to attend classes tomorrow smelling like a distillery***
As an intro, I’m not sure if I’ve discussed this before in this class but I actually began my post-secondary schooling as a pre-med major at the University of Iowa. Located in a small city in the middle of the otherwise predictable Iowa cornfields, the University of Iowa was notable for its celebrated Writer’s Workshop and, during my short two-year tenure, it’s ranking as the #1 party school in the nation.
Throughout my 7 years in college, I must say that MSU Denver and the general Auraria Campus are simply unique in their lack of overall collegiate drinking culture. Perhaps it is the lack of university football tailgates, the lack of dorm culture, or even my older-than-the-average-freshman age, but I truly feel that even with a brewery on campus, Metro is worlds away from the damaging college drinking culture that seems to seep throughout every other major college campus I have ever set foot on.
Despite this separation of drinking culture within my current college community, I still find this to be a massive and overarching issue throughout the nation. When I went to U of I, underage drinking was essentially required in order to maintain friends in the dorms. And while this party atmosphere begins as a “fun” way to blow off steam, it quickly becomes a stressful form of societal maintenance that drains you of any other ability to focus meaningfully on academics and learning.
When I think about performance art, the first thing that comes to my mind is that in order to truly be successful a performer must sacrifice something - societal embarrassment, bodily discomfort, etc. In this piece, I essentially ended up water boarding myself with water impersonating vodka, coming out of a liquor handle. I wanted to show the loss of control that can come from this modern drinking culture, one that can become both emotionally and physically stressful. I was going to add some audio in the background of pop culture references to drinking such as famous quotes from the movie “Animal House” but I decided that it was almost more uncomfortable and striking to just keep the original audio of me essentially choking on the liquid.














