Picking one of the 17 prompts to make into a new project, take on an idea of its own, turn into something.

I ended up working on “commemorate something”. At first I hesitated between a few different prompts. Actually, that was at second. At first I had no idea how to approach this, not looking forward to it at all. After looking around the other rooms at other people artwork I was somewhat discouraged, scratch “somewhat”, I was discouraged. This was partly due to my social battery running out , to being “flenked” if you will. It takes me a lot of energy to walk around, navigate crowds, chat, look at everyone’s work and think about it. So far I have ended up exhausted by the end of it but that is something I will be working on and that will hopefully get better as I get more and more used to doing it. Now, onto the other reason I was discouraged. Again and despite myself I felt that everyone was better than me. Actually it’s not that simple. I was inspired by other people’s work for the most part, I was very impressed by several of the works I saw and ended up curious and wanting to meet everyone and ask them about their thought process. So overall very positive. But then coming back to my own works all that inspiration from earlier was drained out of me. In retrospect I see that that was most likely due to being tired more than anything else. All that to say that I had a hard time getting started on this new project, I really didn’t feel like doing it and none of the 17 works I had done were giving me ideas. It vaguely occurred to me to make a more intricate and complex version of my path through navigating grief, or maybe make my shrine dedicated to the airport security man into a series, a bunch of shrines dedicated to people who have helped me out at different points. Would that be blasphemous? Inappropriate? I do like a bit of blasphemy. What about having these shrines represent my views on religion? …I understand the importance of faith to some people but I personally choose to direct my gratefulness and faith to people in real life. I’d have to acknowledge my own family’s religious beliefs and how having a virgin Mary in every room as a child influenced me into this whole shrine idea. So make something about my childhood and religion? But I was raised atheist and only spent time with my catholic family during the holidays, my view on religion has always had some distance to it, it’s not very nuanced. But you know who hasn’t always had that distance? My father. As atheist as me today, he actually made the switch, from being catholic.

But where would I take that? My shrine idea wouldn’t really work with this new angle. I want to tell his story, to share his view on religion. I called him to conduct an half-formal interview, not really knowing where I would go from there. Having translated, transcribed and edited the interview I was very happy with it but still had no idea how to make it into a piece, a work that would qualify as art. Anything can be art, there’s no definition…bla bla bla I know I know, but you know what I mean. So I arrived in school on tuesday with my little interview written in my notes and no idea what to do with it.

In effect it seemed quite obvious what I could do with it, embrace what it is and make it into an article in a magazine. I could then incorporate some images, maybe illustrations, and make it more visual. I started looking at various magazine page layouts and playing around with placement of text and images on my iPad. It got very frustrating, something just wasn’t working for me, it was’t clicking, I had to change approach. I thought about my article and how I wanted it to feel. Without being private, it was quite an intimate conversation between me and my dad about his childhood and his life so I thought of making it feel that way. I was trying to make it into a news article when it isn’t one, it’s a chat between me and my dad. I decided to make a notebook with the interview hand written inside and sketches spread out over the page so it feels like you’re reading someone’s diary, like a look into someone’s life.

Communication week 3

Confirm copying