the mirror with a memory (current) With a collective artistic praxis, I have chosen to involve ten of my friends/acquaintances into a loosely framed project. Starting last spring, I took portraits of each one, sitting for hours at a time listening to their stories. I was dealing with the concept of the places we “live”, abstract space, meta-narrative, “the home”, universal suffering, and the response of the internal escape. Having found these characteristics within myself, I played the role of social critique and questioned others (as has been posed the question to me), “Are You Dreaming?” Through this process, acquaintances became good friends, and some lost friendships were rekindled.
This spring, creating what has been referred to as “site-specific art”, where my subjects are aware of and respond to “a function of specific circumstances instigated by an artist… [and are] aware of the effects of these circumstances on the very conditions of the interaction, performing its own coming together and coming apart as a necessarily incomplete modeling or working-out of a collaborative social process,” I have asked these ten friends to return to that place with me (literally and figuratively), to create new images collaboratively with the goal of being present in remembering this past year (Miwon Kwon One Place After Another: Site Specific art and Locational Identity).
Within the last few months however, the project has begun to take a turn that is similar to a community art project, as the unified group, having all undergone the same “site-specific” experience, has begun to express itself in its own form. Through artist instigated personal reflection, collective group thinking and dialogue, the community is beginning to converse about how it desires to represent the “site specific” experience they have all had. Through the possible use of performing arts, video/feedback monitors, and portraits of myself taken by each member of the group, they have decided that my show will be a combination of medias with the collective goal of not only group representation (as is the goal of community art), but also with the hopes of having a larger audience partake in the site-specific collaboration that they have experienced with me.
With an overall desire to call people to be aware of the present moment, through actively remember their relatively near past, (specifically the past one or two years) this project has enabled me to work relatively closely with ten friends as they partake in the journey of entering into reality through remembering the past. With a belief that one also truly learns something when they teach it to someone else, I also hope to engrain a practice of awareness and remembrance in my own life. And, as my group of friends shares their experience with a larger audience, I hope that they too will follow suit.
