One of the most important elements in my work as an artist is that of storytelling. Using video primarily as my medium, I tell the stories that are most important to me. Although, I am a video artist I am very influenced by James Baldwin. His literary work comes from the perspective of the microstructures and not the superstructures. His work is focused on the everyday lives of the individual and the community. Through this means the reader or audience gains an understanding of how the superstructures, such as institutional structures of oppression impact the personal lives of everyday people.
After reading about the work of Joe Lambert I feel that the visual/digital storytelling I do outside of his academic format. I don't feel the stories I tell have an ending and I mostly work with things that come out who I am. So, these are real stories. These are my thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. I believe my work has a bit more flexibility and fluidity. This work can be displayed in a gallery, but it can also be placed in a public space.
What I will show the class for my final project is a video from a series currently titled, "Get it together..." Simply put, I am sharing my story about managing anxiety.
So, I did a google search for "Get It Together" and I think I maybe found the video you showed in class on what is your weebly site (?) I'm thinking through that with what you wrote here.
I'm not very familiar with James Baldwin's work, but I read a little of his stuff with Margaret Mead a while ago. I'm also vaguely familiar with some of the politics between him and Bayard Rustin and Dr. King Jr. from a museum studies project. The themes of anxiety connected with the rest of the framing you provide are really cool though.
I really like how you used the lighting and the audio in order to hit some notes of tension alongside the pacing back and forth in front of the chair-- which is also something that is open to some really interesting interpretations regarding how you frame the place of your work.
I feel like the stylistic proscriptions of the Lambert formula for DST are a little too clear in order to talk about anxiety in a way that might do it justice. In your video, I read subjectivity and context as playing equally important roles-- but the absence of any overt clarification of context is what for me (after reading how you framed it above) ended up providing the context. I felt that the way you use "non-signification" in the video in order to signify something was really smart and effective.
What links and differentiates your work (that we saw in class: thanks!) and JL style DS is important: of course both seek for "real stories" of everyday lives, as you suggest Baldwin does, as well. I am not sure that JL/DS always works to help make that jump to what you are calling "superstructure," given, as it often is, dedicated to representing and producing feeling and healing. Your work is much more poetic, loose (in that it follows your own script and no one else's thus being more "true" to your story) and artistic, but I would love to hear more about how you then pull us to these larger social issues and institutional structures of oppression. You are a fine, and refined artist, and most people have not had that training, time, or inclination. How would we move communities of practitioners to the power and freedom of voice you have developed. Is JL/DS that first step?
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