WORK > Knowing Others and Wanting to be Known

Stills and episodes (008 and 011) from Knowing Others and Wanting to be Known

002 5 More Lil Blonde Bitches
video collage
00:35 - 1:07
2019
003 Where’s God
video collage
1:07 - 1:28
2019
004 Time is a Flat Circle
video collage
1:28 - 2:19
2019
005 Our Lord Bubz
video collage
2:19 - 2:40
2019
006 The Gaze
video collage
2:40 - 3:20
2020
007 Grad School Words 1
video collage
3:20 - 4:06
2019
008 Saint Hannah
video collage
4:06 - 5:04
2019
009 M’yeah Totally
video collage
5:04 - 6:34
2019
010 Reality Removed
video collage
6:34 - 7:23
2019
011 Who do You Think You Are I Am
video collage
7:23 - 8:18
2019
012 Jealous
video collage
8:18 - 9:30
2019
013 Compromise 1
video collage
9:30 - 9:51
2020
014 I Don’t Understand
video collage
9:51 - 11:24
2020
015 A Boy Named Sue
video collage
11:24 - 15:25
2020
016 Grad School Words 2
video collage
15:25 - 16:08
2020
017 Compromise 2
video collage
16:08 - 17:41
2020
018 For Now
video collage
17:41- 18:30
2020

Knowing Others and Wanting to be Known is a video collage piece created using found video, After Effects, and a variety of phone-based applications. The video consists of a series of short thirty seconds to three minute long narratives strung together to create one long piece. This establishes a work that functions as an episodic continuum open to the infinite addition of narratives, similar to a social media feed. This episodic form generates a binge-watching experience, one suited to the Instagram sized attention span. Knowing Others and Wanting to be Known can engage the viewer for thirty seconds or they can sit for twenty minutes and, like a youtube rabbit hole or a netflix binge-watching session, consume a large amount of information and stimulation. The use of a timeline construction references the archival nature of the online performance of self. Posts happen in and reflect real-time, they serve as an archive of the content creators experience. Working through this episodic process results in the continued historicization of my own practice and the ability to create my own personal mythology over time. I can curate episodes together, mix and match them, and show part or all of them at once. Just like @uncannysfvalley, I have created a system of working and a conceptual framework that can last a lifetime which serves as both an archive and a body of work. Knowing Others and Wanting to be Known is both an extension of my Instagram practice in construction and my thesis research in conceptual intent. My thesis paper titled Social Media, Reality Television, and the Contemporary Performance of Self unearths the coevolution of reality television and social media within post 9/11 surveillance culture. The found video used in the piece demonstrates the undeniable contribution of these popular culture phenomena to the contemporary performance of self particularly for femme-identifying people. This video serves as a meditation on representations of gender in art history, popular culture, and the internet. My objective is to recontextualize and transform elements from within these corporate architectures developed as platforms of self-representation blurring lines between public and private experience.