tattoos
For my tattoos, I had 2 projects I was working with.
The first is a part of my ongoing topic of being a young person diagnosed with “invisible diseases”. I am diagnosed with IBD and liver diseases. The main liver disease is a degenerative disease which means eventually, sooner rather than later, I’ll have to get a liver transplant for a new “lease on life” as this rare disease comes with a life expectancy. As an artist I have a unique way to communicate and teach the community about these diseases in a way that a student in a STEM program may not be able to.
My first tattoo project utilized this outlet as I had people fill out forms to get their “diagnoses” from me.
On this form, one of the questions was to correctly define IBS and IBD. Not one person correctly named both of these medical problems. In fact, some people left that question completely blank. I was then able to teach them the names during their tattoo “session” with me. It also allowed an opening for a conversation on what it was like being a person diagnosed with these.
FOR REFERENCE: IBS = IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME and IBD = INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE
For my tattoos of diagnoses, I took sentences from my actual medical forms and had them covering my stomach. Even just having the first sentence from paragraphs on my forms was enough to make people ask and wonder and be generally taken aback by my own diagnoses.
I chose a smaller font so that people would be forced to look, as well as the exact font used on my forms to give it a more accurate look.
My idea grew quite a bit, as originally I knew I wanted to play with an invisible disease but was toying with the idea of labeling oneself and having my tattoos say “I HAVE CROHNS DISEASE” and “I HAVE LIVER DISEASE” whereas most everyone else’s would read “I DO NOT HAVE CROHNS DISEASE” and “I DO NOT HAVE LIVER DISEASE”. I’m glad I was pushed to take a more introspective look at the conversation the tattoos would be having on the body and how they would interact with the wearer and the people around them.
My second project didn’t have as much deep conceptual meaning, but it was near and dear to my heart in a different way. I am a gatekeeper at heart. I like what I like very passionately it is visceral and aggressive and I become protective and sometimes even a little mean about it. Specifically Wes Anderson. Now I KNOW many people love him, as they should, they just don’t love him as much as I do. At least that’s what I have to tell myself. Is this unhealthy? Maybe. But I’ve found ways around it. I keep him just for me and I just can’t have people talk to me about him. This has been a problem as of late though because he’s released a trailer for his new film Asteroid City and since everyone knows how much I love him, people have been trying to talk to me about it. It has been driving me insane. So I took matters into my own hands and created “DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT ___________” tattoos.
Now MINE said, “DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT WES ANDERSON”-
-but everyone else had a blank line that I had to fill in for them. Ironically, forcing them to talk about what they didn’t want to talk about. I chose to look at this with a gatekeeping lens, however, some people chose to use topics they simply didn’t want to talk about. I enjoyed the different perspectives, as some people are healthier and do not gatekeep as aggressively as me. Sadly, I think I could cover my whole body with “DONT TALK TO ME ABOUT _________” tattoos. I also loved how these tattoos worked out in the world. I wore mine to work the next two days and its funny to see people’s reactions and sometimes even their attempts to talk about exactly what my body was telling them to NOT talk to me about.
I brought these tattoos to other classes and have continued to put them on people when they ask.
parents video
I chose clips where my parents were talking to us, or in them, or even clips of their parents. Often times the things my mom is saying are things she still says to us even now.
I also created this as a sort of gift for my parents. Since all our home videos are on VHS and our VCR is long dead, having this video is so important for them, in fact, they’ve asked me to make it longer and create an archive for us of the videos on a more accessible technology.
It was really interesting to watch back these old videos at the point in my life I’m at now. I never realized truly how much Hungarian my father spoke to us. They’ve always spoken it around us and Tas and I know the phrase or two that are said around the house, but my dad use to only speak to us in Hungarian, and once I started to talk and talk in English the Hungarian that was spoken directly to Tas and I dropped out a bit.
I know I mentioned wanting to add audio of phone calls over parts of the video, specifically with an interest in bookending it. I still want to, however, I had some problems with DaVinci and also a sad lack of time to have phone calls with my parents and brother.
I think I linked the timeline to the memory stick. and not my laptop? So I’m unable to edit the videos unless I have the memory stick plugged in and the audio files on my desktop. I’m not too sure how that works but to add new audio in I’ll have to completely rework the files, a feat of which I’m not quite at the level to technologically resolve quickly and easily.
This being said, I will continue this project as it does feel a bit unfinished to me still. Nonetheless, I am happy with how the final video turned out for the class.
As I’ve said before, video art is not my forté, nor my interest, so I was content with my abilities in editing and technique and overall finished aesthetic.
Video Art; Terrible ASMR
For my video art I took clips from different ASMR videos and frankensteined them together to create a video that I hope depicts how I feel watching, quote on quote, “good” ASMR.
I don’t enjoy regular ASMR. I don’t get that tingly nice feeling. I get skin crawling I want to die feeling. This video evolved from my original idea of just using terrible sound clips, as I wanted it to appear like ASMR. This meaning, I wanted it to have the regular setup of microphones or POV.
I also included some clips from a popular ASMR eating video to enhance the fever dream esc feel and also edge the audience a little bit, for lack of better terminology.
At some points, there are extra audio clips added in, however, not throughout the entirety of the video, as the silence of the background is a key factor in ASMR. I also played with clip lengths, having some very sporadic and choppy moments and other long periods of video clips.
I hope you enjoy?
Video Art; Research
For my presentation, I wanted to talk about something I actually watch from time to time and it made me realize I have a very boring search history. This is not to say I don’t indulge in youtube videos every once in a while, but I definitely lean more toward television and film if I have the time to sit down at watch something.
This being said, I do tend to click on music-based videos more often than not. I watch a lot of music videos, but these are not as *niche* as some other music-based material. Music videos historically began around 1894 and picked up throughout 1900 to 1940s to the 1960s and so on, as technology improved. In the ’80s MTV began; a unique channel that showcased music videos. MTV was huge and music videos were highly digested. Nowadays it’s less likely that the average person sits down to watch music videos in the same way that they were once consumed.
Focusing on other aspects of a “music” “video” there’s a genre of internet video nowadays where people will listen to and rate an album. One of the youtube channels that does this through youtube is HTHAZE. (I’ve included a video I’ve seen multiple times, however, it is not technically part of my presentation as, since its the whole album, it’s over 40 minutes long)
There are shorter versions of these types of videos that are now appearing on youtube shorts, instagram reels, and tik tok. For example;
Clearly, this “genre” plays with many different features and the thing that threads them all together is that they’re all simply listening to an album. They differ in length, style, framing and quality.
I think historically it’s interested to see this new type of video appear, especially looking into the history of a music video as a whole and understanding that an artist’s creation may not be as popular as it once was. Though artists still come out with music videos and people do watch them from time to time, it’s not like the days of MTV. The consumption rate is not even close to comparable. However these album-rating videos have loads of views; especially the short easily digestible ones, as sen on tik tok and other short-form video apps.
It’s also interesting to note that these videos of music rating are subgenres of a much bigger and overarching genre of just videos that rate things in general.
I’m unsure why this genre is so popular, perhaps because you can truly apply it to anything…and people do.
There are rating videos about people, animal breeds, foods, apology videos (which is a whole other thing…), couples, thirst traps, products, outfits, chess openings and everything under the sun.
Every once in a while a trend pops up in line with this genre, most recently a huge video genre was the “tier list” videos, wherein people would create a tier list which titles of their choosing and place miscellaneous things within them.
The tier list videos also range in length; from 30 seconds, to 15 minutes, to 45 to an hour.
Videos in this genre are an umbrella to almost every other genre, as rating things can be applied to literally everything.
*If we focus once again on the first video and the idea of “recapping” an album for an audience so they don’t have to listen and form their own opinions. This is a genre in itself. There are recap videos for a myriad of shows and movies and they seem to be increasing in popularity as well.
It makes more sense to recap a 15-season show than a 60-minute album to me, but this being said, I watch the album ones and not the shows so basically I’m a huge hypocrite.
the internet is weird.
Make your own GARLAND BANNER
*UPDATED PHOTOS*
I’m really glad I reshot Performance Driven. Not only are the photos in higher quality, but they were also shot in a better light, which overall documents the piece in a more successful way. I also played with some different posing, which was really fun and I ended up with some images that I love!
*The blog did seem to lessen the quality*
The excerpt I ended up choosing from “Dirty Words” by Tammer El Sheik was ‘performance driven’. The entire quote this excerpt is from is “; the zany is associated with emotional labour and the performance driven conditions of the workplace;”. I have to be honest, when reading the article both originally and thinking about highlighted ideas afterward, I was simply reading the words rather than consuming them, so the sentence that this excerpt is a part of played no role in what I decided to do.
I had many ideas going into this, but I knew I wanted to use the foil letters from a HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign for that happy and bright celebratory look. What I did not think about beforehand was that HAPPY BIRTHDAY only includes a finite number of letters, which lead me to do some frankensteining while creating my final piece.
Some of my other ideas included a wide array of works, including putting “our disinterested engagement” up in the library, or “activities of consuming” above the dinner table. Some were even more literal/illiteral, like hanging “glass of milk” on the alternative milk fridge at the grocery store.
I ended up choosing “performance driven” hung above my bed because frankly, it makes me laugh. I wanted to hang it above a bed because I wanted the initial thought process to be as if I was labeling myself as a performance driven individual when it comes to sex. Though this is an important view of the piece, in the final photo of it in the space I wanted to have my laptop open on the bed, as I use my bed for much more than just sex. My bed also acts as a study area a lot of the time, as I don’t really have a desk in my main space. Because of this, labeling myself as performance driven also opens me up to a vulnerability beyond sex and into a sense of self. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told to “not worry so much” when it comes to grades or to art-making. When I sit to work on my laptop, I’m sat right between the dips of the words, as shown in the photo below.
“Performance driven” can be read as a positive or a negative. When it comes to work and grades being performance driven can be a good thing, but it plays as my fault. In sexual innuendos of performance driven this banner opens a whole new can of worms, as that can not only be negative or positive; But also plays into the idea that the sexual content via pop culture that I am fed shows unrealistic ideals of how a woman partner should be during heterosexual sex, squeing “performance driven” in a new way. This could then infer that whomevers bed it hangs above is not being genuine in their sexual experiences, but rather, being driven to give a “good” “performance”, though that performance may be false.
Using Text As Art
“Joi T. Arcand is an artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory, currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario” (joitarcand.com/bio) Arcand is an artist who works in photography and graphic design and has been “characterized by a visionary and subversive reclamation and INdigenization of public spaces through the use of Cree language and syllabics”
Arcand works with her personal connection to language and creates pieces to present, not only her own relationship with the nēhiyawēwin language but also the language as a whole, visible to the public.
Her recent text works use neon signs to illuminate and highlight the language in a way not seen before.
The images above are from Arcand’s solo exhibition in 2019 she used to want to be a ballerina. This exhibition highlights Arcand’s childhood dreams of becoming a ballerina and, as with many of her other works, toys with the energy between Western and Indigenous elements.
Above are pieces from the 2017 project wayfinding wherein Arcand works with themes of “old school tagging” and the ancient art of wayfinding. An article in “BackFlash” highlights the theme and idea that “wayfinding has been described as being both a process of calculating one’s position in time-space by estimating distances traveled, and of being deeply attuned, watching signs and visualizing what lies ahead…we should all be watching for signs to understand the direction she’s motioning us towards”. I believe there is also something to be said about the connection wayfinding has with the earth, as it shares the inherent connection that many Indigenous tribes have with the land, once again reminding us of Arcand’s indigeneity. This project included both neon signs, as well as, installations in public spaces, merging two of Joi T. Arcand’s practices together.
Below, from her series Here on Future Earth; Northern Pawn, South Vietnam, and Amber Motors (both 2019), depict more of Arcand’s works out in the public eye, rather than in an exhibition space. “The two sentences come from words spoken by Joi T. Arcand’s mentors, offering contradictory descriptions of Arcand’s ‘authenticity’ as a Cree woman and as a second-language learner of Nēhiyawēwin.” (https://www.mercerunion.org/exhibitions/space-joi-t-arcand/) Arcand’s works join the ongoing fight to recover languages that are lost, or becoming lost, as language is an integral part of cultural identity.
Joi T. Arcand continually provides viewers with thought-provoking pieces and opens doors that people may have not even realized were right in front of them. Her connection to her sense of self and her life as an Indigenous person tackles the reclamation of Cree language and syllabics as well as indigenizing public spaces through visionary concepts.
