the poetics of living. the poetics of family relations.

Through body gesture and video gesture I will illustrate the relationship between longing and distance and the roles protection/security, dis•connect, companionship, letting go, intimacy, and nurturing have in human familial relations.

These themes are subject to change, but reflect my current thoughts on these videos. Each video has at least one theme associated with it. The video either explicitly illustrates its corresponding theme(s) or responds to the sentiment of that theme(s). I have chosen these themes because I have found them to be truths through the analysis of my field research.

My field research consists of guerrilla-touristic video shooting. One can be a tourist within one's own culture as well as when traveling abroad. I have implemented these techniques in various settings. Using my curiosity and interest in physical interactions between loved ones as my point of departure. I have video-ed, guerrilla/clandestine or otherwise, families, children, and couples. Shooting has taken place anywhere from beaches to busy street intersections to remote mountain trails. In each segment of footage chosen for the videos I have, intuitively or consciously, noticed either a gesture or series of gestures that illustrate/encompass one of the chosen themes.

Once a segment of video has been chosen, I then experiment with revealing these gestures to you, the viewer. Through color and speed shifts, repetition and reversal, even stillness, I expand and compress these gestures. By means of these manipulations, I create short and extremely short videos, video gestures, which you the viewer can then interpret for yourself.

The length of the videos can be seen as a bit of game - Did you catch it? Did you get it? Nevertheless, its length is also imperative to the idea of gesture. Gestures are fleeting and temporal, expressing only a sentiment; therefore, these videos emulate that. Each individual video may not necessarily stand on its own, but once grouped with other videos presenting the same, or different, themes, the viewer will walk away with a sense with what I have been exploring and experimenting.

The composition of the multiple videos on one screen solidifies the themes, hence qualifying my claims. Each video bearing its own length is then combined with others of similar concepts therefore creating a montage effect and an immersive situation with the themes presented. While the projection may display one or many videos at any given moment, the small LCD screen is dedicated to individual videos, thus endorsing each one distinctively.

I see this installation and the research it has encompassed as experimental anthropology/ethnology video. I have manipulated video documentation of physical communication between family members; I am highlighting what I see as important in our interactions as a global society.

Longing and distance are what is consistently felt through these videos. They are a subconscious garnish. It is my sentimental longing for intimate relations with family members, not necessarily because I lack it, but because I feel that our society (Anglo-American) in particular lacks it as a whole. We lack the common and consistent physical manifestation of these gestures.