As Cliche as I Can Be

As Cliche as I Can Be video

As Cliché as I Can Be

            It’s the first day of ARTS 2171, and I begin with the routine most everyone shares when walking into a new classroom. Unsure if I’m even in the right place, I look around for a friend or a familiar face from another class to ask “this is photo 1, right?”. The next twenty students to walk into the classroom do the same dance: hesitantly open door, look for a friend, find a seat. Our instructor walks in, introduces himself as the graduate student leading this section of photo 1, and tells us to get out a piece of paper. Just like that, “Hey, I’m Adrian, I’m the grad student leading this section of photo 1. Everyone get out a piece of paper.”

            As we pull out our notebooks, he continues. “We’re going to make a list of all the bullshit cliché photos you can think of.” He is brusque, to say the least.

            I’m somewhat caught off-guard. He doesn’t ask how our summer was, or hand out the syllabus. Thankfully at least one other person in the class is too, and they sheepishly raise their hand to ask for clarification on what he means by “cliché”.

            “C’mon guys, you know, cliché. You’ve seen it before, its unoriginal, it’s overdone. If someone put it on the wall for critiques, you’d roll your eyes.”

            Another slow forty five seconds roll by before someone says, “a photo of cool shadows on the ground?”, more question than statement. “YES. Let’s hear some more.”

A few of the more candid students voice things like “a photo of a kid swinging on a swing-set?”, and “close-up photos of flowers?” The cliché ideas start coming faster with confirmation we’re on the right track, just be specific about content.

“Hobos on Pearl St.”

“Kids skateboarding on campus”

 “A dude playing his guitar”

“Performers on Pearl St.”

“Sunsets”…”be more specific”…”sunsets over the Flatirons?”

“Girls all posing in front of the bathroom mirror”

“A couple kissing in the rain”

“Everyone waiting in line outside a music venue under the marquee”

“Little kids playing in the sand at the beach”

We continue with our list, everyone laughs and some students even start to poke mild jabs at their friends as they shout out “photos of your pro-skier friends” and “pictures of your girlfriend trying to be a swimsuit model”. I laugh with everyone else, but at the end of our list I review the twenty-some clichés we’ve put together, and I feel the heat and color of my face turn up in the same manner that someone turns on a stove.

“I don’t want to see one single fuckin’ photo, or even a photo remotely close to any of these on this list submitted this semester. It will be an automatic fail, and a waste of our time”.

I panic. I’ve snapped three quarters of these photographs, and until this point, was incredibly proud of them even if it was in high school. I wholly identified myself as a photographer, to hear the work I’d been fulfilled with was simple and cliché began brewing an amazing insecurity. I must be without originality. I created trite content on a bland background, maybe it was decently good photograph but it was something everyone had seen before. I keep panicking.

“Pull ideas for your work from the nitty gritty, don’t take a picture of something because it’s pretty. Take a photograph of something.”

What is that even supposed to mean? I keep panicking. I tune out Adrian and start to create a new list of clichés, all of them about myself, until the list is long enough that I can’t remember a single unique thing about who I am anymore.

“White girl, raised in upper middle class white suburbia.”

“Cheerleader, cheer captain”.

“Has a few friends that are girls, but always got along better with boys.”

 “Lost her virginity to an older boy in hopes of making him like her more.”

“Rebellious, but only to the point of no permanent consequences.”

“Does yoga.”

I understand what Adrian is trying to do by calling out these dry and overdone photographs, I understand he’s trying to push us. Being pushed creates anxiety, uncertainty, self-doubt, and eventually something new. I carry both lists with me today, permanently written on my psyche to infuse the insecurity that still haunts me, that fear of being so unoriginal that all I am is a collection of clichés, with a sense of motivation and intention to be anything but a simple stereotype.

Insomnia

https://vimeo.com/77718438

Sarah Tye

Multimodal Assignment #1

THE CURE TO INSOMNIA

            I could never really sleep at night. It must have started when I was a toddler, terrified out of slumber by the ferocious monsters hiding in my closet waiting for me to drift off and become a vulnerable, easy target. I refused to allow them to eat me, training myself to stay awake, one eye fixed on that crack of darkness in my closet doorway that never seemed to shut all the way. When I grew a bit older, the monsters became killers, kidnappers, the man with the hook from I Know What You Did Last Summer and other characters from movies my imagination held onto. “They will come for you once you fall asleep. Stay awake, Sarah.” Now, my body’s undeveloped ability to naturally fall asleep cannot be cast off to childhood fears. Now, it needs a label. Now, I need medicine. Now, I am an insomniac.

            The inability to sleep is one of the most common complaints of people my age, a mixture of stress and restlessness about our oh-so-promising futures, our million exams next week, and mistakes we might have made last weekend. We find our own personal ways of dealing with pressure, or wallowing in it. I pretend like I can sleep normally each evening. After dinner I study, read, brush my teeth. I am always nervous in the evening, while everyone else retreats from reality into his or her own private dream worlds, I know I will be left here alone and awake. I get into bed each night at bedtime. But my mind is fidgety, twitching in its impatience. I am bored. I check the time on my phone: 1:01. I check again: 2:36. I make lists of stupid things in my head such as,  “People I Like: Don Draper, Jesse Pinkman, the midget from Game of Thrones…” I plan what I am going to do tomorrow. I check my e-mail. I check the time: 3:30. I turn the light on. I write myself a reminder to buy contact solution tomorrow. I turn the light off. I start to count in my head, assigning each number a different color, texture, and design. I stare at the ceiling. I’m tired, but my mind continues to race anxiously, restlessly. I close my eyes and beg my eyelids to take me to my unconscious; I beg them, almost audibly for a break. I need sleep. My eyelids flick open, symbolizing that they have denied my request once again. I’m bored. So, mostly I lie in bed, and I think.

            Anxiety follows insomnia around wherever it goes. Sometimes it brings panic along with it. But other times, anxiety is kinder. Sometimes, the impossibly thick, anxious cloud that devours me is light. Sometimes I can see through it, and I can lie there and think clearly. When my mind is blissful and I am thinking exceptionally well, out of boredom I try to answer unanswerable questions. If I can answer them at all, they can only be answered by me. These questions have a funny way of nearly exhausting me into sleep. I obsess over them, my mind growing weary as I dig through every memory, dusting off every last corner in my psyche to find an answer, though I am never quite sure what I am looking for. My mind grows weary, it grows drowsy, and sometimes these puzzling questions can put me to sleep. Maybe tonight I can think of one of these questions, exhaust my mind so that it can give my body a break.

        I am lying in bed viciously arguing with my eyelids again. I beg them to rest, but they quickly flick open in refusal. I check the time: 3:47. I stare at the ceiling. I decide to plan my future. I fantasize a scene where I am at a job interview at some fancy pants art gallery. The intimidating boss, a knowledgeable pseudo-intellectual philosopher artist asks me “What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?” I spend the next hour dashing into memories, searching for an answer, trying, incessantly to tire out my head. “What is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen?” I remember my semester abroad, the view of Florence from the terrace of the Piazza Michelangelo. I think of my favorite room at the Art Institute of Chicago. I even think of the flatirons with just a trace of dusty snow. Is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen a place? Is it nature? I think of the sea, and quickly decide that is a flimsy obvious cliché. My mind gets nervous; it always gets nervous when I begin searching for these stimulating answers, as if it is angered by my questions. I feel stress. Is the most beautiful thing subjective; is it something personal, delicate and special only to me? Mind sprinting, I think of the faces of my best friends, my family, my little sister’s hopeful smiles. I am turning in, rushing through quick thoughts; I cannot find my answer. “What is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen? What does that mean?” My mind is thinking in desperation of Paris at night, the first visible days of fall in my hometown. I can almost feel my brain panting in fatigue, it’s giving into my unanswerable question. Have I tired it out at last? My mind grows weary, caught up inside of itself. It grows drowsy, it’s hanging by a string on to consciousness. My mind is blank. I finally fall asleep.

Free to Dance Multi-Modal - Ranya Jarrar

https://vimeo.com/77565348

A Brief Encounter

A Brief Encounter from andie estes on Vimeo.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  A woman, not significantly older than myself, stood hunched over the spider web of lines that had wound its way beneath the surface of the darkened paint, lifting it slightly in broken, dry desert patterns.  She carefully maneuvered the tip of her small Q-tip in a coin-sized circular motion, not even stirring with our entrance.  Finally stepping back to admire the progress of her dainty hand, she turned to us, suddenly lifting the tension that had had me unknowingly holding my breath for the past minute or so.  I was mesmerized, bewitched by the faded painting coming to life beneath her touch.  When I could finally speak, I squeaked out the only request I could formulate.  I wanted to capture this moment.  In self-conscious uncertainty, I tried: “Umm… je voudrais, umm… je veux prendre une photo?  S’il vous plait?”

Warmly smiling in my direction, she told me to go ahead and take a photo.  But NO flash!!! A flash could potentially damage an oil painting, and this painting, oh, this painting, was not only spawned in the 16^th century, but had thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars being poured into the restoration of its darkened surface by the organization of the Chateau de Chantilly in France.  As I stood next to the museum director, I turned to him for reassurance, then merrily raised my brand new digital camera and waited for the green box to pop up, telling me that it was all a go… click.  An explosion of light burst forth from my fingertips and engulfed the darkened room.  Well, I guess I still had a few settings to mess around with on my new device.

It had been so long since I had felt this alive!  What I had just witnessed changed the way I would pursue art.  Five years down the road, I still feel the rush of excitement raised by the fading mental images of my first brush with art conservation.  Growing up with an artist as a mother, art has always been a part of my daily life.  But somehow, this encounter that occurred my junior year of high school sparked a new level of understanding of art.  Something clicked inside of me and I knew I had found my niche.   This groundbreaking revolution withdrew me, if only for a few minutes, from the depths of my unmitigated self-loathing.  I was once again reminded of what it meant to live.  I was reminded of a time before my downward high school spiral.

New to my all girls high school, I was extremely nervous, but also excited to start class with ninety-some girls who would be my “sisters” for the next four years.  While I had always had a knack for art, it wasn’t until I started high school that my art became a source of refuge and escape.  Somehow, two years into my high school career, my experience had transitioned from one of joy to one of complete loss of confidence and insecurity.  By the end of my sophomore year, I had gone from marveling at the crisp plaid uniforms, to cursing the day I decided to wear them.

The absolute worst day I can remember was one afternoon when, as a junior, I came home from school so upset and so down that I couldn’t even take off my uniform to crawl into bed.  I simply made my way upstairs and under the covers, as if I could hide from myself.  My mom came up to check on me but I was inconsolable.  I couldn’t even catch my breath long enough through all the tears to squeeze out a word.  When my dad got home from work, both of my parents came to my room and sat on either side of me.  They asked me if I thought I should seek help from a counselor; perhaps I should try talking to someone.  I wouldn’t listen to them.  I denied that they were right, but at the same time, I knew they were right.

From the moment I saw the young woman restoring the oil masterpiece, art became more than just a hobby for me.  I was reminded of what it meant to be alive.  Art wound itself around my very soul, comforting me in my most helpless moments.  Art is my savior.  Ever since my experience at the Chateau de Chantilly, I have pursued art with renewed vigor, as well as opportunities pertaining to art conservation.  This new interest has lent direction to my studies and my own art career.  It has given me a purpose.  In a world that I often feel is incapable of understanding, art has befriended me and remained my one true confidante.

Briana Heller - Personal Narrative

VIDEO: https://vimeo.com/77380087

The Language of Color

            Sometimes, words fail to encompass an emotion.  Overwhelming joy, anger, or sadness is often better explained, better explored, and better understood through nonverbal communication.  Emotions are mostly intangible; one cannot see joy except in a smile, and one cannot see sadness except in a tear.  Yet the vast depth of the emotion cannot be seen or touched by others.  People try to articulate the gaps - vocalize the intangibles - but often fall flat. The problem with words is that they are intangible as well.  One can hear a word and visualize its meaning, but it does not exist in a physical sense.  This is why I need art.  Art is a tangible platform for intangible things.  I need art as a means to work through my emotions, explain them to others, and understand them myself.

            Art enables me to pour my emotions out of my inner self into the outer world.  As I lay brush to canvas, my paintbrush becomes a conductor that transfers currents of emotion from my body onto canvas, and that emotion flows into colored swirls of paint.  This is how I achieve catharsis.  I gravitate towards paint as my medium of choice because of its innate expressive quality.  Brushstrokes convey emotions.  They can be angular, jagged, and quick, and this style is inherently seething and aggressive.  Conversely, brushstrokes can be soft, blended, and flowing; this style is peaceful and serene.  These implicit connotations are universally understood and accepted.  Brushstrokes are tangible.  They are both visual and inherently expressive, and this enables brushstrokes to illustrate emotions.

            Painting is also the best medium for color, and colors not only express emotions to the viewer but produce emotions within them.  This creates empathy and a nonverbal dialogue between artist and audience.  Viewing the color yellow makes one excited.  Viewing the color blue can be calming or saddening.  Red is angry, powerful, and lusty.  With painting, there is an exponentially infinite number of colors that one can mix and blend, and each color has an emotion.  These colors can be combined and juxtaposed to convey intricate, multifaceted emotions.  Together, red, yellow, and black can create a sense of inner darkness and untamed rage, and this complex emotion is given a visual, tangible representation that others can see and understand.  For me, painting is a means of escape for these emotions.  Feelings can become entangled in the labyrinth of my brain;  my emotions cannot escape me and I cannot escape them.  This is why I need art.  These emotions leave me and are mixed away into pigments.  The overwhelming, intangible mess inside of me become concrete and clear on canvas.  It becomes clear for others as well as clear for myself, and this aids in the process of confronting and understanding overwhelming emotions. 

            Painting is an emotional release, and - through that release - a dialogue is created that enables me to express myself.  Paint turns the intangible into tangible.  Brushstroke, color, and context come together to convey emotions in ways that words fail to solidify.  I express my joy, sadness, or anger, and I release it into the world for others to see and comprehend.  Words are fleeting and finite, but art will often outlast its creator.  I explore the complexities of my emotions through painting, and - as I mark a clean canvas with paint - I cleanse myself of feelings that are too overwhelming to articulate.  Emotions are translated into the langue of color and brushstroke, and this language is universal.  This is its power and its allure. 

Multimodal Video

Writing in Visual Arts

https://vimeo.com/77073037

Something wasn’t right. She isn’t one to unload her mind all the time, which is why I listen to her eyes.  Waking up in the middle of the night for us isn’t that unusual neither is staying up for a few hours when it happens. This time was different though. A hug and kiss out of comfort escalated for 15 sweaty minutes in the dark, air-conditioned room. The lack of distraction from the passion that had just occurred was enough to kill a fly in the air faster than the frigid apartment. Lying there at 2:17 in the morning I noticed she was increasingly feeling… “abnormal” . This wasn’t her mood or some trivial argument or dream that had gotten her up , it was health related. She was scared, touching her lips out nervous habit.

“ I don’t feel well” not that she had to say it, I could read it like someone was holding up a sign on the side of the road for mattress sale. It was such a livid feeling that my butterflies were growing and my palms went from small creek in the woods to Niagara falls. Her attempt at hiding her panicked mind wasn’t going so well, I could smell it like it fell out of the air onto my skin and clung to it. Now wasn’t the time to show I was more worried than she was…her strength was apparent even with the inaudible scream of discomfort ringing in my ears.  She took a couple drags and blew out the smoke, which set the bedroom into an eerie stage waiting for the climax. I knew what was about to happen and so did she. And there it was. The first physical sign. It was kind of like somebody had gave her a little electric buzz during a sneeze and cut it short. Her whole body twitched in an unsettling way that sent a tear to my lips. It happened again. Then again. Her phone practically flew out of her hands the next time it happened. It was like watching a clock countdown to the scariest most emotional thing that I would ever experience.

“ Mike, this isn’t good. “

“I…I know”

“Its going to happen”

“ I know”

It was like a switch got flicked so hard in my head I felt like a robot that had the emotional capacity to cry and love and think what was about to happen and what I would have to do. Everything I had read up on in preparation a month earlier made itself present in my head. That moment made me realize how much I loved my girlfriend , how I would do anything I could in my power for her and never abandon her no matter what… no matter what.

I didn’t even realized it was happening when it started. I was sitting Indian style facing her right side in the bed. White sheets and comforter a sea around us. I thought she went to scratch her leg but in reality it was her body locking up . Her mouth was wide open like she was in awe of something she had just seen. Her eyes dilated and looked blacker than the night, like something took her life away. I could hear her body struggling to breathe and relax itself. I immediately turned the light on to see the most painful sight ever.

Her body was convulsing like they do in the exorcism movies, but this was real, and way scarier. Nobody was there to here me screaming or crying for help. Foam and blood was coming out her mouth and her body was shaking so hard I could barely put her into a safe place/position by myself. I called her dad immediately to tell him she was seizing and I was calling an ambulance. The first time ever talking to her father I had to tell him his daughter was seizing while I am crying so hard I can barely see a foot in front of me. I was trying to put her on her side and move her away from the walls and furniture while keeping her on the bed while trying to call 911. I was so angry at whoever picked up, stop asking me fucking questions and just get here so I can have both hands on my girlfriend. I was yelling and crying and screaming on the phone trying to remember the address, my name, her name and what was happening. I managed to hit speakerphone and toss the phone next to me as I kept a pillow under her and trying to pry her mouth open Blood was all over the mattress, her face, my face, my hands and then she just stopped. She stopped seizing as I was swearing at the operator; myself, the Lord and whoever else existed in the world. She looked directly at me so calmly and innocent, and said a single word. She just stared at me, pale, life rejoining her eyes. She couldn’t speak very well or understand what I was saying. The operator said I had to open the door for the police and then let the paramedics in through another door. I was asked to leave her side, the last thing I could ever imagine doing at this moment. I told her to just stay sitting on the bed and she said no, not that she realized what had happened, where she was or anything. But she said my name, she couldn’t remember her own name but she said my name. I had the operator telling me to open the locked door. I pulled my emotions together enough to stand and so did she. She wouldn’t leave me and I held her hand as I walked her swaying body to the couch and let the officer in. As bright as the light was in her room, it was pitch black until she stopped seizing, looked at me and said my name. When she looked at me and recognized me and said my name. You’re not even supposed to be able to recall or recognize anything that quickly and she knew my face and my name the second it stopped. There was light.

B. Chavez Multimodal Project - Frame by Frame

Frame by Frame (Vimeo)

            I try to come to terms with the fact that she’s dying. Beyond her eminent beauty she may not even realize that her time is numbered. It’s a slow death, and she doesn’t know it yet, because all she knows of is some altered space, rarely ever an exact representation of what we call reality. She does well at understanding this, but she can also articulate my struggles, my fears, and most importantly my own identity. No one knows me as well as she does. I take great care in making sure that she is satisfied, and I’m even more aware that I need to spend as much time with her as I can before she is gone. I handle her carefully and attentively, every time I hold her, the futility of her existence is all but too clear to me. It is remarkable how we can come to know someone so well in such a short amount of time, and end up feeling like we’ve been lifelong partners. I would call her my second lover, but perhaps even that is too superficial of a label. She ages just like you and I. With time, she begins to forget who she is. The elements are not as kind to her as they are to us.

            Who is she? She is film, a beauty lost to the cold, cynical world of digital convenience, a virtual world that does not exist. Film is tangible. I can hold it up to the light, scan single frames with my own eyes, reach out, and freeze a single moment in time. I can taste it if I wanted to. It is dissimilar to someone’s recording of a rabbit that they saw out on the road, taken on their iPhone. Film has purpose, and film is an experience. I like to think of the experience of film like those “Wonderballs” that I had as a kid, those hollow chocolate spheres with a prize inside. When I’m filming, I must pay attention to every last detail before sending it away to be processed, praying to the film gods that I shot everything that I needed and that it comes back in one piece. There is no way to view it instantly. Before I even view it for the first time, it is at that point in time that it becomes my Wonderball. I don’t know what is awaiting me inside. It is often then that I’m surprised with images of quality, as a result of a satisfactory job. Or perhaps I am met with awful sequences that weren’t filmed correctly, and have to deal with pushing on with the project without pulling too much of my hair out. That element of surprise is addicting, and no matter what the outcome turns out to be, it is enlightening. You either go away from the experience learning what worked, or learning what not to do next time.

I’m often asked what I want to do with film. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. It is, however, the strongest medium with which I can express any form of catharsis, or perhaps even experience one as a result of filming. Film keeps me grounded, like the roots of a grand tree snugly burrowed into the earth; it has me connected with every facet of my life. Usually, we like to run away from labels. But what is my art if it is not a reflection of who I am? Labels and themes that I identify with run rampant through these films. It is almost always about the topics I’m familiar with and my identity as a gay, Mexican-American. Film allows me to reflect upon myself, but instead of simply being a mirror image of my perceived reality, it has the ability to exist as a new tool, offering perspectives and insights not otherwise available. The content of a film are threads of a spider’s web: simple and ordinary on their own, serving no purpose but to solely exist. When working together to create the final product, as a whole, they are seamlessly intricate and unique, capable of structure and pattern. Film gives me the opportunity to fill my creative cup to the brim with personalized images. Some are too subtle for an audience to catch, but the general idea is to create a metamorphosis from the incredibly personal to a universal, visual vocabulary. It’s almost addicting to be able to tell incredibly personal stories and present them to viewers who will then be free to judge it as they please. It’s also one of my greatest fears, right up there with heights.

Film has helped me make sense of heartbreak, depression, the first time I fell in love, comedic experiences, fantasies, and death. Each experience through film leaves a mark unseen to the eye, and gives me a new understanding of how life can function around me. With film (or any form of video, for that matter), I can explore my identity carefully. I can dissect who I am through the process of brainstorming, filming, and editing. Without film, I feel fragmented, as if I were missing vital organs but yet somehow manage to walk around without them. Essentially, if I can’t satisfy my itch to create, to film, I feel as if I’m not taking care of a basic need like breathing.

Furthermore, I can deal with situations or problems by translating them into images for others to understand. I still think about my sister’s battle with cancer at only four years of age. This dark period was punctuated by walking into her hospital room and seeing her deeply under, recovering from surgery. Through film, I’m able to share an experience with her, and create a visual vocabulary to share with a larger audience without having her directly relive those events.

Every walk of life presents an opportunity to be translated into film. Film is incredibly tedious, incredibly expensive, but incredibly fulfilling. After completing a new short film, it’s almost as if I’m experiencing a new form of baptism, but instead of being cleansed and having my slate wiped clean, I’m showered with knowledge, absorbing experiences, and gaining a new lens in which I can experience life through. There is an inexplicable rush of euphoria that no drug can come close to replicating.