CONCEPTUAL PORTRAIT
a mosaic of everyone I have ever loved: a conceptual portrait of myself through the love i’ve received from others in my lifetime, displayed through printer scans of the many items i’ve kept in shoeboxes in my room over the years.
this was definitely the most emotional thing i’ve ever done in the name of art- reflecting on the different ways i’ve been perceived by those i love, the experiences ive had with others, and the items ive deemed worthy of keeping (which is a LOT- im a sentimental gal, this is just the stuff that i was able to shove under a printer scanner). sifting through YEARS of birthday cards, trinkets, tickets to events, random pieces of paper and receipts, among other things, made me reflect on the love i’ve received from close friends, family, people who aren’t in my life anymore, lovers, strangers.
this was inspired by a quote that said “your room is a museum/mosaic of everyone you’ve ever loved”.
AUDIO ASSIGNMENT
For my audio assignment, I decided to piece together clips of my mom’s voicemails. She always tends to start and end them the same, with “hello m’love” and “love you. bye bye”. She has a pretty prominent East Coast accent that shines through in some of these. I thought that piecing them together to compare the start and end’s would be a wholesome idea with a sprinkle of guilt about not calling her back.
ONE FEAT, 3 WAYS
For all three of our videos, Tegwyn & I wanted to explore the abject concept of using body parts to serve different food items. We wanted them to be a hard, uncomfortable watch, but also something that you can’t quite look away from.
The One-Shot
Our one-shot was inspired by shaving-cream ASMR videos with bizarre foot-fetish undertones. We were both pleasantly surprised that the peanut butter and jelly erupted out of the holes of the crocs so well- it turned out to be so disgusting yet satisfying. We realized after that the crocs were kind of dingy and dirty, which added another layer of uncomfortability.
The Edit
“All You Can Eat” was meant to be a buffet-style sequence of several different ways to serve food with your body. This also somehow ended up verging on fetish content (for some freak out there), especially with the spitting of the syrup and the bacon. The white dress shirt was used throughout the video for continuity and formality, despite the non-formal essence of the video. We decided to do an overhead shot of the plate at the end with the accumulation of gross body foods, and thought that taking a bite out of the ass toast would add another layer of abject. The use of both male and female bodies in this video was useful in expanding the idea of sexual content and steering away from the use of explicitly womens bodies (we communally agreed that hairy butts are more effective in provoking the “eugh” factor)
The Loop
Our loop was intentionally meant to cater to fetish content, and we decided to wear silk slips and place the camera as a chest-shot on Tegwyn (two girls no bowl?). The visibly stressed rise and fall of my chest and the calm manner of Tegwyn while she leisurely scoops cereal out of my mouth are so contradictory, which I found entertaining. This one is especially pretty abject to me because of the spoon scraping on my teeth, and the experience of doing it and knowing that my uvula was being shovelled.
Overall, this project was so much fun to produce, and I’m incredibly happy that Tegwyn was able to match my freak (and beyond) and was not only so open to bizarre ideas, but already had them fired up and ready as soon as we sat down to talk about what we could do for this project.
Katja Heitmann: Turning the Gestures of Everyday Life Into Art
- This work aims to emulate the unique gestures/actions that define an individual. One of the challenges might have been performing a gesture or movement that is not instinctual to the performer themselves; personal movements/tics/unconscious gestures are often developed over a long period of time as a habitual, self-soothing action. A unique gift with this performance is that it is a very interesting way to study habitual movements as someone who has externally observed them, and is making an effort to replicate them consciously as opposed to the subconscious state that they’re originally observed in.
- I thought that Katja impersonating the child was super interesting- it seems as though the kid is dissociating, zoned out, in another world, etc., and would have a different perception on the work as opposed to adults. If you ask an adult if you could record them, they may become a bit more aware of their actions, but a kid is more likely to just do whatever they were going to do anyways. To me, it seems like the most genuine.
- When my brother laughs or is really excited about something, he rubs his face up and down with both hands really fast, one or two times. My boyfriends mom pulls on one part of her hair when she is planning or talking in-depth about something. My roommate/best friend tilts her head down and looks up above her eyes when she is telling a story, while sticking one hand out and “talking” with it.
KILOMETER
I decided to do a skit on taking an unassuming, leisurely walk to the beach, which happened to be precisely 1km away from the characters house.
(In reality- the true kilometer was from the entrance of the Speed River Trail to the Guelph Lake Dam).
Bon appetit!
