video proposal

so i'm starting over and trying to do something much simplier that i had originally thought about for this class...so i'm working on this idea of communication breakdown by our overwillingness to just live in denial....the idea is to take the notion of sweeping things under the rug and have that play out....i'm currently shooting video of myself sweeping objects under rugs in different rooms of my house...and i'm also working on photographs and video of someone sweeping me under a rug...a lot of which will be from the point of view of the objects as they are being swept under the rug....i feel that the still imagery will come from the video itself and will function as stops or breaks in motion or as a way to slow the motion down and place emphasis on the action of broom.....i think it should function like looping video rather than a video with a beginning middle and end...i'm struggling with the sound....presently it is probably just going to be sweeping sounds.

new artist statment

so i just spent the last two hours doing lgbt 101 for a couple of campus English classes with one of my friends from wingspan....and the nice thing about this is that usually when i do something like this, i generally have a lot to think about and write about after it's over. today was no exception to that. i've been struggling to write an artist statement for my work since last semester, and i kept stumbling around it all. i did a very bare bones one at the beginning of the semster, and it has helped to solidify what issues i wanted to bring to the table about my art. so between yesterday and today's panels, i finally found a place to speak from, and i thought i would share it.

Leonard Cohen once wrote: “The body I chased, it chased me as well.” He was speaking about love when he wrote this , but I find it to be a thought that is easily applicable to my life and my art.

As a transsexual man, I am constantly chasing and reaching this idea of body over and over again. With each step into transition, I reach a new level of body that I am comfortable with and simultaneously reach for the next level of comfort in the space that I occupy.

I am also chased by my choices in persuit of my own understanding and realization of myself. I chase and am chased by a lack of communication with my parents and family. I chase and am chased by the decision to reveal (or not) myself to others. I chase and am chased by intimacy (or a lack thereof). I chase and am chased by responsibility, to the lgbt community, to activism, to family, to me.

And in my artistic life, I chase expression. I want people to get a glimpse at what it means to live a transgendered life in a society where that isn’t embraced. I want people to begin to understand how gender, sex, and difference function in my life and maybe then in their own. I want to be voice in the chorus of voices that have always been and are now beginning to break through to the mainstream. I don’t want my work to be about talk show mentality or voyeurism. I want to share my life and share what it means to be human as I understand it.

It can be about paint, or photographs, or performance, or subversive acts. It is all one in the same. The work comes from daily experience and activism. It comes from a need to share and be - in the best and most honest way I know how – a man. It comes from my daily chasing of life.