Learning languages to transmute memory

I have become interested in immersing my thoughts and ideas into my practice as a means to document growth and former perspectives that can be expounded upon in the future. I do not think of myself as an indefinite being so I embrace myself as evolving flamboyantly granting myself agency in the spaces of which I occupy.

“OUT OF BOUNDS,” in some instances, defies traditional modes of communication. Beginning to exercise agency in a new medium of echoing existence- incorporating found footage, recorded conversations, music, and memes to articulate and intersect with more complex audiences.  

The opportunity to navigate the spaces that exist within the complexity of blackness allows a unique perspective that can be viewed objectively and critically as an imposed system as well as, subjectively as an active participant: existing within and outside of this framework: to be a complex mobile field interacting with people observing spatial relations requires a type of out of body experience. I am interested in acknowledging how I have begun to activate myself in a variety of environments.

The 1987 documentary, “Ethnic Notions,” examples the impositions onto humans labeled as “niggers” or “black” or “colored” or “beastly” and all other fear-based projections. These types of indefinite labels articulated as fact played a role in self-hate and the submissiveness or relinquishing of self-mobility. Reflecting, I considered Kanye West in “24,” directed by Nick Knight, and the scene in which West is floating in, or perceivably ascending into space. Artists, creators, alchemists, and scientists, are steering control whilst championing for more humans to think for themselves- to acclaim freedom from constructions that are embedded into the violent history of America- not the land of which America now exists, but the foundation on which America was built.

Familiarizing myself with points of departures that I align with that exist along the continuum of my life and identities that box me in, yet free me- I have found are not mutually exclusive. In exploring who I am, I have found myself absorbing ideas not my own, but better-articulating instances and circumstances I find myself experiencing. In doing so, I begin to create and process to form my articulations of self and understand the many micro-worlds around me.

​In “OUT OF BOUNDS,” when the audio of my voice overlaps, I appear not facing towards the camera: intentionally defying any gaze which is amplified by wearing sunglasses. I am interested in figuring out which mediums best translate contemporary languages by borrowing liberally to form and think through unstable ideas.

Video Still from short film, "Out of Bounds" (2021)

Video Still from short film, "Out of Bounds" (2021)

Beverly Daniel Tatum writes, “Integrating one’s past, present, and future into a cohesive, unified sense of self is a complex task that begins in adolescence and continues for a lifetime.” In her essay, The Complexity of Identity: Who Am I? Tatum discusses observations with her students identifying themselves in a 60-second exercise. In this exercise, the prompt “I AM _____” is given to her students. It is observed, “...in the absence of dissonance, the dimension of identity escapes conscious attention.”

Considering the past, present, and future, my subject position is consistently challenged with social and cultural impositions: my physical body has become a mental playground for political implications without my permission. In 1950, Marcel Mauss an anthropologist, phrased, "techniques of the body," summizing being in the body and the world as cultural somatics. I likened this to my fascination with other spaces I can navigate and exist in: the ability to integrate sequenced complexities to log progression. My output provides value and impact by existing with and without any inherent understanding- it is what it is by way of channeling and transmuting memory. 

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REFERENCE |

California Newsreel. (1987). Ethnic Notions. 

Dirlik, A. (2006). The anthropology of space and place: Locating culture - low, Setha M. & Denise Lawrence-Zuniga. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12(1), 230–231. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00289_11.x 


Tatum, B. D. (2000). The complexity of identity: “Who am                      I?.” In Adams, M., Blumenfeld, W. J., Hackman, H. W., Zuniga, X., Peters, M. L. (Eds.