Memory has always fascinated me. Manipulated and distorted through the lens of the present, the past is remembered in blurred images and sound-bites. What is the significance of the events that we remember? What is the significance of the events that we forget? What is the significance of the way in which we associate memories with each other? How does memory affect the way that we see ourselves?
One of my favorite thinkers who I’ve encountered at Ross, the Scottish philosopher David Hume, proposed that the origin of the popular, Rationalist concept of a Self (immutable, unchanging, and constant throughout one’s life and even after one’s death) stems from our associations between experiences. Hume’s famous ‘Bundlist’ philosophy asserts that we create webs –or ‘bundles’- of memories and that the way in which we each create these determines our individuality. Hume also stated that humans are Only these bundles of experiences and associations and that the ‘Self’ is always changing as our memories and experiences blur together and change the way we interact with the world around us. In the modern world especially, people are/have been bombarded with records of past events. Photographs, articles, interviews, language itself (the oral tradition): how does experiencing these affect the way that we remember? Are we recollecting actual events or are we merely creating a memory of memories: simulacrum of simulacra?
For my Senior Project I would like to explore the Bundlist view of the Self through visual and poetic ‘webs’ of memories. I will recreate memories and try to illustrate how I associate them with each other. I will use photography and creative writing to try and translate my memories from sensory experiences into still images and words that others will hopefully be able to look at and be provoked into examining they define themselves. I wanted to create a senior project that is intensely personal. An artist is in some ways, for me at least, as a translator. We take pieces of ourselves and carve them out in clay or throw them onto a canvas or in front of a lens so that the audience can find corresponding pieces of themselves and let them grow. I hope to take what are my most personal possessions –my memories, unique and inextricable from my Self- and give them to my community in order to let us grow and reflect together.
My first shoot is tomorrow with Tina and Sylvia, I've been prepping all week with my outside consultant, Mr Vincent Moon! We've made a shot list and built forts out of photo books in my living room....scans soon!
H
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