Capturing the Moment
Video performance
In this piece, I chose to explore the concept of time or more precisely the difficulty in remembering particular moments or a particular state of mind after it has passed. No matter how hard we try to remember a past memory down to the tiniest detail, there will always be something missing. In my art practice, I often like to explore emotional states or feelings. My own experiences are often the most accessible inspirations as they are known to me, but even though they are my own, they are extremely hard to capture exactly as they were. We can try to reproduce a picture we have taken on a trip, a scene that brings back a pleasant memory for instance, but no matter how accurate the reproduction, it will always differ from the original experience.
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The moment I attempted to capture in this piece was a moment in which I feel free to be myself, a moment when I feel happy and comfortable enough to allow rhythm to carry me to a place where nothing else matters. The choice of music was based on what I listen to when dancing on my own; the music that compels me to dance. I included short clips of my friends dancing to show the influence and importance of those people in my life I relate to and admire. The performance of drawing myself in real time was intended to illustrate the difficulty in drawing a pose that has passed. The viewer would discover what I am drawing as the process unfolds. The act of drawing live in front of an audience added further pressure on me given that I was limited in time. As time passes, the images might become increasingly blurry, further from the original state of mind in which it occurred. The performance was meant to show the difficulty of sketching something that is constantly moving and changing. As I attempted to accurately draw a moment that had passed in the video, the viewers waited with anticipation as the drawing developed and waited for the pose to reappear on the screen.
