Title: Documents Please
Date: 2016
Medium: Single Channel Projection
Description:
This short projection piece is intended as a grotesque and ominous experiment with scale. Inspired by the work of Franz Kafka, and my current bureaucratic situation as an international student, it pairs the textural details of my surroundings (a dollar bill, synthetic fibers, paper from documents etc.) with close up video of backlit architectural figurines. The reverberation of audio and visual layers evokes the sense of disorientation and agitation that comes with immersion in bureaucracy or highly controlled environments like airports or planes. The imposing stare, angle of filming, and erratic movement refer to what I imagine a person turned into an insect, like Kafka's Gregor Samsa, might see when looking up. An inaccessible grotesque mountain, that moves away from or toward us without warning, a barrier that shifts with us blocking the way to the light, an omniscient untiring guardian. The soundtrack for this piece was obtained by recording a conversation about immigration and slowing it down until words are no longer recognizable. The haunting soundscape that results could be identified as the voice of the giant, the desolation of wind rolling down a barren wasteland or a plane's jet engine.