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SCULPTURE

'MUSHROOM AT THE END OF THE WORLD'
ELEVATED SCULPTURE ASSIGNMENT

'RUINS'
INVISIBLE ASSIGNMENT

My initial response to this assignment was quite a stampede of contradictory ideas extending in different directions and I was focussed on a specific idea for a while (a bridge with sound indicating motion above.) There wasn't enough of a convincing image of this in my head enough to actually commit to this idea.
This idea simplified things because it was just that, simple. I got excited thinking of ways to distort my form and other forms using only light and absence of light.
Monochrome illusions with a background and a foreground has infinite possibilities to play with.

I started to connect with ancient ruins fading into nature because of my arms being invisible at times looking like a greek statue with missing arms. And just the word ruin because I ruined the paper.
Another word that interests me in relation to this is disappear because it is the opposite of appear and some Amazonian languages use the same word for appear and disappear and either my arms are visible or my body depending on the background.

I am reading 'Girls against God' by Jenny Hval and she writes a lot about the irritation of writing black on white rather than the other way around. I take accountability that I should've practiced this performance at least once and it would've been better if the paper was fabric like my dress so I could more easily disappear.

I made the dress and the gloves in the performance from scratch and here is a close up of a glove on my hand.

Here is the dress and gloves in clear light

For the elevated sculpture it took me a while to realise one of the main everyday uses of elevation: food. It also strikes a cord in me because I struggle with necessary daily tasks when mental health and disability decreases my executive function skills.
Sometimes dishes pile in my bedroom and I joke that my bedroom is a swamp which I joke about but it is quite sad to not be able to control the reality of decay in my own peripheries.

I already bake weird cakes quite frequently mostly as a therapeutic activity and I like to put anti inflammatory ingredients in there and tinctures to prevent pains. Small brag: my cakes were mentioned in a New York Times article during quarantine about psychedelic cakes.

Mushrooms survive in environments that aren't conducive to other life forms and to me are a symbol of hope in slow persisting survival in apocalyptic environments, a slowness against fast paced burnout culture and compulsory able bodiedness.

The idea of mushrooms as a beacon of hope also features in the book 'Mushroom at the end of the world' by Anna Tsing.
Foraging for mushrooms, if taught to those who are marginalised could also perhaps be a small hope for the economic oppression for anyone living in the margins.

Cake is joyous and as I served cake to my class mates as the class ran into break time I realised that art for me is ideally about care under the constraints of capitalism.