On Salt and Cellphone

The project is a compromise between the concrete and the abstract: an exploration of the space standing between them. Perhaps the mirror and salt have some specific representations; and perhaps the cell phone soundtrack some metaphors swimming beneath the words. I was most interested in the two elements begging of each other "Who are you?" I found little interesting in creating a piece that tried to blend the personal and the cosmic. However, by distilling the text from the subtext the piece became infinitely more interesting. Each supertext took on a life of its own. The cellphone confessional becomes more intimate, embarrassing, and performed. The obscuring of the mirror is freed from representation. The camera captures a dialog, not a lecture. The viewer is asked to join, not absorb.

The space, the process, and the performance of this video seemed to dictate exactly what needed be done with my piece. The physical confines of the space could be manipulated in anyway, however, by leaving it stark, a sense of claustrophobia pervades. In developing the piece, time was a huge factor, a fourth dimensional wall; I left the back end of the video empty of cellphone message to let both the time and space collapse on each other as the last grains of salt trickled into place. The performance itself was dictated by the constraints of time and space. Having a piece of technology relay the confessional was both a necessity for consistent performance, also a choice for self-reflexivity in the piece, the hands are seen initiating the message but let the machine speak for them. The voice is static in space and time, captured on a medium for communication, talking about the passage of time; however, the salt traveled through space and time to mark and build upon a single moment. This tension, contradiction speaks both for the project and for this piece.