Identity is a self built construct that is so intrinsically tied to each individual person’s own lived experience and psyche that it is impossible to separate. One is synonymous with the other – the self needs an identity. But, how does a person create their identity? What in their life can influence, and shape how they are; and not just at a shallow surface level, but to the deepest core of a person?

I cannot answer that, and I hold no delusions that I can. Finding out who you are is a deeply personal journey, influenced by outside forces, yes; but the shape of that identity is not something that can be told. However, many people attempt to dissect and tell the masses what box they belong in. There is this false sense that there is someone who can tell you exactly who you are and therefore how you need to act to be “correct”. 

There are many ideas always swimming, always churning around everyone, and those are reflections of both them, and who they have been impacted by. I assume everyone knows the sentiment that we are all mosaics of the people we have ever met, built up over time and through the people around us. I can’t remember how long ago I first heard that, but it has been a thought that has seldom left my mind, and has influenced many of the decisions I have made. A sister phrase to me that first inspired this piece was, “Can you refill your own cup?”. My answer to that is yes. I believe that any person given the opportunity can do just that – but what opportunity is that? Obviously it is different for every person, but the things that can build someone up after a loss are also usually tied to what built them up to be the person they were before that. All reflections of what we have experienced are also being projected by others who have mirrors of their own in return. I’m not sure If I can ever fully explain this feeling, at the core it is an insecurity that my personality is not my own, and it never will be. But, that’s not what I want to talk about. Truly this piece is a question, a posing of different ideas that I don’t want directly transplanted from my head to my viewers. I’ve laid out what was going through my mind while making it, and what I want people to think about. But truly what I want the experience to be is something wholly unique to the individual.

I did leave breadcrumbs, though. The video itself is one that I took many years ago of a lightning storm over Lake Michigan. It was a singular event, a phenomenon that left a lasting impression of its beauty onto me. I find myself going back to look at those videos, and seeking out that same feeling of the strikes lighting up the world for only a moment. I wanted it to have visual weight, a synthetization as if it had been copied many times over, an imperfect recollection through digitization. Hence the deep fried editing style I employed. The audio as well echos (literally) both the intensity of lightning and the glass on the floor. Each decision I made about the visual and audio stimulus was both in tandem with concept and creating atmosphere, there was no one goal I had in mind to make you feel, just that it should be something.

The glass is broken mirrors and crystal that are spilling out from a singular wine glass with a hand pulled cane stem that winds and twists as if it means to be something else entirely. It is a grounding element, and one that allows for a more focused narrative rather than a sensory only experience. The paper accompanying the glass on the ground are spiraled strips that I cut by hand and each hold one line of text. There is no one narrative throughout the writing. Each is a snapshot of a poem, definition, shitpost, or even my own diary all speaking directly to the state of life and one’s relation to what defines their self either in the past, present, or future. Much of it is melancholy, but with a singular hope for a future that will be moulded by the decisions of today. Moulded by those around us, and the impact that they have; really what everything has, other people aren’t just what affects us. They are the most powerful on a grand scale, however. There is one last aspect, one I was hesitant to add, but decided it would speak to people in a relevant way. The voices behind the glass breaking in the audio is taken from a church in Europe. I don’t know which one, I just know that it was taken from a crowd settling in for mass. Religion is an intense vehicle for creating and shaping a person’s ideals. It is a guidebook for life, and therefore what also comes after it. There is a certain beauty in that, but again, it is just one vein amongst many.

This piece, for me, gave me much to ruminate on. And the goal through that was to give much to the viewer as well. Not spoon fed, not overt, or photographic, but speaking more to an experience. Something to be shaped by the individual rather than myself.