रत रत Race

The word RAT is not working for my title, but the inspiration of this blog is the rat race.
Life sometimes makes no sense, why does it all happen at once after such a long limbo lull?
Job offers and University acceptances all in the same week, causing happy moments to become big dilemma's.
I took the job, I like the job but moral dilemmas arrives when I know I will leave the job for teachers college. Do I stay and earn some much needed money, building false relationships and driving for three hours a day? Well I tried for a week, but I just cannot justify this thinking.
Why can't I be money motivated like the others who will drive all over to work, day in and day out, instead I get frowned on by older sis, who thinks I am a flake who can't hold down a job...
My work has to make a difference in the world, I cannot live just to earn a buck, I can only live to make others happy.

White Linen Print: In the moment

White Linen Print: In the moment

In the moment

One breath
One movement
One step
One room
One touch
One sound
One word
One song
One page
One taste
One day….at a time…one fleeting instant to be in the moment.

A Shout Out to All Those Mid Life Wives and Mothers, Who Stuck it Out in Order to Figure it Out!
Women are in a new era, treading out onto new ground- we have options for the first time in history (thanks to the brave ones who burnt their bras for our freedom), but those historic roles of our mothers are at conflict with the new notions of freedom from the domestic space we have grown up with. If we leave the kitchen and laundry rooms, then how do our children know how to fend when they become adults? The men may not want to replace us and why would we want such role changes, we fought to become equal, do we want men to replace our old selves? I am rambling on, but during my 6 years of my studio degree, I spent all my time making art on this dilemma. My art is not pretty or marketable, but speaks to me and makes my partner( who is a wonderful mate) very annoyed! Therefore it does communicate my feelings.

I have interacted of late with others in my age group and with similar circumstances and found I was not alone. I desire to be home and give my family a wonderful safe fostering place to come every day. Yet when the chicks have flown the nest, where does that leave me? What did I sacrifice for their well being? Did I break down the work of my fore mothers by nurturing so much?

Many choose to go in a new direction, find a new life, new man and try to find what was missing. This is a road I cannot discuss having never travelled it, yet I have seen many take it, also struggling with where they fit into our new age.

I spent one day on campus with three pairs of work boots tied around my waist and dragged them around for hours. (It was for a performance art class) -yes I looked crazy, but not to the women who were in the same boat. They understood the ground we must still break. The need to be a contributing female in the new Global World we live in. A role model, a wife, mother and maintain composure that leaves us exhausted at the end of the day. I have paved a road for myself once my chicks have flown the coop, it was a struggle of wills, but ultimately kept this little family together, even with the constant push/pull of our gendered spaces.

I have chosen to stay on my road of wife and mother, but still struggle to find my fit as I let my children go off into the new world. I hope their daughters have the choice to be whom ever they want and that we have managed to give them the ability to love and nurture on their own terms.

My work is based on my experiences in a domestic world. The medium I use varies depending on the visual record that best corresponds with my current subject matter. I have used photography to document the meals that I have created for my family. Endurance performance art enables me to show the physical struggles of nurturing my family.

Through these works I am exploring my identity as a mother a wife and as a woman. The role I perform has been rooted in me from my mother and grandmother. The way I interact with my own family is a product of past traditions and recreating them to function in contemporary society. For example game night no longer involves charades; rather it is movie watching and playing video games.

My current work deals with gendered spaces. I worked with the floor plan of my own home. The blue and pink fields indicate the male and female use of the space. By creating a rug, I am taking a common domestic object and using it as a foundation medium to show my current domestic role. Traditionally I have always known a welcome rug to be the first material encountered when I have entered any of my homes, thus it becomes my foundation for which to recreate my role.

The physical action of rug hooking interested me as it slows down time, the process of cutting wool and hooking it onto the mesh frame is slow and intricate, making me conscious of my movements especially that on my hands in relation to the high speed technological world that continues at normal speed around me. I am interested in assuming the role of my mother and grandmother spending countless hours in my family room. Passing time in a quiet manner, yet still being productive. This time has made it possible to withdraw from the outside world and be nestled in my safe environment. This is significant as it brings my past and presence into one space.

Freedom from Farming

Oh Don't get me wrong, I love farming. I imagined myself living on one. What I didn't expect was the control that Facebook Farmville had on me. After a head injury and during a cold winter, I have managed to reach level 26 of a not so thrilling game. My virtual farm. For some reason I return daily to feed peoples chickens.
But why....? Is there an end to the game?
I am going right now to remove my farm, and starting farming my own thoughts and creations.

Auto Emotion

Rafael Lozano-Hommer’s Eye Contact (2006), is a wonderful example of interacting with the viewer and stimulating the viewers own auto emotion. Initially the piece seems nothing more than a flat screen television, with small pixel squares filled with colours. However, it is with great excitement that one discovers that the image of ones one body is captured on the screen, causing one to play in front of the screen, waving and jumping, with out considering the commotion one is causing in the gallery space. The interaction with the screen brings a childlike emotion, which develops into a happy glee, when you realize that not only do you have the power to change the image, but you have the power to awaken hundreds of little people who are living in bachelor apartments with in the television.
It is the start of new relationships, and the viewer hunts the little people, picking and awakening who they desire to make contact with. The viewer is in total control of these beings, and a feeling of empowerment joins the glee and excitement. Each figure reacts differently upon being woken, each provokes a different emotion on the viewer, If a figure takes too long to wake up, then the viewer is frustrated, if the figure dances then the viewer receives the satisfaction in the performance and may choose to continue the interaction.

Gradually the viewer passes the glee and surprise stage and gets bored of interacting with little apartment dwellers. A new emotion takes hold, that of how is this done, and (as in my case) may choose to read the plaques describing the technique used in the piece. This holds the word “Surveillance”, which suddenly brings forth a new reaction to the once lovable television, the concept that the viewer is just like one of the little figures with in, someone being watched by others, unknowingly. The small surveillance eye, on the top of the television, starts to be sinister and unnerving. As on realizes the impact that surveillance has on personal space and privacy.One can image being a member of the little people apartment complex, living in a designated space, possibly never meeting the bodies around you. Each little space seems to be the private space of the dweller, a place where the dweller can wake up and act in any fashion that suits them, and then return to sleep. They believe they have the control of their own lives and the neighbors cannot see them, and therefore not judge their actions. They can be as silly as they like in that space. Just like any other apartment or subdivision in any place on any cotenant.
The realization that this personal privacy and independence is only a concept and actually each little dweller is being watched and manipulated into wake fullness and then left behind to sleep, brings one to question the privacy and independence each of us really has. Are we controlled by a job, would we choose to wake up at that appointed time, or have we been manipulated into doing so. Has the media and society brainwashed us into behaving in a certain manner, or have we used our own emotions to make our decisions and guide our movements. And most of all, who is watching us, wake up? When we check our phone messages, boot up and go on-line, when are we really in privacy?
Rafael Lozano-Hommers interactive Eye Contact was a wonderful addition to the Auto Emotion exhibit, as if brought the viewer to consider emotion and movement on a gamete of levels.