what i have been working on…
Hello, and welcome back. Last week I introduced you to CreateAthon. This week (as in tomorrow) the 24 hour designing for education extravaganza begins. Simultaneously I am knotting loose ends for my senior thesis project. Today I have decided to share a draft of my artist statement for my senior thesis to get your brain gears turning.
Here we go…
French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard argues that we live in a era in which “signs are no longer required to have any verifiable contact with the world they allegedly represent” (Baudrillard 55). He uses the term ‘simulacrum’ in describing the nature of a contemporary society that is constructed out of models, or simulacrum, “which have no foundation in any reality except their own” (Thompson 244). This production of images, with no attempt to base their meaning in reality, results in a new social understanding of meaning and birth of a cultural identity that is rooted in the consumption of images and signs.
The journey to discover personal and cultural identity is composed of endless experiences,concious and subcounsious. We strive to create a sense of belonging through labels and stereotypes, but nothing is black and white. Identity becomes a cycle formed through many connections: social, cultural, sexual, religious, idealist, musical, cinematic. Nothing is stagnant but the self. Identity is the creation of a lifetime. Always in orbit and never at rest. Your many faces combine into one. Attempting to define a single identity in this simulacrum society is gray, composed of so many black and white facts, labels, and stereotypes that they become fused and unclear.
So I drifted. Winds and currents decided where I went. Time became distance for me in the way it is for all mortals—-I travelled down the road of life—-and I did other things with my fingers than try to measure latitude. -Life of Pi, 193
