The Assignment
Throughout its history, New York City has attracted many from outside of its borders. Among the most precious possessions that one might bring to a new city are one’s memories. Through a vast patchwork spanning generations, there is a seemingly infinite number of stories and histories brought to the city from other places. At the same time, New York City itself has countless histories – both minor and major, grand and humble, that continue to inform our contemporary experience of the city. For the third project, you are encouraged to access either your own unique history/histories that you have brought to the city or your own discovery of the histories and mythologies of the city.
Using either (or both) as source material, develop a series of sequential images that creates a relationship between this source of memory and/or history and our contemporary experience of the city. In what ways are the memories or histories at odds? How does the memory/history make itself evident, how is it hidden? What kind of narrative do these lines of experience give?
My Response
I called my piece “Unfamiliar Places” because of the lack of sentimentality I felt towards this city. Maybe if I had been here longer, I would have felt the same nostalgia as I did while doing through my own archive of videos and images from my life in Las Vegas. As a result, I incorporated 3 images from a night where I walked through a small street. I found that even though there were people conversing all around us, there was a disconcerting silence that made me feel like a ghost passing through. I walked by strangers talking and a shopkeeper closing up for the day, but there was a continuous disconnection. I overlayed a series of flashing images from videos I shot a year ago in Las Vegas as a way to comfort myself in contrast to these unfamiliar streets. The loud chattering that couples with the flashing images is from an audio clip I took more than a year ago from eating lunch in the cafeteria with my friends. Even though all it is is loud unrecognizable noises, it takes me back to a fond time in my life. It’s a noise I find comfort in because I know the history and reason behind it.
