Idea 1.0 for MEMOIR

After reading the prose poem of Joe Brainard’s I Remember, I found one line inspirational – “I remember ‘come as you are’ parties. Everybody cheated.” These sentences make me think about how we picture ourselves in society. Actually, when we are given choices, we never “come as who we are”, but rather we decorate ourselves with superficial cover-ups. Intentionally, I choose my make-up, my clothing every morning to conceal certain information that I do not want to reveal. Whether consciously or subconsciously, the ‘self’ we show to this world tends to be fake.

It is commonly said that the first thing we learn when we grow is to hide ourselves – we choose to put on the face we want others to perceive to keep us away from the exposure. However, the question I really intend to reveal is not about fake but rather about what is really ‘real’. If we consider all actions we have taken were caused by a reason, no matter the actions were in past or are happening right now, they would be all unnatural, thus fake. Hence, no matter how I project myself on a screen, as those expressions are all artificial and intentional, I will remain unreal. The only content of me being real is the part of me that remains unknown – the part I have no control of and  can only be identified by outside society.

This idea of “all that I present in front of camera are fake, due to the intentional choice I made, EXCEPT for the absent part is what I call the ‘real me’, but that absence of me WILL only be identifiable by viewers in future” will be the main focus of my Selfie Grid project.