Artist Statement

Artist Statement

One of my favorite things to do is put myself in extremely awkward positions in terms of my appearance - I find humor in making myself look as unattractive as possible and showcasing it as a 15 second skit. I can usually achieve this by not washing my hair and filming myself when I've just woken up. Rarely do I even speak, rather I use my facial expressions to make people uncomfortable. I enjoy making others laugh, even at my expense.
I find it difficult, however, to be funny or appealing without injecting myself in projects. How do I make something funny without intentionally being funny? Often one can witness a stranger doing something ridiculous on the street, rarely am I able to capture these events on camera in time.

I am fascinated by the events that happen every day on the street. I know that I cannot manipulate what strangers do. I prefer to have a laissez-faire approach. How do I capture the funny, quirky, and often random events that happen? Going out to shoot with intention I am often disappointed. I am interested in shooting people in their day to day life, capturing the mundane activities that take up our day and finding humor within them. I want to identify with the people I shoot. I want my viewers to identify with them.

I want to use my iphone to capture these videos rather than a camera that will capture video I am to edit on a computer. I am not interested in seamless editing because we are so used to seeing videos so well put together - commercials, interviews, previews etc. I am interested in taking clips that have nothing to do with each other and putting them together; may be against the backdrop of a song that in addition has nothing to do with clips either, not only to make the clips more stimulating to my viewers but because they will add even more humor to the videos. Perhaps adding music is a way of having control over my work - manipulating how viewers will feel about what they watch.

I will try to challenge myself not to use any external music or sounds in the videos that I shoot for the sake of being authentic and allowing my work to be organic. I want to implement the work I have been doing with the help of my peers in order to get outside of my comfort zone and apply my talent to a new way of seeing.