Motion:
A Little Peace, Please
Ultimately, this is a piece about the absurdity of consumerism in the face of horrifying global events. It was inspired by a few phenomena: Gertrude Stein writing absurd nonsense while the world plunged into war, the 1914 New York Times which featured run-of-the-mill advertisements alongside terrifying headlines, and finally the Russian invasion of Ukraine which occurred shortly before I began this project.
It took me three weeks to design this 18x24 document which I used to create a motion-graphics project. The materiality of this piece and the immersive nature of creating this fictional past was really rewarding.
The process was also highly informative as I had to study the real 1914 New York Times carefully, figure out what typefaces were in use (including Clearface, Lo-Type, Herold Reklameschrift, Block Berthold, Windsor, Alternate Gothic No. 2, Caslon, Clarendon, Beton, Wide Latin, and Young Serif), painstakingly type-set and type out articles in the correct style, and then design a series of advertisements for the bottom that felt era-appropriate.
Scattered throughout the ads are the words of the Gertrude Stein poem, APPLE from Tender Buttons, which reads:
“Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, colored wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato, potato and no no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece a little piece please.”
The Ramp I and II
The Ramp, as it is colloquially known to CFA students, is one of the most peculiar and fascinating spots on campus. I think what makes it so interesting to me is that BU hasn’t figured out how to make money off it yet, so it just sits there. Once they realize some revenue potential, they’ll turn it into a slip-n-slide or something. For now, it just collects detritus from staff and students. It’s a fascinating collection of artifacts on the ramp ranging from abandoned fine art projects to boxes of ceiling tiles and air filters. It seems like this is the place people go to leave things they don’t need now but may want later.
I have spent hours and hours wandering the ramp now, and even though I’m usually the only person there, I do occasionally cross paths with other pilgrims: a COM student playing guitar, an a cappella group rehearsing, an undergrad assembling a sculpture, a custodian exiting her closet. Even when I see no one (which is more common than not) there is still evidence of activity. A new graffiti tag here, a smashed television there. I try to go every day so I can see what has changed overnight. I find myself imagining who might have left the bottle of Fiji water on the fifth floor or who repositioned the little oil painting on the third floor. It’s interesting how much I want there to be a narrative behind every weird little detail. I want the graffiti to have meaning, but I’m sure a lot of it doesn’t.
I spent the whole month of October 2020 drawing creatures from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. I became intimately familiar with that painting, eventually drawing over 60 of the odd little animals and people. I watched a BBC documentary about Bosch that fall and I was really amused by the narrator attempting to ascribe meaning and gravitas to images that are patently and deliberately absurd. “We may never know what Bosch meant by depicting this sort of bird creature with a cauldron on its head.” He said in his posh accent. “Or this human posterior excreting coins into a pit of fire.” I thought Bosch would have probably laughed at this documentary. There was no humor or whimsy in its tone at all, at least not intentionally.
I was really attracted to the idea of treating the ramp in the same way. I wanted to act as if this was a sacred and deliberate space teeming with meaning, not just a collection of absurd little creatures. I wrote a little documentary script inspired by the ramp in the formal, academic style of the BBC. I think it does a good job of explaining what makes the ramp such an uncannily liminal space. It also introduces the idea of the ramp as a church, an idea which is central to my other project; the Altarpiece.
How To Avoid Cults
The latter of the two parts excited me because I had spent a lot of time thinking about John Wilson’s show and how he must go about making it. I figured he probably meticulously organized clips of footage and labeled them with specific tags so that he could search for them by keyword. Then he would write a script that purposely ties together the disparate footage. I figured I could use this method to make my own video in his vein.
I have something like 2500 videos on my phone, many of them are snapshots of amusing and odd things I’ve seen in my daily life. I started by selecting every video I thought was particularly notable or funny (that narrowed it down to probably 180 videos) then I organized the videos into categories and carefully labeled them. Finally, I wrote a script that would weave them all together into a narration relevant to Greek Mystery Cults. Then I just had to compile the clips in order and record my voiceover. This was a very rewarding process and I was really touched by how well it was received. The final video is over 6 minutes long, so I figured no one would care to watch it, but people connected with it. I hope I can continue to make video work like this in the future.
Vertigo Credits
One of my first projects in graduate school was called 50 Iterations. The concept was to choose a poster and redesign it in 50 ways. I chose the famous Saul Bass Vertigo poster. After designing the posters, I decided I wanted to make my own credits sequence for the movie. Although Saul Bass designed both the poster and the credits for the original film, the two feel totally distinct from one another, and this was an attempt to remake the credits in a way that feels cohesive with the poster.