intention statement

for my lungs video:

In this video, I go between two segments of video taken through my lung x-ray. The first is taken at a window and the second is taken outside, and these are joined by scenes of rushing and flowing water. In the first, I bring the body into conversation with its surroundings by seeing the landscape outside my window through the lung x-ray. In the second, I interject my body into the exterior world by holding my lung x-ray in front of me. In both lung segments, I both mirror and conflate interior and exterior by aligning bodily forms with those of the trees and the sound of wind with that of my breath. I also aim to conflate a sense of moving, breathing life with a sense of decay, mortality, and death. Through my video, I consider issues of inclosure and exposure--safety and vulnerability--as well as feeling unsure whether I am really alive or dead. I spoke in a quiet voice and whispers, so that my words are only partly understood in places, and the phrases that come out such as, "honestly don't know" and "hidden, all this is hidden" point towards fear and feeling unable to speak or communicate.

The water sequences in between are connected audibly by the sound of breathing meeting the rushing water and vice versa. I had intended the branches without and then with leaves, and another later that is being tossed to and fro, to be metaphors for what was happening to the entity who is speaking--having a tumultuous experience or feeling a sense of growth.

I am interested in seeing what would happen if I really push this towards being a cyclic narrative of growth, decay, death, and rebirth, but I know that this is not how the video is functioning now. Right now, in it's most basic sense, the video is a meditation on the body joining and reflecting it's surroundings as they move and change and how we insert ourselves into a place.



A quick note to end on (and not so quick because it means reshooting a bunch):
I think I should try loosing the hand, too on the second section. The act of inserting myself creates division between interior and exterior, and also is distracting from what I really want people to focus on, which is the light and trees as seen through my air tract and heart.

And then that just gave me another idea. Insertion in a place. I might try using the footage with my hand in Berlin in another video.