from Becoming
multi-channel video installation
2000

The Becoming series explores the act of constructing and playing a character (through pose and gesture) in an attempt to define one’s self.  For it, I chose the seminal films viewed in my past, literally projected scenes and stood in for different characters.  These scenes represent a collection of images and sounds through which I learned to define and interpret myself.  Imitating and taking on characters’ physical and psychological attributes created a tangible hybrid, both audience and performer, adoring fan and movie star.  Enacting certain scenes exposed the gestures implemented in projecting my own image.  Once identified, these gestures were manipulated.  I could change my self, become another man, a woman, a psychotic, a victim, a monster.  Psychological states, gender, and sexual orientation could be altered by simply changing the movie.  Becoming represents an effort to employ a more malleable form of self.

In Schmuck For A Lifetime (2000), employes The King Of Comedy.  In the film, Robert DeNiro’s character Rupert Pupkin embodies all the frustration of a hack talent who has nothing but criminal determination to push his career forward.  Both untalented and delusional, Pupkin finally gets his shot.  Schmuck For A Lifetime explores three key moments from his monologue.  Through constant and obsessive repetition, I break in and out of character, trying to achieve Pupkin’s level of mediocre talent, a feat which is intstrumental for his sucess and, by extension, mine.