For this project, I want to make a piece that is mainly reflective on my current situation in order to allow for a building of my ideal future. When thinking about what the future may look like, one of the aspects that is the most important to me is to find a space in which I feel like I fully belong in, and feel undeniably comfortable within. I have had these spaces in the past, however after moving to a new area, this feeling feels very distant to me now. While it is easy to manufacture an ideal image of what one’s future may be, I wanted to focus on making a piece that acts as an archive for what life looks like for me now in hopes of answering the questions that I have regarding how I can make this future for myself.
In thinking about belonging, my piece will take the form of a book, one that I am planning on hand binding together loosely to suggest that while acting as an archive, this piece is also constantly in flux. I plan to take photographs from comfortable spaces in my past as well as the brief moments of comfortability I have felt in this new city, and compile those photos with text that focuses on my feelings regarding the lack of belonging in my present moment. This piece will act as a self reflection, searching to answer questions I have regarding why belonging feels so difficult here, as well as serving as a source of documentation of my present in order to move forward in the future. While I am not expecting this piece to hold the answers to the questions I have, I hope that it acts as a point that I can move forward from, as well as allow myself as well as viewers of this piece to understand what this moment is like.
Thinking back on 2020 from a future perspective, I would like to see this year filled with less fear. This has been a weird time, with fear surrounding the pandemic, the removal of rights for certain communities, the government’s state of apathy, moving to a new state and leaving things behind, the fear of new beginnings. I would want this memory to be filled with the good moments, the times when we felt safe and stable. I have been struggling a lot with finding stability this year, either with friendships/relationships, with the way i see my future at saic, and within the overall state of our nation. I want to look back on 2020 not focusing on this instability, but instead highlighting the moments where I have felt the safest. I feel like this year has presented so many different issues, especially these last couple of months for me personally, and I’m very worried that those will be the biggest things I remember from this year. It is sometimes easier to remember those more painful times than it is to remember the happy ones, and I just hope for the future that I don’t remember this year with complete disdain. Memory is personally a very scary thing for me, as I have a lot of issues with forgetting things or only highlighting certain periods of time, so in writing this I am sort of aware of the fact that I’ll most likely only remember this year as a struggle for so many different reasons. Regardless, part of me hopes that I’ll look back on this year and remember the excitement of graduating, the summer that I spent driving and feeling at peace, the nightly phone calls where we stayed up and laughed all night, the movie nights with friends, the sunsets at flagstaff, the disbelief when I stepped into my dorm for the first time, the feeling of calm as I walked home with a group of friends late at night, the first hug I got in chicago, little moments like these where things were okay. I know I didn’t really connect on institutions, but I honestly doubt that other than fear I’ll be able to remember anything else about these institutions listed in the future. I’ll be honest, SAIC and school is still a very scary thing for me right now, and obviously as is government (scary and extremely anger inducing).
Thinking about the world I want to live in, I would say it’s a much less turbulent one. Obviously thinking large scale I would like for many of the big world issues right now to be solved, I mean who the fuck wouldn’t, but I don’t have any big inventive ideas surrounding the changing of the world at large other than those that go pretty much unsaid. I think right now I’m going to focus on what my world looks like in the future, and what the space I hold will look like. I want to live somewhere that brings me joy, and that I can feel comfortable in. The city is much scarier than I thought it would be and can be really hard for me to comprehend sometimes, and I’d like to be in a space that is easy and comfortable. Ideally something still close to a big city, as part of me really does love it, but I’d like to live in a small apartment on a quiet street where you’ll maybe only come across one other person walking at night and they’ll smile at you and it will feel okay. I want to live somewhere where the sun is soft through the window again, not reflected off the sides of buildings and a cold white. I want my world to be one I make my own, a space I feel like I can manipulate to my desire and fully exist in. I want a space that feels warm, one I don’t have to think about but can instead just peacefully coexist with. One that is full of light and energy, a space people gravitate towards and feels genuinely like home. I want to make a world for myself where I feel comfortable with the people around me, and they feel comfortable with me as well. In the future I want to have a world where my anxious thoughts don’t multiply and build after every interaction, and I can exist with people and be at peace. I want a world where I can be trusting and genuine to myself and to other people, one where getting dressed in the morning isn’t a struggle because I am comfortable with my existence and comfortable with the way the people I know perceive me. I can sometimes see myself sitting on a kitchen counter in a small ass apartment in the morning while friends I don’t know now but know all too well in the future make coffee and breakfast together. I can sometimes see myself sitting on a porch or steps or something outside of my house in the future with someone and talking and just feeling so safe. I can see myself basked in soft warm white in the future, completely content with my surroundings and the world I’ve made for myself. I’m sure I’ll definitely still drink a shit ton of coffee.
“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” ― Cormac McCarthy, The Road