After The Crash
Following the photography series After the Fold, the After The Crash project continues to investigate the meanings and implications around our work and careers, questioning their validity and attempting to understand and dismantle the ways in which we make them an essential part of our identity. The multi-media project explores both the role of work and our own sense of self-worth, observing the ways in which these interact and shift through their ever evolving nature. To what extent is our identity with work a valid one and when that is placed into question, who do we become?
The daily layoffs in the US and around the globe are a reminder of how stability and structure are constantly in question and thus contradict their very own meaning. In the Western world, what we do professionally largely defines our social identity. Given the weathering of the professional structure in this current climate, an examination of that very association is essential.
While producing this project, I had a view of the Hearst tower from my studio on 41st street. Having worked for the company for nearly a decade, the vision of that building became an albatross, a place that continued to bind me through its presence and gaze, a machine I continued to feel trapped by, right there in my own studio. In an attempt to play with the image and partially to control it, I projected a live feed of the view of the tower from my window and into my white box studio. For some time, the projection just remained as is- a live feed of the outside in. Birds would fly by, the light would change. However, no matter how much time I spent looking at this space, and in some way becoming more disconnected, its relentless presence persisted. I decided to black it out of my view.
You can see this video work under the Paint it Black Series. This video piece is the first of many works that I am currently working on which present various laid off New Yorkers blacking out a projected image of the building in which they worked.
Through the development of this project, I incorporated a variety of channels to visually present the emotions, challenges and realities that I and so many others around the globe were experiencing while losing their jobs. Not only were people feeling bereft from that loss, but those who still had paid positions began feeling trapped inside the system since leaving their job became unthinkable given the increasing rate of unemployment.
Untitled # 2 presents a 4 minute sound piece inspired by and created from 600 minutes of interviews with the recently laid off. In this piece there is a slight disorientation as we listen to the female voices struggle with what might be interpreted as a recovery from a breakup while in actuality they are reflecting upon their recent departure from work. This parallel is intentional as I found that through my own internal process, being laid off, even from a job that I disliked for so many years, is much like breaking free from a dysfunctional relationship- the habits that become part of our daily life seem the hardest to detach from.
Untitled #4, a 3 minute 15 second video loop, which is meant to be viewed as an installation rather than on a monitor, presents the image of a woman in an office chair rolling back and forth in a hypnotic trance, progressively getting frustrated from her entrapment within her work space, or lack thereof. This definitive and spare performance by professional dancer Nathalie Jonas expresses the inevitable and pervasive angst that is felt by many, including myself, while working in the monotonous, vapid, and stifling corporate system for several years. It further investigates the lack of choice offered in the workplace and the limited options one is confronted with in our current economic climate.