art · 2015
Package for Me
Dirt Luv (graduation exhibition)
Part of Dirt Luv, my 2015 media art graduation exhibition. A piece about the urge to cut apart and 'package' one's own aching body — like a magician's assistant divided in a box, then made whole again.
Projection mapping on boxes · 1:19 · 2015
Package for Me was shown in Dirt Luv, my 2015 media art graduation exhibition. The show grew out of a feeling I couldn’t shake — that, against the cliché of youth “overflowing with passion,” my reality was closer to lethargy: a body that seemed to have less function than a piece of furniture, worn down by days that repeat without change.
A dismembered body and the magic box
When something hurts — physically or mentally — I feel an urge to cut off a part of my body: to pull out my spine when my back aches, to drill a hole in my head when it throbs. I never act on it, but strangely the cruel image itself loosens the pain for a moment. The destructive urge is born of a greater pain, and imagining it gives a brief, real catharsis — a wish to escape the flesh.
These imaginings remind me of a magician’s assistant placed in a box and run through with swords, the box then pulled apart — even though magician and assistant are one and the same. The dismembered body looks incapable of anything, yet in the act of imagining it apart, a kind of magic is handed to me.
