Take Care of ur Monsters
@the vera list center | artist/filmmaker/participant | 2024
I was selected to take part in the Vera List Center’s Mental Wellness film workshop, developed by Borderlands fellow Fox Maxy:
This workshop and screening is part of Fox Maxy’s 2022–2024 Vera List Center Borderlands Fellowship and is organized by Camila Palomino, VLC Curatorial Assistant. This program is co-hosted with Relative Arts and UnionDocs, and co-sponsored by the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University.
Film premise: a version of myself hyper focuses on the imagined and invisible trajectory of a cigarette butt from the lips and the lungs to an ocean of microplastics.
the film seeks to explore ‘eco-anxiety’ exacerbated by ‘pure ‘O (a form of OCD characterized by repetitive, distressing, intrusive thoughts.
Thesis excerpt (autotheory): In my mind’s eye, I saw the cigarette butt flicked carelessly into the drain and then its trajectory towards a diffusion of micro-plastics in the depths of the ocean. I would - and sometimes still do - multiply this course to account for all the plastics world over, and feel an all encompassing anxiety wash over me. In some sense, the narrative I held on to was that we had already ‘ruined’ the planet.
Film process:
Two online ideation sessions
½ hour filming, tompkins square park
½ day of editing