From the Notice Board

Part 1:

 

MISSING

24 carat diamond ring.

Please contact 555-555-5555 immediately if found.

Fiancée also missing.  

  

Part 2:  

Your fiancée is finding freedom by hitting the slopes.
Don't bother calling. Our phones are off.
-Best Man!

Part 3: 

You can take my girl. I’ll be clubbing with yours. 

She can’t wait to salsa, you never take her anywhere…Don’t bother calling. It’ll be too noisy.

~Groom-to-be-(still!)

 

Part 4: 

Oh, that was your girl? I thought I recognized her.

Sincerely,
Mr. “I highly doubt it.”

 

Part 5: 

Perhaps the only thing missing from the scene was the empathy that traditionally took position on people's faces in such a situation.

Artist Statement: 

This project was a lot of fun for me, but it was also a big challenge. I’m generally a pretty wordy person when I write, so it was difficult for me to convey a story using so few words. It forced me to be creative and to get down to the essence of a story rather than filling it in with lots of details. It also opened my eyes to the millions of tiny stories that are out there in the world.

The inspiration for my first story came from a notice board. I’ve always loved reading notice boards, because every flier and poster is a tiny story. There's always a huge variety of things to be found on a notice board, from missing people and pets to cars being sold to dates being begged for. There is an endless variety of notices and there’s always something new. I came across the particular flier that inspired my first story about a year ago, and to this day it’s one of the most interesting notices I’ve ever seen. 

In about 10 words, this notice speaks volumes. For my first tiny story, I decided to create a notice that would also speak volumes, both about the person who posted it and also about the relationship in question. 

The actual process of this project was a lot of fun. In Totems and Taboos, DJ Spooky describes the process of the Exquisite Corpse thus: "It's the sequence of the game that makes the tension between each player a connected, and ultimately enriching experience." I found this to be true as I worked on this project. 

It felt like a game, and only getting a portion of the series to use in the creation of my own contribution made it exciting, like I was creating a piece to a puzzle that I couldn't see. It was like playing telephone, I was getting a message, and I got to choose which part of the message I wanted to pass on to the next person. I would look forward to getting the stories every day, because each one of them presented a different concept to add on to. 

It was also really interesting to put all 5 of the little stories together and see what the end result was. Even though it doesn't make sense in a linear narrative format, all of the stories are clearly connected. Either by a word or a concept, there are commonalities within each story. I think that's kind of how art works, it builds on itself. And every artist gets to be a part of that. Isn't that amazing? I think so.

~Brontë Campbell

Dancing Alone

 

 

Music - The Swell Season (Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová)

Artist Statement:

When I first started working on this project, I thought it was going to be about loss. The original thoughts and impressions I got from my song were of loneliness and the pain that come from being lost. However, as I began to put together images of loss, I realized that I was instead creating a story of being found.

In her essay Seeing, Annie Dillard talks about a moment of pure clarity. In her words, “Something broke and something opened.” I experienced a similar moment while working on this project. I was sifting through several of the images trying to put them together in a way that made sense, and I stopped on the image of the dancer looking in the mirror. As I studied it, the word found popped into my head. Something broke and something opened, and I realized what my project was actually about.

Finding oneself is not an easy process. Even more difficult is facing the self we find. Dillard talks about seeing in terms of the world around us, and with my project, I chose to talk about seeing in terms of oneself.

Mirrors play a huge role in the seeing of oneself, both symbolically and literally. When we look into a mirror we are literally facing ourselves. However, the way we see ourselves in that mirror goes far beyond physical characteristics. When we look into a mirror we’re not only reminded of what we look like, but of who we are. As such, the relationship we have with the mirror became a focal point of my project.

I chose to use a dancer as my subject because dance is one of my favorite artistic mediums. I believe that it is one of the most raw and beautiful ways to express emotion. Dancers are incredible storytellers, and telling a story with one’s body can be just as powerful as telling it with words. The journey this dancer goes through in this series of images is a story of moving through loss and other difficulties in order to find and truly see oneself.

As mentioned above, the hardest thing about finding oneself is facing that self. And often we have to face ourselves before we can face anything else. For this reason, I chose not to show her face clearly until after she had seen it herself. We don’t see her for who she truly is, until she has done so for herself. And as she finds and recognizes the value there, so do we. 

Sometimes it's okay to dance alone.

~Brontë Campbell 

Blackfish: Entertainment, Nature and Objectification

We love to be entertained. Entertainment comes in countless varieties, and new forms of entertainment are always being dreamed up. A major form of entertainment that has blossomed during the past few decades is entertainment that involves large and generally dangerous animals. The film Blackfish explores one aspect of this kind of entertainment, the Sea Park, examining Sea World in particular. Blackfish shows us a side of this entertainment that most of us have never considered before, which is the repercussions that come from using and exploiting wild animals for entertainment. As the film continues, we begin to ask ourselves about the ethics involved in such entertainment. Gradually, it leads us to the idea that using living creatures solely as objects of entertainment is damaging to them, and diminishes the respect we owe them.

            As humans we have a stewardship over the earth, and a responsibility to every creature that resides in, on and under it. Nature is powerful. Nature contains incredible intelligence. When nature is messed with, it can strike back with full fury. As such, it deserves our respect. John Jett, (former Sea World trainer) said about the orcas in Blackfish “When you look into their eyes you know that somebody is home. Somebody is looking back.” The same is true of several animals, from domesticated dogs and cats, to orcas to elephants to lions. These animals may not be as intelligent as we humans consider ourselves, but there is definitely “somebody home”. When this is forgotten or cast aside, real problems begin to arise.

            Many orcas that perform at Sea World and similar parks are captured from the wild at a young age and then trained in captivity to perform. A scene in Blackfish shows a group of hunters (for lack of a better term) capturing the young orcas from their family groups. One expert describes it thus:

“As soon as they had caught the young orcas they dropped the nets and the others could have left, but they stayed.”  A former hunter also recalls, “The whole family is just sitting there calling out to their young ones and it’s then that you understand what you’re doing…. It’s like kidnapping a little kid from its parents.”  

            Are these the lengths we are willing to go through simply for entertainment? A neurologist interviewed in Blackfish also talks about the mental capabilities of orcas and the fact that they have the capacity to feel emotion, and as mentioned above, they are very social creatures. So why do we only think of them in terms of Shamu, doing flips at a Sea World show? When we put them, or any wild animal for that matter, in terms of a mindless performer, we lose a large portion of the respect that we as stewards of this earth owe them. And, as evidenced in Blackfish, they fight back.

            A large part of Blackfish focuses on the story of Tilikum, an orca who has killed three people in the course of his captivity. He is an extremely large whale, which makes him an impressive addition to the Sea World “collection”. His size also makes his performances extra exciting because of the big splashes and fun tricks he is able to execute. However, he has what we will call a “history of violence”. When people get stressed or scared or mad they lash out. Well as it turns out, so do orcas (as well as several other animals). This makes perfect sense when we remember that these are living, intelligent creatures that have the capacity to form families and feel emotions. Tilikum is no different. As Blackfish goes over his life, there are several things that would make any human lose it, so of course an animal who, although very intelligent does not have the same control over its emotions as we humans do, would snap, and react violently. The real tragedy is that the trainers, probably the people who objectify these animals the least, are the ones bear the brunt of their attacks. The trainers and former trainers interviewed in Blackfish explain how important “their” animals are to them and many of them truly understand and believe in the intelligence they see in these animals.

            Now, entertainment in and of itself is not a negative thing. As well as Sea World and other similar parks do play a major role in conservation efforts, which is definitely commendable. However, the problems arise when the animals kept in the captivity of their parks are only recognized for their commercial and entertainment value, as opposed to their inherent value as living and intelligent creatures.

            What it all comes down to is an appreciation for life, in every shape and form in which it exists. As we come to appreciate the incredible value of every living thing, it will be easier for us to recognize the difference between entertainment and objectification. When we see the world through a lens of appreciation instead of the expectation for entertainment, we will be able to find the inherent beauty in every life on this earth.