Project 4: Ritual
This project asked me to transform a space through a weeklong performance ritual. To create personal meaning for the ritual, I began to think about what kind of actions I hope to make space for in my life. I have lived in Santa Barbara in the summer and during that time I started my days in solitude on the beach. Walking up and down the shore gets my mind and body warmed up for the day. I miss this time during the school year. I can never seem to fit it in when studies come first. So, making the beach an assignment is a way around this unfortunate prioritization!
But I wanted to add a part to the ritual that increases mindfulness for an aspect in the rest of my day. Environmental issues seemed a natural next step. I am very frustrated by the amount of plastic I use in a week. I buy water because our tap water is has an unhealthy mineral content. I am tasked with recycling in my household and quantify our consumer waste in bags and bins. Next step for me was getting a specific grasp on my part: I would begin collecting my used plastic and weigh it. Keeping pace with my tab of plastic, I would collect and record tar on the beach.
I was going to do a plastic for plastic equivalency. But, thankfully, our beaches are relatively free from plastic! So I broadened my collecting to tar– the real tragedy for our beaches recently– and, like plastic, not biodegradable.
The goal: Clearing my mind on the beach now paired with clearing the beach. Giving back to it what it does for me.
The strategy: For seven days, I walked on the beach in the morning and collected plastic all day after.
It wasn't as meditative any more. My mind wasn't absorbed in my thoughts; it was searching the sand. But maybe I was clearing my conscience a little more.
There was no real solution reached. But I count increased awareness as a significant outcome. I was measuring my difference in grams but, in the grand scheme of environmental impact, my 1050 grams of tar are insignificant. This was for me.
To represent the week's ritual on critique day, I wanted to combine the two activities visually. I arranged my collected plastic in a trail spilling out of the box I used to contain it. As the class followed me along the path, they picked up the plastic, mirroring the way my path along the beach was spent stooping down to pick up tar. A performative semblance of my week. An awareness-creating action.
This project reminded me more than any others that, as an artist, it's in the process that I create meaning for myself.
To represent the week's ritual on critique day, I wanted to combine the two activities visually. I arranged my collected plastic in a trail spilling out of the box I used to contain it. As the class followed me along the path, they picked up the plastic, mirroring the way my path along the beach was spent stooping down to pick up tar. A performative semblance of my week. An awareness-creating action.
This project reminded me more than any others that, as an artist, it's in the process that I create meaning for myself.
