ETERNAL SUNSET EXPERIENTIAL AREA
Through travel, one enters a state of transience – vulnerability, both physically and emotionally, as one goes from one place to another. This feeling of liminality is pronounced when looking out at the land, and especially while driving – watching the landscape slowly morph and change over time, becoming something else. Complicating this further are the knowable and unknowable histories and forces that shape the way these places are experienced. Even after traveling and returning home, these images and experiences remain active through memory. Memories of physical sensations – sight, touch, smell, feel – become triggers for not just the places that were seen, but the emotions that were felt, activating any time a reminder presents itself. Over time, the memory of travel overtakes the original physical experience in the mind, in that the emotions felt both in the moment and again while remembering become the experience remembered. The resulting nostalgia colors the memories of the past, as well as yearnings for the future.
This experience is what I sit with when creating my work, contending with the liminality of my past experiences of the sublime with the ennui of day-to-day life. From this experience, I present my MFA Thesis exhibition, Eternal Sunset Experiential Area. Each work is an individual installation that invites interaction as a means to embody the memory spaces of travel. Moving from installation to installation, these works then form a connected journey – a constellation of moments – to explore these states and the emotions they induce. Taking the time to fully experience this body of work – sensorially and interactively – provides a space to sit with and ponder these liminal feelings, which would normally be experienced in passing unintentionally. By undergoing this experiential process within this hypnagogic setting, a fuller understanding of how one’s own unique physical experience fits into the vast landscape of the world and its inhabitants is gained, even if only while within this threshold.
From left to right: Entering, Where Do You See Yourself?, Take It Easy, Along for the Ride
Installation and Interactivity view of Where Do You See Yourself?
Gallery view of Along for the Ride, installation views of Constellation Vista Ahead, Burn Ban, In Effect, and Rest and Stop, interactivity view of Burn Ban, In Effect
Interactivity view of Rest and Stop
View of auxiliary gallery materials
Installation view of Take It Easy