Collector

Tara DeVincenzo
Inspiration
So for inspiration in this project I used myself. Something I feel is an experience I have had that has affected me. Then looking at what questions it brought up about the world I live in. Over the past four years I have lost three people who were very close to me: one to cancer, one to a drug addiction, and one in a school shooting. Along whit these people others that I have known, maybe not quite as intimately, have also passed on. So unfortunately as it has been, I have been continually haunted with grief. With the piece I began to think about death in the ways it affects the living. How grief is reckoned with. I have noticed that the better I became at pushing the pain away and not letting it sit with me, really sink in- the more comfortable the people around me felt. This is not just limited to my peers who didn’t share my loss, but my family and my partner as well. I guess I just began to think- how funny- even the most emotional points in life we are expected to be able to handle privately. Knowing that I am an emotional person by nature it has always been vital to my life that I learn how to stifle those emotions to participate in society. So my piece really was born out of the desire to see what it looks like when someone really feels pain- in all its stages.

Process
A lot has gone into the process of this piece for me. First I had to unpack the pain that is associated with losing people so that I could look at where I was and where the piece would be going. Next I thought about what I wanted the piece to look like. This ended up being an unnecessary step because I really couldn’t control this part of the piece- I had to work intuitively and instinctually to find what I was really trying to do. I looked at the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and how I have experienced them-denial, pain/guilt, anger, depression, and acceptance. A lot of what I ended up with in my piece was born out of the assignment to allow my body to tell the story. In this assignment we were asked to express the subject matter with our bodies. I think it was successful because the story and subject matter is so personal that it is in my body I walk around with it, and it was a chance to let it breath. So from this experience, that liberated me from the fear of creating the piece, I was able to understand where I wanted it to go. I wanted to tell the story of a person just like every other person-including the audience members- who carried pain around with them everyday having to keep it bottled up for fear of its interruption in there life. Look at how we do it to ourselves as a society, viewing pain and grief as weakness. I didn’t want the piece to be about my pain. I wanted it to involve the audience, to involve their personal experiences. I wanted the piece to tap into the pain that we in American culture tuck away so deep even we can’t find it. I wanted it to heal. So I created a character that had the outward appearance symbolizing La Dia de Los Muertos to tap into that, but also had powers like a shaman to heal. I also had to pay attention to the magic that needed to pulse through the room and the character to allow this process to happen. In a way a lot of what I am trying to do is to fulfill this deep desire to have a burden lifted. Whatever the burden may be: pain, guilt, grief, depression, and embarrassment it can be taken away. I wanted to let everyone know they were not alone and to not be scared. So my goal was to give the healing experience that I have achieved through making this piece, to my audience. Side note: the mini story behind the balloons. First of all I have an unhealthy obsession with clowns and the circus so this was all probably floating around in my subconscious. I was still working with the idea of what a person who bears the burden of a ton of pain does. They carry it around with them; there heart-my heart- is heavy. So I had this idea of carrying these things around that were filled with the painful things in my life. Then I popped this water balloon to release the pain inside it. This worked as an image with the cleansing and the burst of the balloon. However, when I realized I wanted the piece to not be about a personal experience I began to become very, very lost. The balloons where what stayed because I could have the audience put themselves in the balloons.

Mentor
The person’s work I followed most closely during this process would have to be Kristen Kosmas. When she came into our class and read “Frieda Story” she did something that I didn’t know previously was possible in performance. She inhabited the room so intensely simply by making me feel like she was just sharing a story. I was hanging on to her every word. After she preformed for us, she gave our class a piece of advice that I have tried to keep at the center point of my process: regarding your work. Every time something I created coming out of my preoccupations, I tried to step back a look at what I had done and where it fits in my piece. To collage together the final project. Though Kristen’s style of presentation is very different from what I ended up making, but her subject matter is similar. Her work that I have read continues to feel both poetic and authentic, and that is something I am striving for in my piece. I also admired her restraint and knowing when to let lose. Also I can’t help but notice the Latin influence that has made its way into my work and I think that has something to do with what Frieda story made me think about.


the painting at the top is by painter Sylvia Ji