Category: Video Art & New Media

Online Exhibition :: Communicating My Deaf & Hard of Hearing Self – Part 1

Communicating My Deaf & Hard of Hearing Self – Part 1

Welcome to my first series of art works produced examining and identifying as a deaf and hard of hearing person. It has been a long road. This body of work is the first in a multi-part series with supporting written explanations broken down into individual blog posts. I encourage the viewer to view the gallery of digital art works above and then delve into the individual blog posts listed below.

All of the pieces have been created in 2018 and consist of Digital Illustrations, Collage, Animated GIFs & Video Art. Fragments of manipulated grainy images and re-compositions display the variation and extension of each piece. The works are visual representations for the regular distortions, missing of sounds, words and overall communication I experience daily. They represent how I feel, react, overcompensate and adjust to communication in various interactions. They are intended to be both subtle, confusing and difficult to follow. “Communicating My Deafness – Part 1” is the first installation in the series. It is first published here on my website and shared via my social media platforms. I am seeking to extend this body of work into a lecture series for both the deaf, hard of hearing and the hearing world.

Animated Hearing – https://www.ryanseslow.com/animated-hearing/

Missed Communication Continued – https://www.ryanseslow.com/missed-communication-continued/

40 Years of Missed Communication – https://www.ryanseslow.com/unraveling-integrating-40-years-of-missed-communication/

Fears Faced Continued – https://www.ryanseslow.com/fears-faced-continued-is-this-is-a-series/

The More I missed, the More I Made – https://www.ryanseslow.com/the-more-i-missed-the-more-i-made/

1970’s Hearing Test Art Machine Hacker – https://www.ryanseslow.com/the-1970s-hearing-test-art-machine-hacker/

Opening Another Door – https://www.ryanseslow.com/opening-another-door/

Responsible Communication RE-sponsibility – https://www.ryanseslow.com/responsible-communication-re-sponsibility/

Non-Auditory Sensory Other – https://www.ryanseslow.com/the-non-auditory-sensory-other/

View the entire category on my website here

Responsible Communication RE-sponsibility

An ongoing visual. Wrongly, from a very young age my impression of being deaf and hard of hearing was viewed and internalized as a major impairment and disability. I absolutely disagree with my past self, and the assessment that the ever so young me had made. The confused little guy who made this decision was pretty much only 5-years-old. How could he have known better at that time, he couldn’t have. How many other deaf and hard of hearing people also fell into this belief system as children as they witnessed their fellow classmates bullied and picked on simply because they were deaf or hard of hearing. Maybe you had a different experience, but the sum total was the installation of fear. The fear that caused you to hide. Was 5-year-old me most afraid of being deaf or afraid of being bullied and labeled as different? I wonder, as I reflect, (and dig deeper into child psychology) how many other children went into unconscious hiding and denial, fearful of becoming the next victim of the bully’s prey and or labeling of being disabled? Where are those children now if those experiences still remain unexpressed and buried alive inside of them? I wonder. My unexpressed fear evolved into a split life of being deaf when I was alone while faking not to be when I was not. I had to own this and take responsibility for the choices I made, even the unconscious ones created as that 5-year-old boy. I am ready and happy to discuss and share the “how’s and why’s” about my experiences. 

I believe there is value in sharing one’s story of overcoming fears. Of course, this is my own personal journey, but I know I am not alone. Writing, reflecting, writing some more and producing art works around the subject has been a great vehicle of communication and expression. It is the most meaningful body of work that I have created to date. It is the action I needed to begin the changes and transitions in my life. The trained artist in me attempts to avoid the words “art & therapy” in the same sentence, but this too is an outdated thought that I picked up from someone or something that isn’t me. The process is a form of therapy. I see no reason to separate them. I see a method that helps me assert myself and grow. Personal responsibility is empowerment. It is easier said than done and believe me, in this case it has been a lifetime of 1 step forward, 20 steps back. I know that I can play a role in helping others who are deaf, hard of hearing or both. I can also help and inspire hearing people to learn and understand what it is like to be deaf and hard of hearing. I can help by becoming a better communicator of what I need. As I learn more and more ASL each day I can share what I learn with those I encounter. This ranges from family, friends, colleagues, students and my fellow human beings who I have not yet had the pleasure to meet. This inspires me.

2018, Digital Illustrations, Digital Art, Animated GIFs & Video. A continued series of manipulated images and re-compositions. The variations of each piece show the process of how the works displayed are visual representations for the missing of sounds, words and overall communication. They are intended to be both subtle, confusing and difficult to follow. A representation of the daily life I experience between the world of the hearing and the non.

Fear Installed.

Through the eyes of a child,

seeing unaware of the missing sounds.

A series of repetitive actions and the behaviors observed,

the rituals of the alphas.

An acute visual awareness to the reactions of those involved,

activating simultaneous perceptual contrasts of engagement.

Acute visual noticeability to the facial expressions, gestures and body language,

while low sound frequencies murmur, missing, absent.

Defaulting, unconsciously to a visual conversion of emotional blueprints,

placed into the new interior folder titled “fear”. 

Screen Cindy Sherman’s short film: “Doll Clothes” from 1975.

Screen Cindy Sherman’s short film: “Doll Clothes” from 1975. Click here.

Via the Ubu.Web Film & Video Archive – (An Amazing Resource!)

“When I was in college, I made this book of doll clothes for my photography course. I was documenting a piece that I had already made for a film course, but I wanted to bring the doll to life so I shot myself doing all the poses, and it became this goofy little film. It completely ties in to everything I’m doing now because I decided that I liked the cut-out figures more than the film.” -Cindy Sherman

“One of the First Cindy Sherman’s super-8 film,”Doll Clothes” has not been viewed since 1975, the year it was made. It comically crosses Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase with animated paper dolls in a sly, funny and clever precursor to the concerns that became signature elements in Sherman’s remarkable body of photographic work.” – UBU.com

“Sherman’s 1975 animated short Doll Clothes, is among the pieces that bring Sherman’s early exploration of gender and identity into focus.” – Paul Ha and Catherine Morris

React & Respond in the comments sections below.

Questions to consider:

  1. After screening the film (is it really a film?) share your first impressions in contrast to the artist’s current work on the popular platform Instagram <– go here.
  2. What similarities do you see? What contrasts are obvious and why?
  3. How did you experience the works shared in this post? Your mobile device? Tablet? Laptop? I would like to know. How did you make this choice?
  4. What other artists do know of that share a connection with the genre of Identity exploration?

Weekend Video Art Screening: Les Grands Ensembles & Tango

Please screen the video art works above and below and respond in the comments section below.

 

1. “Les Grands Ensembles” by Pierre Huyghe (1994–2001) – (Above)

(I was lucky enough to screen this piece above in full scale at the Guggenheim in 2002).

“On October 16, 2002, Pierre Huyghe was awarded the fourth biennial Hugo Boss Prize. Inaugurated in 1996, the prize was conceived to recognize and support contemporary artists making profound contributions to the cultural landscape. Huyghe has gained international prominence for works that explore the convergence of reality and fiction, memory and history. Incorporating film, video, sound, animation, sculpture, and architecture in his diverse works, the artist intervenes in familiar narrative structures to investigate the construction of collective and individual identities in relationship to various forms of cultural production. Huyghe is interested in both reading and making possible multiple, subjective reinterpretations of incidents and images that shape our realities. Through such retranslations, Huyghe offers a way for his characters and his viewers to take back control of their own images, their own stories.”

“At the Guggenheim, Huyghe presents a film installation, Les Grands Ensembles (1994–2001) that address alternative modes of representation and communication (the work has been compared to the attempts at contact in Close Encounters of the Third Kind). In Les Grands Ensembles a pair of bleak buildings, models based on 1970s French housing projects, enacts a subtle inanimate drama. Enveloped in fog, the uninhabited scene is both romantic and alienating. “These subsidized public projects ended up being an architectural and social failure,” explains Huyghe. “They were a corruption of Le Corbusier’s social and architectural Modernist theory.” Though meant to be temporary, these structures are still here, much as we may try to ignore them. Huyghe brings the buildings into view and gives them agency. “Without beginning or ending,” he says, “the two low-income towers dialogue in a strange Morse code given by the light of their respective windows, a blinking existence.”

Source Via – https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/hugo-boss-prize-2002-pierre-huyghe

 

2. “Tango” by Zbigniew Rybczyński  – 1980.

Tango is set in one room with an increasing number and series of interesting characters that loop in and out of the composition over and over.

Can you stop watching? Tango won The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1983.

 

Questions to ponder and react to:

Tango is considered a “short animated film”, but is this a film? How would you describe it in 2018?

How would you describe both pieces technically? The year they were made plays a role for sure. Or does it?

What did you think of “Tango” and “Les Grands Ensembles” as a whole?

What is your interpretation of each piece? What is the artist communicating?

Does the art work(s) induce personal reflection in anyway? If so please share.

Do you find connections between these two works of Media Art? If so, please describe?

Please leave your reactions and responses in the comments section below.