ANDI JANIS TAYLOR

Consisting of over nine hundred digital images and edited to the song “Walk Together” by Olexy, take off your art. i want to try it on is a short stop-motion video piece which features twenty-two shared moments in time inspired by the photographic piece Hostess by Cang Xin. Using a 2005 Canon Powershot SD600 Elph camera, a tripod, and Voice Memos on iPhone, I captured a series of one-on-one meetings, lessons, and rehearsals between myself and other current Italic students in which I spent ten minutes learning and practicing their art form as they guided me along the way. In each image, I am seen wearing an article of clothing from my peers’ closet and they are seen wearing my black hoodie to emphasize that I am not only learning their art, but spending a moment in their shoes and “trying on” their identity as an artist.

 

The piece depicts art as empathy, care, and interpersonal communication; though at its most basic level it presents as a video clip and performance piece, at its true core it is a photo album displaying the art of human connection. Over the course of the six days it took to capture the images and edit the final video, I made many tangible products and achieved many personal accomplishments—I drew an ink-and-pen illustration of Sala des Rosiers, learned to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on both the cello and the violin, and edited a 4:54 video showing the process of picking up twenty-two new skills. However, no artistic creation, or skill, or even the story I tell through my edited video is nearly as creatively charged as the poetic words each artist used to describe their passion, the electric epiphanies I had trying those passions out for myself and seeing just where that poetic inspiration came from, and the intimate moments I shared with each artist as—just for 10 minutes—we lived together in a bubble where their artistic love became our entire world.

 

Upon first seeing the chromogenic print of Hostess in the Cantor Art Museum, I was captivated by the peculiarity of the image and the vibrancy of its colors. However, it was the themes of identity and connection, as well as the idea of art as a form of communication used to transfer deeper ideas about the aforementioned themes that ultimately led me to choose this piece as my object. As an actor and cinephile, I knew that I wanted to create a film for my final piece and that I wanted to incorporate Xin’s original idea of assuming another person’s identity, similarly to how an actor assumes the identity of a character onstage. However, I feared that a normal 24fps film may seem too inauthentic and performative as well as reveal too much about my time with each person, compromising the intimacy I was working hard to foster. And so, I decided for my project to continue Xin’s photographic series using the same medium of digital photography whilst layering on audio as well to add a cinematic flare.

 

My project was highly inspired as well by Carl Philips’ idea of art as an exploration of new, comfortable ideas after a period of restlessness. Although prior to my meetings with each artist I did find their art forms compelling and inspiring, I had never been courageous enough to step out of my comfort zone and allow myself to try them on my own and be a beginner.