Okay so in all my classes I'm getting all the rubrics for our finals. So this blog is going to get a lot of finals project brainstorming action over the next few days. For my 3D class I had this morning, we are to create a performance piece with a body extension using the idea, material, or concept learned from the artist we studied earlier in the semester. I did Banksy. So like, what in the world am I supposed to do with that. Banksy is like the last thing from a performance artist (i.e. he is never present during the exhibition of his work- which is what a performance piece essentially is.) .
What I've got to work with: graffiti, walls, stencils, urban, war, Vietnam, 60s, 70s, youth, spray paint, capitalism, politics, consumption.
My idea: When the atomic bombs hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the intense heat and radiation left behind silhouettes of people whose bodies were vaporized in an instant. I want to honor these lives by recreating ghostly figures of myself on a wall, using a spray paint to stencil my form onto the surface of the wall. Obviously I can't use aeresol spray paint because that's highly toxic, but my teacher helped me develop alternative ideas. Conclusion: Spray tanner. (She was really into the fact that my great grandfather invented the stuff and insisted I do something with it.) This self-tanning aspect will play into the consumption and youth of layering on toxic chemicals to your body for aesthetic, cosmetic appeal, think- Toddlers and Tiaras. This culture America has bred our youth, our children, to deem normal- that we must "doll" them up for display. Apply fake eyelashes, smear on lipstick, smother them in spray-tans.
