Maybe I should mention that I don't think my parents would approve. Maybe I shouldn't.
But let's be real: before I leave the mysterious, stigmatized, romanticized realm of college life I thought I better create an art piece about drinking culture. I have scoffed at it and I have reveled in it [literally], but regardless of how I have felt about college drinking there is no way to deny that at this tiny, private, Lawrence-difference university it doesn't exist.
This past Friday I set out armed with my iPhone4, some over-sweetened honey whiskey,
some good beer and some bad beer, some friends and some acquaintances, some crutches (which I lost halfway through the night) and an idea that I was going to capture it all.
Before I say anything more, here is the first stage of my project: the audio montage:
"Art is an encounter."
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, pg. 18
So, what did I notice?
1) What we say when we are drunk is truly and most often ephemeral [in an environment where most everyone else is drunk]. Our memory the morning after may be hazy. In a space like a college party, we feel we have a little more leeway to say what we mean, right? BUT, when you audio-record it all you can go back and listen to what you said. SURPRISE, YOU MAY NOT LIKE EVERYTHING YOU SAID UNDER THE INFLUENCE.
example A: I wanted to trounce through Sig-Ep, a fraternity house on campus because I thought I could get some "really good" stories in that type of space. Guess what?? That space is also somebody's home which a friend of mine pointed out in the recording.
example B: my singing...was horrendous.
example C: we talked about braces and how cool we thought they were in middle school for almost 15 MINUTES.
The list goes on and on.
2) When you are with others "partying" and someone is recording things for a long period of time, people slip in and out of performance. When listening to the audio-recording, see if you can spot when people are talking to the camera or about the project, and when people seem to have completely forgotten about the phone mic.
3) My crutches were gone, halfway through the night = sometimes you're not at your best when drinking. I am by NO means demonizing/criminalizing/dis-valuing the drinking experience or the choice to drink. I think drinking can be a cultural practice; a way to connect and to relax but hey, we can also do some pretty silly stuff when we've had a few drinks.
4) Last but not least: Art exists everywhere. We can find beauty in all sorts of experiences. The 40 minutes to 1 hour of sound that I collected has given me comedic relief, joy, embarrassment, confusion, happiness, sadness, slight anger and moral dilemma. Perhaps I explored more than drunk interactions...Perhaps I explored the day to day living that typically falls short of that academic term: art.
I totally agree with you that art exists everywhere. A person may not be an experienced artist, but even choosing some thing as simple as natural sound, an art form people seem to forget can make an effective project. I really liked how you decided to not film people because when people are taped, they tend to put on a different persona. As mentioned before in your blog post, people almost forgot you were recording and I think that is where you get the best, most genuine conversations. This is a great project where you not only learned more about the people you were recording, but also yourself in these situations where liquor might be involved.
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