Alan Goodrich
SUNY Stony Brook
When I make art, I am a teenager alone in my bedroom. I have the things I love around me, and they provide me with inspiration. My books, my music, my movies. Pictures of the world out there – and memories. Leisure time and boredom are the engines of imaginative invention, and I use my free time as a challenge: fill me up, it says. Alone in my room, what can I do? I have with me all I need – a camcorder, a super8 camera and projector, my PC filled with crazy audioware lifted for free from online, my markers, my crappy paper and magazines for cutting. With these broke-ass items I attempt to transmute the lead of everyday life, of my life in particular, into the gold that some call “art.” I call it the underground sublime, maybe – at least that’s what I strive for. Calling up something sad, or exciting, or funny, just by applying little ol’ me to these scraps of the world. In the process, I’m playing with myself, trying to figure out what I can do with myself. Can I make people feel something – just with me? And by me I mean: my body, and all that penetrates or extends is – conjunctions of all my gadgets and influences and references that reside and collide inside my overheated noggin.
|