A cinematic self-portrait presented in a two-monitor installation. Two large screens sit attached at one end in an open obtuse angle like a open “V”. On the wide sides, the self-portrait images from my life, on the other a changing color field and imagery with text floating over the color field with voice over.

 

The work poses questions. What does a fish know about the water in which it swims?  Is self-portrait possible outside of painting and  photography? In a world awash with selfies and internet self-promotion, I decided to dive into the middle of the storm, portraying dozen of life periods, shifting memory and recombining them sometimes randomly.

 

Buddhist canon teaches that the ego/self is illusory.  In SHADOW CASTING ME I constructed three feverish poems and interwove them on the soundtrack allowing them to rearrange themselves and recombine. Self-consciously re-photographed self-portrait “selfies” blur by the viewer and speed backwards and forwards. The blurred montage and the “hurky-jerky”hand-made imagery and voice conjures the fleeting and illusory sense of self until the last frame zips through the projector leaving the audience alone again as the author ages and disappears through the blur of time into oblivion like every impermanent thing that briefly arises and then disappears.