Media Arts Annual 2021

I called my mom one day while shopping to finally tell her that I was dealing with racism in my MFA program at SMFA. In that conversation she told me “Jorge, tu no tienes pelos en la lengua”, I had never heard that expression and I asked her to explain it. She told me I don’t mince my words and always speak truth to power. But speaking truth to power, especially to a power that encourages people to keep their head down and just graduate is exhausting, not just physically but also emotionally and mentally. But even through all that, Yo no tengo pelos en la lengua.

Duration: 04:20

Trying to find the right word is like grasping at a moth that keeps fluttering away. You hoard vocabulary like they're a rock collection but they keep turning into other things, washing away into a fog. Is anyone even listening to you?

Duration: 04:30

Practice experiencing longing without the expectation of satisfaction: a collection.

Duration: 03:52

A showcase of an uncanny museum and those who live inside it. An exploration of the player and the universe.

Duration: 04:52

A girl starts receiving mysterious calls that change her view of herself. As time continues, she loses her sense of self to the external pressure of the mysterious caller.

Duration: 02:13

This animated piece served as a documentation of my experiences starting college, specifically during a global pandemic. It pieces together scraps of written observations, sounds, and visual elements of the world around me that I was observing and interacting with during that time.

Duration: 03.53

Porcupine Work focuses on my participation with the more-than-human world in the woods I grew up with as a child. Returning to this forest has led to my collaboration with a dead porcupine. I visit this porcupine as often as I can, carefully observing and participating with this porcupine’s cycle of life. These interactions have helped me to understand the visible and invisible interconnection between this site’s ecology of trees, soils, mammals and weather patterns. 

Duration: 05:27

This short film comes from the hike I did on Mt. Waumbek. I made it a point to stop at every trail marker, also called a blaze, and this film is made to draw attention to these strange yet beautiful mark of humans on the natural world. 

Duration: 00:15

This short film is a tiny tribute to my brother, and to the things he’s taught me about birds and mindfulness and ice.

Dear Grandpa, uses a collection of letters between grandfather and granddaughter to explore family history. The story traces the grandfather’s paternal line through their travels and jobs in the late 19th and 20th century British Empire. Through its use of hand-drawn maps, family trees and letters, Dear Grandpa, reveals the messy web of western domination, capitalist exploitation and whiteness that has built today’s white middle class British families. The video explores differences in generational attitudes towards history and personal success, and how to move forward acknowledging the privilege gained from other’s generational trauma.

Duration: 06:24

Two young boys play with army toys and later grow up to join the army. They see each other after many years, however they are on opposing sides. They reunite briefly but are quickly told to choose between death or shooting each other.

Duration: 0:57

An ode to the beauty of the temporary and the acceptance of transformation. This animation takes you through the last moments of two paper beings and their welcoming spirits towards their next journey. Almost all materials in this animation are compostable to further the messages of temporary art, transformation and environmental consciousness.

Duration: 01:33

“The Study of Jane Grey “ was made during a study abroad year at the University of Arts London. It is a pseudo-ethnographic account of the range of reactions to the gruesome yet theatrical scene unfolding in the painting, “The Execution of Lady Jane Grey” by Paul Delaroche. This is a meta-interrogation of the power of art to stir empathy among viewers and who operates the gaze in public art institutions.

Duration: 02:15

My first time playing music outside in over a year.

Duration: 05:30

This film explores the distinct relationships and connotations people have with the feeling of Homesickness. Individuals were prompted to share a story of a time they had experienced such a feeling and their stories were captured in full. However, this edit does not capture the extent of any one individual story. Rather, each incomplete narrative is woven together into one, leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps.

Duration: 03:42

I bought a pair of used police boots from a white police officer on eBay and built a structure that would walk the boots in front of me. This allowed me to follow and push ‘in the footsteps’ of the systems of oppression white people inherit and then choose to reproduce. The performance borrows symbolic reference from Mona Hatoum’s 1985 Roadworks performance, who also used police boots to index power and oppression, though instead of the artist representing the oppressed and vulnerable I represent the passive/active oppressors of white America that vote for and fund an oppressive, procedural status quo.

Duration: 02:30

No More Cows in Michigan is a series of vignettes musing about life in the past year. It is not about the pandemic itself, but little things that happened or were noticed during the pandemic.

Duration: 04:27