User:Se Jo Spring 2008
Greeting, Little People.
I am a senior BFA Photography and BFA Art History major in the School of Fine Arts at OU. I'm also a Precollege Advisor/Team Leader for the Precollege program.
At the end of this quarter I will have my Thesis Exhibition for my photography degree, and I am also completing a 10-page Thesis paper to elaborate on my work. Much of my research and artwork has been focused around the concept of humans as a species of animals - we have instincts and subconscious systems of interaction with one another (body language, pheromones, etc.) More specifically, my work focuses on our inability to ever be "outisde" the laws of nature - we are inherently part of nature, and will always be subject to natural laws.
To this end, I focus heavily on the concept of "disaster" - how we perceive it and the role it plays, not just in our daily lives, but in our species and the global ecosystem we are part of.
For my exhibition I am creating a video installation that utilizes footage I appropriate entirely from YouTube - in this way I will only be using video that is important enough to have been edited and uploaded by someone other than myself.
This footage will result in two videos. The first depicts humans inflicting negative effects on nature (including pollution, de-forestation, nuclear testing, human-on-animal and human-on-human violence, etc.)
The second video will depict a similar collection of clips, but they will depict negative effects being inflicted on humans by nature (including hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, famines, animal-on-human violence and - again - a wide array of human-on-human violence.
The presentation of both sides of this coin, so to speak, will communicate our species, not as superior or separated from nature, but rather a truly integral factor. We may see our actions as a species as positive or negative, but outside the realm of human interpretation our role on this planet plays out according to the laws of nature, and our input into that system.