Take Shelter
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Format: Found Footage, Carboard
Take Shelter is an installation piece that explores fear overtime and the transition from practical - primal fears, to abstract - existential fears. There’s an interesting through line between ones life as fears evolve and change based on life experiences.
The piece is made up of a large cardboard box with a screen and speakers hidden inside. Around the box, child like sketches of my fears with writings around the piece describing fears and times in my life that fear consumed my actions.
There are two openings to the inside of the cardboard fort. One of them can only be seen when one is on their knees, the size of a child. Inside, one sees a video interpreting a child’s anxiety of one of God’s biggest natural disaster, a tornado. Heartbeats, heavy breathing, and rising storms are sounds that come from both the video and the piece in its entirety. Sirens ring out in relation to the video. Above, the other opening can only be seen while standing up as a regular sized adult looking in. Inside is a self portrait with images scribbled around. At the top, 1043 dots are lined up in a neat row. The number 52 is hovering behind the self portrait. At the bottom, a quote from famed philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. All of these things represent more modern fears of death and existential choice. The dots at the top are the amount of weeks that I had been alive at that point in time. 52 was the age of both my parents at the time, with ellipses trailing into the darkness, symbolizing the void of death. My portrait stares into the face of the void as the quote from Kierkegaard rambles about the absurd idea of choice. These are my modern fears, hidden away inside the fort, same as my earliest fear.
Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.
- Søren Kierkegaard
