2010 | anticipation1 minute 48 seconds
Everyday humans feel anticipation about the future… whether it's the next moment…30 years from now…a life-altering event…a mundane occurrence... Although we have the capacity for foresight, most, if not all, future events in our lives have elements of uncertainty and risk. When confronting this uncertainty, our body language (a simple hand gesture, movement of the shoulders, cross of the legs, tap of the foot) reveals the complexity of our emotional responses. These anticipatory, or future-oriented emotions, can take the form of hope, fear, suspense, or anxiety, and often a mixture of these emotions.
In this piece, I use video collage to montage human body language with events that are both uncertain (balloon movements and the moment of their pops) and certain (the fact that the balloons will pop). Balloons are airy, ephemeral objects given as gifts to both children and adults and often mark significant events in one's life. Their lives are often short-lived, however, because they will inevitably pop or shrivel unexpectedly. By collating video performances with balloon movements, I hope to convey the multiplicity of human's emotional and bodily reactions to feeling both fear and excitement simultaneously.