/Vanitas/, Illustrations

Dixon Place in NY,
2017


Illustration made for the performance /Vanitas/ text and poster. The project was presented in Dixon Place in NY

/VANITAS/ explores the multitudes contained within the internet — the near infinite database of people, ideas, images — all refracted into a single beam composed of and pointed at the user. Directed by Naomi Boyce, the piece handles slippery notions of scale and materiality beautifully as it navigates between infrastructure space, internet abstractions, and our own bodies. It is not moralizing; it is exploratory. The writer, Zachary Small, emphasizes in the program that the audience must let the work wash over them rather than seek to make sense of what they’re seeing. While /VANITAS/ is constructed, like poetry, to eschew narrative, the work nonetheless has numerous movements and declarations stand out as unnervingly familiar. This is no robotic tale; it breeds empathy.


Director: Naomi Boyce
Text: Zachary Small
Images: Inga Aleknaviciute


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