Act III: Cameras
In Scene III: The Dance Studio, I wrote that Instagram's "house" is inside my silver full-length mirror—where I used to take nearly daily outfit pictures for my Instagram stories in 2021 and 2022. Not only had I personified Instagram as a character in my mind, now I had a very tangible personification, too. I began filming video experiments with mirrors and beveled glass to visually show how navigating reality is distorted and confusing when my Instagram account is both a real and not-real reflection of my own world. Around the same time, I dove deep into home video, photo, and writing archives from my childhood to understand more about my history of performing for an audience.
The creative possibilities were only growing. First, "Poems for Instagram" didn't seem big enough...but as the clock ticked 2024 and I started to see February getting closer and closer, "Prose for Instagram" didn't seem big enough, either.
Video
When I am driven to create, it's usually because I am seeking answers to usually unanswerable questions. Some of the questions I am exploring here include: What happens when mirrors interact with each other? Is what we see in a reflected surface real, not real, or somewhere in between? How is a childhood VHS tape similar to or different from an Instagram reel? Where is the line between performance and documentation, or is there a line at all?
