As an artist, video is my medium and chroma-green surfaces are my canvas. Through “keying”, chroma-green can be the video artist's canvas because of its void-like and transformative qualities. Any surfaces with this contrasting color can be replaced with a new image, via the “interface” (or in other words, my software program Adobe Premiere Pro). This additive process is similar to how a painter uses the canvas as a platform for imagery. What are the surfaces that I utilize as canvases? Through performance, I use the surfaces of my own body for adding imagery – whether it is painting directly on my skin or using the art of projection. Projection, after all, is merely “a play on surface,” in the words of Guiliana Bruno. In Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media, she states that “film literally comes to life as light dancing on a surface-screen.” Projecting green light onto surfaces (my body, billowing fabrics, clothing, mirrors) further allows me to manipulate the image through the power of the interface.

I further explore the concept of artist as both image and image-maker by taking inspiration from Bertolt Brecht’s ‘alienation effect’. This theory is applied by making conscious and purposeful decisions of revealing the artistic process to the viewer. For me, this includes: not fully keying a chroma-green color, un-muting dialogue between the performer and recorder, and including theatre-like movements. All of these elements assist in triggering self-awareness for the viewer (“alienating” the viewer from what they are observing) to combat the passive action that can come from experiencing art. Revealing the process also further strengthens the idea that I, as performer, creator, and object, am both the image and the image-maker.

The natural use of keying allows for a double-exposure effect to surface. Therefore, my videos often resemble the components of a collage. I lean into this collage effect, looking at these “layers” I am making as colliding images on images, or ideas on ideas. I see my performance, as a body moving through this space of colliding worlds – being both the unifying “thread” (a familiar visual tether for the audience), as well as the manipulator of time and space. I both reinforce and thwart spatial and temporal grounded-ness for the viewer.