Allegra

My collection is about storytelling and non-verbal communication. I started out filming hands and stomachs as people told me a story but I was not thrilled about what I gathered so I looked for a new body part to explore gesture with. This led to me to backs and shoulders. I started filming my own back as I told a story and was really pleased with the different movements and gestures that came out but it wasnt quite coming together as a project right away. After experimenting more with croping and filming conditions I started to film in the dark with a spotlight that accentuates the musculature. Then I was ready to really start filming and thanks to my lovely host brothers, Mike and Jonathan, I have recorded the gestures of our three backs as well all tell a story.

What the actual story told was not important to me because I am interested to see how our movements relate and play off each other taken out of their original context. Will they still communicate a narrative or emotion? As I work on the new narrative of our combined "story" I am working with similar gestures that we all made and the differences between the movement and shapes of our backs. Lastly, I had considered recording a new story--different than the original three--to play with the video. But now as I am bringing the video together I am more interested in the abstraction of the narrative. Backs, especially a naked back, is intimate and private and bringing out to be the main, or only, form of communication is arresting without any other audio. To get a better idea of my upcoming video project see some of the film stills I have linked.