Professor Tenneriello's Seminar 1, Fall 2023

human

https://photos.app.goo.gl/HcdgpGoVgAEqVwMc7

Nothing is ours to keep foreverForever, we borrow time

We borrow trends

Fashion trends

Fashion becomes food

Decorated china and green leaves sprinkled on noodles

We eat food

And then it is gone

But our bodies are fueled

Fueled with energy

We play sports

We dream of filled arenas or running far

We build teams and make friends

We bring those friends home

Home to our families

Keys are a sacred thing

Because there is only one set to our heart

They say that art is complicated

But it’s not complicated

Art is human

And humans are simple

We wear, we eat, we play, and we come home

We are all the same and yet so very different

And that is what makes us human.

Our project is meant to make you feel a bit uncomfortable, perhaps even offended. We chase, aspire to be unique and different, but we all end up being almost exactly identical. Identical. From the late 16th century, from medieval Latin identicus, from late Latin identitas (see identity). Identity. How can we create our identity in a world where we are identical? It is in what we share that makes us different.

My fashion is art. My food is art. My sport is art. My home is art. We find art in each of the things that we do and it is this definition and this perspective that makes us unique. Everyone either put on their glasses, ate their food, threw their ball, or took out their keys.

Yet no two people in the video wore the same shoes or threw the same ball.

In these small differences among these sweeping similarities, we find humanity. We find humanity in the art of life. We find art in experience and in identity. And the circle continues. We are all different but also the same. Are you offended yet?

Does our identity lie in the glasses we wear, created by some other person we have never met? Does our identity lie with the food we consume created by someone else? Does our identity lie in the sport we play created by the James Naismiths of the world? Does our identity lie in the home of the people we must make time to see? Are you offended yet?

Some version of you existed some time ago. Another version of you will exist in the future. We will overcome problems that have already been solved and others will come to the same solutions another day in the future, as though everything you did never truly mattered in the first place. And that is why history repeats itself. Are you offended yet?

Another version of our project existed some time ago. A project on “home.” Now, the context is different and the message is unique. Do they have a right to coexist?

And so the only thing left to do is to march on to the drum of life, living in false hope and a false reality of believing that we can actually create something new and something different even though we cannot. Are you offended yet?

2 Comments

  1. janavedano05

    I found the video project to be really interesting and well put-together. The editing was great, and the sequence of videos captured the theme well. The most interesting thing to me was actually in the manifesto, the idea that history will always repeat itself. I think that’s an important realization because as much as we do pass on knowledge from generation to generation, we can’t pass on personal experiences in the same, effective way. We can tell people about historical events and the consequences, but we can’t tell future generations about personal experiences because everyone’s circumstances are different, and one solution may not work for the next generation as well as it did for the first. We end up circling back and solving the same problems until we have grown and matured, and begin to handle much bigger issues, which is when we need to pay close attention to history.

  2. elliegillis

    Your video is very well edited and thought out. I like how cohesive it is with your manifesto, where everything flows together and shows how one idea leads to another and connects all of us through our art and expressions. It was very cool to see how different everyone’s takes on art were, and how even when people shared similar ideas no two responses were exactly the same.

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