I know I mentioned this in class, but I thought it would be a good way to start off this post. Thursday morning, I bumped into Ilizar on the train and we ended up talking about our self-portraits. I remember him giving me a very humble response, saying something along the lines of “I’ll just be drumming with my drumsticks. Nothing big really”. After watching his self-portrait, I saw it was the complete opposite.
Already from the beginning, Ilizar’s self-portrait was unique because he started off with an entrance (Sorry again for not catching that on video!). He strolled in with his backpack singing some tune. We then got to see a glimpse into Ilizar’s daily life. He puts down his backpack, his headphones, keys and wallet before going on to make something for himself to eat/drink. Although we weren’t allowed to use spoken word, his single utterance of “OMG!” really emphasized his arms flailing in the air and jumped backwards. He takes out his laptop and books to do his work while beat-boxing and tapping on the table and his thighs. He also took out his drumsticks, which surprisingly he never used during the performance. He writes a bit on his To-Do list, before he starts typing to a very catchy rhythm on his laptop, while tapping his foot at the same time. At this point, he is very focused but he seems a bit frustrated.
This is when he starts clearing his table, first of his school stuff. He then looks at his drumsticks and makes the facial expression “Drumsticks? I can do without them”. As he plugs his headphones, he is still concentrated, but in a more relaxed way. He starts tapping on the table and tapping his foot, putting aside the pencil he was tapping with and his glasses. I really liked the transition of a really cluttered table in the beginning to a bare table at the end. Although Prof. Uchizono told us to rehearse our self-portrait, all of Ilizar’s rhythms seemed improvised which made it all the more impressive. At the end, he even incorporated asking for how much time had passed as talking to himself, which made it not disruptive. Ilizar’s self-portrait was an exciting, rhythmic show for us to watch.
I felt that Ilizar’s and my self-portrait had a common theme. Both of us presented two different sides of ourselves. For me, it was solving Science Olympiad: Physics problems and baking. For him, it was completing tasks on his To-Do list, which made him seem very organized, and drumming. I think this showed how we enjoyed doing things that were structural, but others that were more creative in nature. Baking and drumming were our ways of relaxing and putting our minds off work for a bit. I also noticed that we incorporated work with play. I would problem-solve while waiting for my cupcakes to be done, while he tapped out a few rhythms while working. We both had the show component, my cupcakes and the latter half of his self-portrait, but we also were in our own worlds before that. What I like is that although we had similar ideas, our self-portraits came across differently because of our interests and really revealed who we were.
~Erica Kwong (Blog B)
