Video documentation from an ongoing public performance, "The Crying in Public Project": I ask strangers to to take a short video using my phone. This is often in front of tourist destinations where people have asked me to take their photo, but sometimes in mundane spaces, i.e. ordering a coffee. Instructions: "Film however you want, however long you want. Just a video capturing me in this space." I then break down in tears. What is captured is all up to the stranger - through the lens of their voyeurism and my phone. I have had to ask everyone to stop filming - no one has stopped on their own volition. The lens is a power anesthetic. I assume it doesn't feel "real" to many people (even though the channeled feelings are authentic), given our straddling of URL and IRL, and experiencing/seeing so much via our "fauxns". This work questions the lens as an anesthetic - how emotional performances IRL are reduced when seen via the screen, and the consequences of our current "hyperreality".

Another version of this piece, has continued throughout quarantine in the woods, with trees are my voyeurs. Source material: loneliness, a breakup, Mother's Day (grief), alienation, fear of feelings, distant love. At one point, it really felt like the Pines were crying along with me.