In fact, Lee doesn’t take these photos. She asks someone else in the group to do it, reversing her role from photographer to model and passing herself off as one of their own.
In my work this year, I want to examine and explore how acts of identification and passing can expose or subvert the power dynamics that conventionally define culture. I want to question who owns language, culture, and identity, and re-envision how they are created, recreated and shared.
In a social context, passing demands audience participation and validation. You can’t pass in a vacuum.
Successful passing conventionally goes undetected. But when passing fails, that is, when the act of passing is revealed, it becomes a transgressive act by blurring the boundaries between cultural or social spaces.
In fact, Lee doesn’t take these photos. She asks someone else in the group to do it, reversing her role from photographer to model and passing herself off as one of their own.
So in this sense, passing implies movement—between communities, spaces or contexts.
I am hiding in plain sight. As the child of immigrant parents, I learned early on how to navigate through various social and cultural spaces. I have always felt like a chameleon, moving among these spaces by changing my gestures, language and visual markers, trying to pass with varying degrees of success. Passing acknowledges the norms and stereotypes associated with particular cultural or social environments.
At first glance Gondry’s “Star Guitar” imagery looks recognizable. Like passing scenery shot plainly from a train window — until the trees and buildings start moving past in time to the music; the transformation of parts into a virtual landscape. The parts representing notation become as noticeable as the musical whole.