So Far.
Team Members:Â Taya Van Dyke, Riordan Huenemann, Megan Lane, Regina Zhang
Abstract
A collaboration between Taya Van Dyke, Riordan Huenemann, Megan Lane, and Regina Zhang, the project “So Far” was initially inspired by a calendar, accompanied with the implicated idea of “quarantine” and closely engaged with the concept of time, memory and future. The piece “So Far” is divided into two parts: one is the calendar from January to June of 2020; the other part is the conjecture about different time periods in the future made by the four collaborators.
The first part of the project focuses on exploring the concept of “past” which is implicated in the calendar. The calendar notes down the time from January 2020 to June 2020, a half year time, reflecting on the process of us living without the pandemic and being gradually affected by Covid. On each date, images, hand written notes, and drawings are defamiliarized in order to evoke certain moods and experiences. For individual images, there is also a link attached to it, as an extension for that mood and experience. However, the gaps and emptiness in the calendar implicate the absence of memory. The choice of images, links, colors, and image arrangement create a traceable memory curve for the past six month of 2020. When people click on these memories, they may also be pulled back into their own recollection curve. At this point, the calendar works as a trigger that stimulates the past memories and brings back certain emotions back to our bodies. However, as the months go on, even the notion of the calendar is defamiliarized as the dates become less and less visible; our attempts to track events and emotional experiences become futile as we note them down on a calendar that no longer seems to tell time.
The second part of the project focuses on exploring the concept of “future”, which is a natural extension of the concepts explored through the calendar. In the future part, the speculative futures vary from closer futures that feature the late 2020’s to a further future one thousand year after. In addition to sharing our visions of the future within the group, this section also invites others to observe and leave their reactions and interpretations in the google sheet. Although the epidemic has separated us for some time, in a way, we reunite through this project and imagine the future together as one entity.
