THOMPSONSPF10RESEARCH

Lecture: Tuesday, November 2 at 3:00 PM at the Grace Street Theater

Working in mediums such as performance art, do you feel that you are limiting your work to a select audience? If there was a way to express your complex ideas in a medium that could reach the masses would you choose to do so?

Unanswered

You said that in a sense you think of yourself as the last living amateur psychoanalysis. Do you feel that art in general analyzes the viewer instead of the viewer analyzing the work? If not, do you feel that art should analyze the viewer more?

“I’m not really sure if my art analyzes the viewer. I honestly haven’t thought about it in that way. That’s very interesting. Often I am not there when people view my art so I cannot be analyzing them or seeing if the art is.”

“With Freudian views on dreams becoming less popular among the scientific community and with new theories more widely accepted do you feel that you will do more work on dreams reflecting those new beliefs?”

“I find Freud’s beliefs fantastical and it is much more like storytelling. I might revisit working with dreams but I am not sure.”

“There’s always a grain of truth to my work, but I make my own past.”

“I wanted to put the audience in a position again as if seeing film for the first time.”

I find it compelling how Zoe demands control over her audience and does so through her choice in medium and what she decides to reveal about her process. Once she has control of her audience they are free to let their mind wonder in her world.

I am most interested in her ability to create work that causes the viewer to analyze their inner thoughts. I feel that most art is viewed on a higher level of awareness. If someone views a political piece of artwork they might be moved to learn more about a situation or take action. Zoe Beloff’s work seems to have the ability to cause the viewer to wonder why they feel the way they do about a subject matter or how their mind interprets what they see. I am curious if I could employ a method in my own work to cause my viewers to re-think their own belief system rather than just analyzing what I have created and relating their own experience to what is presented.

I also find it very interesting that she uses a form of method-acting to live other lives to create her work and embody a fictional character from her own mind. Some might see this as multiple-personality disorder, however I feel that it is storytelling and creativity at its roots.  

Mystery, Psychology, Internalization

I found this work most interesting to me since I created a pseudo name to use for some of my political art work (cit6039). It made me realize the potential power for creating work under someone else and how when I create ad's I am creating it under a businesses name until the viewer realized some of the subtle changes I have made to their logo and branding.  Zoe's work made me think of the possibilities of different mediums and how imitating and trying to fool your viewer has the power to alter their acceptance of everyday information that is presented to them once they realize they have been tricked.

I wonder how Zoe Beloff would feel if her documents she has created became part of history as an accurate representation about Coney Island. Would she feel that she altered our views of the past and in a sense changed the past?