What is "I am ________"?

I am _______ is an interactive photography installation that combines an artists gift for collecting visual and written stories with a community collaboration that culminates in the creation of large scale installation work.
During the Art City festival in Austin, Texas in Spring 2008 artists will capture Polaroid portraits of festival goers. Participants will be invited to react to the prompt “I am ______.” and create a statement that describes themselves (in any context they wish). This written statement and image will be cleverly combined and presented with the photograph.

Once the photographic and written records have been made by the festival audience and photographer they will be displayed. A clear stark cube, 8ft by 8ft, that stands freely on the Art City site will become the display venue. Participants in the project will contribute their creation to the display. Inside the cube will be an performance artist diligently hanging the photos and statements, in a pixel- like arrangement, to be seen from the outside of the cube. As the festival and installation progress the surface of the cube will fill and the view of the performance artist will slowly disappear. The work will transform over time- as it grows as a community installation the view of the individual performance artist fades away.

Through this progression of the work the “I am_______.” statements find themselves together in the cube. They create a community of photographs where the “I am ________” becomes less obvious and together they grow into a statement about the community itself. The cube becomes a representation of “We are _______”. The installation demonstrates how the contributions of the individual create the community.

The project will not only occupy the time and space of the event. A web presence will be established to both promote and record the work. Prior to the event local artist and individuals will be photographed and asked to complete the statement “I am __________.” These images will live on the web as an encouragement for festival attendees to participate in the project.
After the completion of project, and in the true nature of displaying the work in a public venue, all the images will be displayed on the web.

For this project a local photographer with a unique eye and nostalgic lens captures the stories of people and places with the help of a special tool- the polaroid camera. The instant creation of the image in a Polaroid has intrigued people for decades.  In today's technically savvy public, where instant creation of images is done with pocket sized devices from music players to cellular phones, the unique quality and imagery created by the polaroid remains appealing and intriguing. This artists desire to tell stories in this unique way is combined with a second artists desire to work on community based projects in site specific large scale settings. Audience participation and the unique manner of display allows this work, to explode in scale and become personally relevant to an entire community.

Cybil's Artist Statement:
I am a visual artist and educator by study and a dancer-choreographer by passion and practice. As an artist, I am primarily interested in creating unique works that incorporate and combine unconventional mediums to express ideas or realize artistic intentions or themes.
I’ve had the fortune of working in many mediums, from painting, metalsmithing, drawing, dance and sculpture. An inability to find artistic fulfillment in just one medium has led my work to continually experiment with mixing mediums. For several years Irealized this through collage and assemblage, more recently I have worked in the medium of site specific performance art and dance. The choice of dance has served my art in several ways: In addition to aligning with recent themes in my work, dance has allowed me to expand the scale and collaborative opportunities of my art. Through working on larger scale sight specific dance pieces with First Night Austin I have aspired to realize this type of a project beyond (but sometimes still including) the medium of dance.
Just as I am interested in combining mediums I am also interested in the process of collaborating with artists, the public, organizations and other entities to create works. My most recent work had a strong element of audience participation. The Bus Line Dance performance culminated in the community joining trained dancers in a line dance which they had several opportunities to learn prior to the event (YouTube instructional video, workshops, distributed print piece). Collaboratively generated work finds the delicate balance between compromise and individuality, between process and product. These elements add immeasurable depth and richness to a work.
Iam ________. is a community based creation combining large scale sculpture, the exploration of new mediums and collaboration not only with another artist but also with the audience- the Austin community.

Jackie's Artist Statement:
I am moved by finding treasures. Especially treasures that have a story to tell.
I have always been interested in people and objects that have a story to tell. Not
particularly stories with a beginning, middle and end, but rather timeless stories. The
first timeless story I remember “hearing” was through a collage I found that my mother
made when she was a teenager. It hangs in the backroom of the cabin her family bought
in the early 60’s.
It is a loud piece, boisterous in imagery, and water damaged. It is monochromatic, and
still hangs by its original tacks. The collage itself is hideous, but tells a story of teenage
longing, yellow thick sunsets, and sweaty palms.
The feeling of finding such a treasure and understanding its message years after it was
created is something I have always tried to emulate in my photographs.
I have a BA in English Literature and Photo Communications. Ever since I can
remember, I’ve been a collector of stories, both through words and images. I became
enthralled with shooting film in college, embracing digital technology, but only secretly.
I was too attached to the idea of handmade, hand processed, tangible photos to give in
completely. Losing my darkroom and spending hours combing through bins at Thrift
stores led me to shoot Polaroids.
The biggest test of my ability to shoot with the intention to emulate a time period
or feeling of nostalgia came to me when I purchased a land camera from the 1960s that
was fully loaded with 40 year old film. I am moved to create treasures, to shoot
photographs that make people yearn for a place in time, or a specific time in their life.