Daniel Pavis BFA Thesis Fall 2015

Other Space

The invasion is a revolution. A resisted, forced movement toward a new framework. “The sound” referenced in Ben Marcus’ text featured in the short film I created is the beginning of such a revolution. Quiet at first, barely noticeable, people are unbothered by it. It’s inconvenient to pay it any mind, we’re all busy with our own lives. Then there is a desire to understand its code, to study it, to assess the potential mobilization of “the others.” Is the sound brainwashing us? Is our apathy opposition or assimilation?

Invasion is related to colonization. An unwanted colonizing gesture. The threat of the other coming into the imperial safe space of the somatic norm. An alien in a consecrated space – a space invader – is a body out of place. It is a metaphor that I am crafting for a queer person existing within a heteronormative culture. Can I thrive here? As a queer person inhabiting a binary system, so is the human inhabiting an alien world, so is the alien inhabiting the human world of cultural fictions and acceptable gendered bodies. The process of recognizing otherness is displacing. A distance of light years reveals itself.

Fantasies of futurism are reliant on heterosexual reproduction – there is no space for queerness in it. In that sense, queering the future is displacing it from a matrix that is maintained by compulsory heterosexuality. The presence of idealist utopian aesthetics in this project is a critique of the present order. Queer utopianism is a refusal of the here and now in favor of the future.

In this installation, I’m making a reality that’s mine. A science fictional utopia that contains a supernatural arena of displacement, a virtual landscape of fantasy, dreams, metaphors, and desires. It is dislocating of the body and the mind to not be able to fulfill the role of understanding the codes, rules, and systems that make up this world. It is A realm that invites you to look closely, but through a telescope, from galaxies away.

Jacqueline Ko BFA Thesis Fall 2015

Carly Mandel BFA Sculpture Thesis Fall 2015

Daniel Pavis BFA Thesis Fall 2015

Nathaniel Smith BFA Photography Thesis Fall 2015

Aimee Skaer BFA General Fine Arts Thesis Fall 2015

Tara Williams BFA Painting Thesis Fall 2015

Marybel Martin BFA Painting Thesis Fall 2015

Lindsey Butler BFA General Fine Arts Thesis Fall 2015

Anthony Anello BFA Illustration Thesis Fall 2015

William Leetham BFA Sculpture Thesis Fall 2015

Jackson Ward BFA Intermedia Thesis Fall 2015

Emmeline Eao BFA Printmaking Thesis Fall 2015

Madeline Loftesnes BFA Animation Thesis Fall 2015