Steven Gonzalez BFA Video & Sound Thesis Spring 2015
Fragments of Desire
For my thesis, I have created an exhibition space that contains artifacts, documents, of my exchanges with men over online mobile applications created primarily to facilitate casual sex. These documents take the form of three separate components: video, photography, and prints on fabric. Though these components are very different in their materiality; nevertheless they are unified through an overarching theme of using these online exchanges and manipulating them into more tangible, physical, works of art. The content of my work is composed of mined information from various messages passed between other men and myself. The conversations that occur are responses to how I portray myself on a digital platform and the intimate physical relationships that develop as a result of these conversations are what interest me most. Through my artistic practice and research, I aimed to unveil the subjectivity of online identities and call in to question what does it means to desire and be desired through these digital mediums and what sort of human experiences can be gained.