Trying

Quindo Miller
Trying, April 2, 2014
Marker on paper
Courtesy of the artist.

Quindo Miller attributes their ongoing interest in ritual, repetition, and isolation to their upbringing in rural Guam. For Endurance Text they chose a series of words to serve as the basis for a meditative practice, hoping to “analyze the transformation” of suggestive words like “love” and “release” through the repeated actions of handwriting. In I Am Great? their use of repetition shifts to include other people. With this video they hope to propose a “question about the perception of identity,” through an unusually close observation of nuanced moments when their subjects may or may not feel pressured to move “between self-confidence and anxiety” as they obey the artist’s request to say the words “I am great” into the staring eye of the camera.
(DKS)