Experiment 2 — Part 2

Initially, I thought this was a landscape oriented photo, with the dark triangle shape being like a pine-tree outside a window. It was only when I remembered what I had taken photos of and went looking for the broom picture that I realized what this was.

In the process of deciphering these photos for myself—Rotating them, twisting my head, squinting my eyes... sometimes they only became something intelligible when considered alongside another photo, taken in the same place, at the same time...

That's how this window picture became a window picture. As well as the photo of karyna and I. I took those photos in a classroom at the election, after voting. It was only once I brought them together that they collectively provided enough clues to make them make sense to me—to reactivate the memory of what they were, allowing me to then fill in some of the blanks...

There’s also something interesting about how like… the photos that remain legible are largely those that are like, the least personal, I guess? The ones that contain something highly recognizable, like a building.

Some of the more complex photos, particularly my double exposures… they make no sense, even if I do sketch in the details that are missing, because the details are incoherent—it’s more than one photo at once.

This speaks to (or makes me think of) how our experiences from the margins often need to be flattened—how the complexity is lost or is like rendered illegible, idk how to explain...

^well, precisely that, actually. That which cannot be neatly explained, rendered intelligible.

There are things that will only make sense and be knowable to the one who knows it from experiencing it—living that thing that is maybe difficult to make out, understand (at least fully).
Experiences that are layered… but particularly/specifically, I'm really thinking about experiences that are complex... Sometimes because of that layering, I guess. But also maybe something else...

A thing happening, informed by what is already happening, or something that has happening... the background, the horizon... things you might not see, things that are felt, things that can only be seen by squinting your eyes and tilting your head a little (an integral part of attempting to illustrate these drawings. Lots of squinting, head tilting, backing up, zooming in, looking at it from different angles in an attempt to see it, see what else it there, to see what is and isn't...)

And this process of trying to draw in the photos that were double exposures, it made me think about how like, sometimes even efforts to render it intelligible, to make it knowable and visible, end up making it harder to see that thing... make it harder to understand what is going on. Sometimes, maybe, this is necessary.

I'm thinking here of like...There are so many times where I have a thing I wanted to say, to talk about or write about, but saying it and actually being heard, actually communicating all of what it is that I am trying to say in this thing I'm saying...it requires first delivering all of this other context. Providing all that stuff that allows me to form a lens through which this thing can be understood, brought into focus, particularly for like, an unfamiliar audience, I guess?

And sometimes it’s like… if I say the thing without sharing all this other stuff that gives it meaning (or makes its meaning legible), then there is no point in saying it, because it isn’t getting at what I mean.

But if I share what makes it meaningful, then it’s as if I have these two, three, four things going on at once. It seems unfocused.

I have to sacrifice what I mean to say, sacrifice the focus on what I want to focus on, in order to produce something “focused”.

idk if that makes sense

I feel this a lot, in my writing. In my explaining. Sometimes what it takes to provide the context within which the thing I want to get to can actually make sense, itself, forms a whole body, leaves no place to get to the next thing
And then if I do get to the next thing, the work is seen as imprecise, not focused enough

What it takes to bring certain things into focus requires a focusing elsewhere… requires this time spend, split…
So then what it takes to make a “focused” work is sometimes to not focus… idk how to explain.

And like... There's also something about like… wanting it to make sense? To someone other than me?

I want you to know what I know, know what I see there (even if you can’t see it, even if it’s barely visible).

And then the blank photos, things that aren’t visible at all, but that were experienced nonetheless. Things I can only ever tell you about, but could never show you directly....