Handmade and Personal: A Companion Piece to Here, Mom (A Video Art Project)

Abstract

This paper serves as an introspective commentary on the conceptualization, development, and realization of Here, Mom, an experimental video art project. This project's research in the cinematic arts, art history, contemporary art, creative writing, and feminist theories developed objectives to work within an artistic medium that allows one to explore the fragmentation of the past and how memories and experiences take shape within our present realities; enrich and expand my understanding of the representational and social language and possibilities of film and apply them on and off screen; to merge the visual form of cinema with the literary form of memoir by enacting experimentation with the video essay format, all to expand the definition of the documentary film form.