Alien Narratives

The Alien Narratives exhibition is a collaborative exhibition featuring interactive sonic workshops led by Hillary Erin Russell, TTU Fine Arts Doctoral Program – School of Art, and Patricia Jarrett, a local Lubbock artist. Through the metaphor of alien lifeforms, Alien Narratives explores what it means to be an alien and how ‘the alien’ is constructed. Participants are invited to consider their moments of alienation through different interactive workshops. In one workshop led by Hillary Erin Russell, participants can build an alien soundscape live in the space with different analog and digital sound materials. Another workshop station, led by Patricia Jarrett, will allow participants to construct and narrate their alien story. This creates a collaboration as the soundscapes and narratives weave together in space. Audience members can experience an alien world and story unfolding through sound. These multisensory experiences will help guide audience members to understand the embodied experience of someone made to feel alien.

Alienation

Alienation. Includes clips from various alien films and cartoons and archive video footage of the Japanese internment camps. This shows America’s history of political alienation and how social and cultural norms/expectations produce otherness.

On the Record

I found the released documents regarding the Roswell, New Mexico infamous UFO crash. Since the documents were redacted and of poor quality the words morphed into strange symbols when I translated them into svg files. Once they were translated I etched them onto records so that they could be on the record. I invited audience members to play the records at the Alien Narratives exhibition that ran from November-December 2022.

Lizary (collaborative work)

Over the course of the summer Liz Wierzbicki and I worked on pieces collaboratively and had an exhibition in October 2013 of those pieces. We focused on the idea of friendship and relationships and that at times the relationship is destined to fail but we each keep trying. It is the trying that tethers us back to each and makes the friendship stronger. The gestures included flying kites, blowing up balloons and braiding our hair together. The collaboration was important for each of the childhood gestures that we reenacted. Each of us played a role in the reenactment, at times the role was unequal but in each gesture both roles were crucial.

The majority of the reenactments are shown through video and an installation of the material needed or involved in the piece. The use of the relic is something I am attached to and video is part of Liz’s practice and so Lizary must need both in her practice.