2016.xlsx
2016.xlsx on view at the Trust Arts Education Center, Pittsburgh, PA 2017.
For an entire year, I entered every monetary transaction I made into an excel spreadsheet. I found myself sucked into the spreadsheet for hours longer than intended, but I recognized the activity resulted in a sense of satisfaction not unlike getting lost in painting on a canvas or weaving on a loom. This process of grueling hand-recorded data collection as self-portraitures something I am deeply interested in, as opposed to writing a program or using an app that could easily generate a similar visual result.
Each receipt is a transaction record linked to a place I’ve been, experience I had, an object I own or gave away, a food ingested or shared. The video was made using Quicktime Player’s screen recording feature, which I used to record myself scrolling in the spreadsheet document. I layered and overlapped these recordings to fill the screen of my laptop to created an overwhelming composition that I consider as both a personal self-portrait and universal ode to a year’s worth of living compressed into a digital file.
Each receipt is a transaction record linked to a place I’ve been, experience I had, an object I own or gave away, a food ingested or shared. The video was made using Quicktime Player’s screen recording feature, which I used to record myself scrolling in the spreadsheet document. I layered and overlapped these recordings to fill the screen of my laptop to created an overwhelming composition that I consider as both a personal self-portrait and universal ode to a year’s worth of living compressed into a digital file.
Screen capture of 2016.xlsx. View video exerpt : https://vimeo.com/199933496
2020.xlsx
Throughout all of 2017, 2018, 2019, and up to the present moment this work was made in 2020, I have continued this process. The video below features January - August 2020. I keep waiting for an elusive (or nonexistent) perfect moment to stop and reflect on the past five years. There is a pandemic raging on, I’m terrified the tyrant who was elected the year I started this work could be re-elected, and the world is burning literally and figuratively due to the climate crisis. This work was recently on view at the Generator Space in Omaha, NE as part of the show @VIRAL_RE_COLLECTION.
I no longer work at an ice cream shop, or have a cat, or the car that I junked for $400, or those rollerblades I got on Craigslist. I sold them to a friend when I moved to Pittsburgh from Chicago. I’ve kept making yearly spreadsheets like this but they are all digital. 2016.xlsx is the only one printed on four yards of fabric.
These artworks were never meant to be art. They were just my anxiety manifest. Maybe one day I’ll unfurl 2017 and 2018 and 2019 and 2020. Till then, yes, I’d like a receipt please.
I no longer work at an ice cream shop, or have a cat, or the car that I junked for $400, or those rollerblades I got on Craigslist. I sold them to a friend when I moved to Pittsburgh from Chicago. I’ve kept making yearly spreadsheets like this but they are all digital. 2016.xlsx is the only one printed on four yards of fabric.
These artworks were never meant to be art. They were just my anxiety manifest. Maybe one day I’ll unfurl 2017 and 2018 and 2019 and 2020. Till then, yes, I’d like a receipt please.