“The Immediacy Needs of Hearing People, My Sounds are Synthetic” 2019, Video-Art / Animation
This is new video art / animation piece that was created specifically as a reaction to a recent experience that I had.
99% of the time I don’t wear hearing aids whilst in transit, (Ill elaborate more on this later) which means that I cant hear anything. No sound. At around 7:40 AM a man frantically jumped onto my Manhattan bound LIRR train & aggressively began shouting towards me. His mood escalated drastically as I scrambled to read his lips as he repeated himself.
I instantly gestured that I was deaf and also used my voice to assert this, (I soon processed and realized in the fast, fierce exchange that he was asking if he was on the right train) the person next me intervened and confirmed his request.
Upon confirmation his shoulders relaxed, he then allowed for them to lower as looked me dead in the face and rolled his eyes and shook his head at me. He moved to another car on the train despite the fact that there were many available seats for him. My inner voice began repeating to me, “How does this make you feel?” I peeked over my should to notice the man sitting next to me as he mouthed the words “sorry”..
I thought to myself, this is 2019.. I don’t linger in this kind of energy itself, and I can forgive really quickly, but the reaction and level of obliviousness in people staggers me. Where is the kindness? Or, how can people be so ignorant and simply make so many assumptions. But of course, we are human, and we need to do better, we need to advocate and bring awareness. As I reflect on this scenario (which is sadly pretty common) Im left with the question of : “how can these moments/situations of immediacy be handled better?” I can place myself in that persons shoes, but why not vice- versa? I can think of 1,000 reasons for why this man may have been late for his train, or stressed about an appointment he may be late for if he misses the train, but why is the inability of another human’s response time duration be the so harshly scolded, in public space no less.
I made this video art piece to express the situation and my experience. This is a video preview but the works are intended to be set to loop as an infinite reminder. Can you decode the elements, objects and fragmented metaphors?
