In Like A Lion
Summer 2022 (The View); Observations on weather and life as recorded by my mother. This is the 4th installment of an ongoing collaboration that explores ideas around direct observation, documentation, and technology. From June 1, 2022-June 30, 2022, my mother is taking over my Instagram account to share her daily observations. She is using social media for the first time. In 2021, she also faced a handful of life changes that have created challenging obstacles to her independence.
In Like a Lion: Summer 2022 (The View), Instagram feed (digital photographs, text, video), duration: June 1-June 30, 2022
Text Messages, Maura Jasper/Maureen Jasper, Aug 2021-January 2022
Production image In Like A Lion: Summer 2012 (Observations), Maura Jasper, 2012
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In Like a Lion: Summer 2012 (Observations), I bought my mother an iPhone and asked her to use it to gather information and record the world around her, as part of her daily weather reports. At the time I was also thinking a lot about weather as a metaphor for something that we try to control and understand through science and technology. It took two years to make sense of the twelve hours of footage and the hundreds of images she collected. The script for the film is a set of 18 Observations that I wrote in response to the quote below and my mother’s footage in relation to “pictures” and “information”.
Thus to see and to be shown, is now the will and now expectancy of half mankind. - Henry Luce, from A Prospectus For a New Magazine (LIFE), 1936 |
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"To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things- machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work- his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, the women that men love and many children, to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed, to see and be instructed;"
In Like a Lion: Summer 2012 (Observations), NTSC video, sound 37:09, 2014 Directed and written by: Maura Jasper
Camera: Maureen Jasper
Editing: Maura Jasper
Camera: Maureen Jasper
Editing: Maura Jasper
Maura Jasper's Artist Statement:
Working primarily with video, performance and participatory projects, my work explores the intersections of history, pop culture and mass media as influences that inform our individual and collective sense of self. Much of my work involves or is inspired by the lives of regular people. Works range from large-scale participatory projects to studies of people and place inspired by historical documents and archives. Oftentimes the work functions as a bridge between art and non-art experiences by inviting participation and bringing people back into the process of cultural production. By taking on the trappings of mass media forms not normally considered art –such as, karaoke, aerobics instruction, or weather reports, these forms become vehicles for empowerment, ones that function as backdrops in which each individual’s stories, dreams, and expectations can unfold.
Working primarily with video, performance and participatory projects, my work explores the intersections of history, pop culture and mass media as influences that inform our individual and collective sense of self. Much of my work involves or is inspired by the lives of regular people. Works range from large-scale participatory projects to studies of people and place inspired by historical documents and archives. Oftentimes the work functions as a bridge between art and non-art experiences by inviting participation and bringing people back into the process of cultural production. By taking on the trappings of mass media forms not normally considered art –such as, karaoke, aerobics instruction, or weather reports, these forms become vehicles for empowerment, ones that function as backdrops in which each individual’s stories, dreams, and expectations can unfold.
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