Nostalgia is a centre point to the work; the Blingee-profiles of the MySpace and Bebo era and the title which is derived from South Park’s Member Berries; a talking fruit that reminds you of the ‘good ol’ days’. Some of the images used however are ones native to today’s (American and New Zealand) pop culture, Filipino culture and my personal interests. The Tinder format evokes a hard-lined approach to identity construction, forcing me to choose which aspects of myself I can drop or keep.
How Filipino am I?
How Kiwi am I?
How problematic can my problematic fave be? Before I quit them that is.
I only love pre-Taylor Swift Tom Hiddleston.
One does not simply justify their support for Trump… …But one can with Lady Gaga.
Did Katy Perry really f*ck up the bi label?
How can I make veganism cruelty free?
With the tumultuous events namely within politics happening, people are scrambling to rigid cultural markers; upheavals that forced everyone to re-evaluate what or who they identify with. Philip Gleason’s text about the 60’s American identity crisis fits this issue once again as he talks about how “the national crisis brought about a re-examination on a massive scale of the relationship between individual and society”. It was a social, political and cultural crisis; brought about by racial violence, protests, abuse of political power, betrayal of the public trust, etc. We may have a repeat of events but with this catalyst there is an opportunity of fluidity. Not everything can be rigidly defined with just as how hard it is for me to answer the questions above. Nostalgia is alluring but regressing to the past yields nothing. This work provokes and celebrates complexities within complexities, intersectionality and individuality.
Mariadelle |Abbey| Gamit 