Visual Fall, 2020

Interdisciplinary project bringing together movement studies, archival research, collage-making, and text. Inspired by early motion photography, scientific studies, and wrestling terminology, Visual Fall examines the phenomenology of aggression by looking at humans and birds in motion.

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I consider it necessary to observe birds for this research since scientific studies of aggression in humans has been built largely on discoveries first made in birds given that they have almost identical neuroendocrine system to us. On one hand, I am interested in working with raw materials such as home videos or amateur photographs to study the daily phenomenology of aggression and the environments in which such behavior is manifested. On the other hand, I question how criminal, mental or educational institutions have looked at and measured aggression. Since violence does not exist in isolation, this research aims to materialize the scientific, institutional or bystanders’ gazes shaping the ways of seeing human and animal actions. In this context, visual fall — a wrestling term that refers to a final winning move in a match that the crowd sees, but the referee does not — symbolizes visually present, but unaccounted practices in the studies of aggression.