x-routes, magnified (tho MOST sharp as a WHEN) is a site-specific video projection designed for display at Luggage Store Gallery for the Tropical Disturbance exhibition (January 19 – February 22, 2018).

As a member of a multi-generational family from Hawai’i, and a person of Azorean-Samoan heritage, I am interested in the unique frame of reference diasporic identity manifests and how it can be translated visually. There is a specific dysphoria that emanates from an island and lingers in its people, a sensation permanently embedded in one’s genetic material. By capturing footage of ocean surf at the origins of my cultural & ethnic heritage, a space of suspension between a past and future self is formed. An ontological tension is revealed through multiple views of the waters of Hawai’i and Portugal, caught midway between submerged and afloat, an unflinching perspective that glides from crest to trough in perpetuity. This condition is heightened by treating the video footage with circuit-bent analog filters, mixed live with stutters, glitches and washes of color that create a sense of the sublime – a spectacle that is both awe-inspiring and overwhelming. The act of such processing, of manipulating video signal, draws attention to the materiality of video as an analog to the composite & mutable nature of identity.

The waves’ relentless roll, the deafening crush and soft effervescence of surf, the mercurial reflections of sky and sand are amplified as glitch-heavy, prismatic visual metaphor, designed to arrest and elevate. This is a narrative of turbulence – one without trajectory, absent of identifiers, devoid of connotative elements that would typically guide a story of diaspora. It is a cyclical motion that speaks its truth as gentle washes and bad frames, codified errors and blurred horizons.