Naomi Mendoza - Emancipation

GPGvirtual: Video

I made this work because I had to...

I had to do something with what I was feeling...

I had been triggered...

Bob Marley sang ‘Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds’.

I used a feedback loop to shift myself from one state of being to another, because whilst I cannot control the world around me, I can control how I react to it.

I have always been intrigued by natural phenomena and patterns, and by how patterns in nature reappear in how humans construct, manufacture and move through the world; so that the fundamental process of a feedback loop (Input, Action, Effect) seen in everything from a single cell organism to animal, environmental, chemical, and celestial bodies is built into behavioural modification systems, computational programs, and social networks.

I do not own what occurs in Nature, but I hope to become more conscious of the Universal mind and enjoy learning about its intelligence.

Some formal elements of the work:

The unapologetic low fi-ness is my unapologetic right to feel, express and heal.

The deteriorating and stretching of the audio visual is me finding something... the light in the dark.

The movements and sounds of my presence signal that you are now in my personal space.

Naomi Mendoza is from Trinidad and Tobago. She is a Performance / Visual Artist currently practising on Meeanjin land. She acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which she is, the Turrbal people of Meeanjin and pays her respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Thanks to Jacob, Lola, Jamie, Sean, Sandie, Damien, Peta, Jenna, Hincey, ACCA, University of Melbourne, George Paton Gallery, the late great Robert Nesta.

Original footage courtesy Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.