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A TV series and Youtube Webshow called "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared". It's a satirical horror comedy that subverts the typical educational kids show format. I adore this show for both it's writing and art direction. The visuals are stunning and they communicate the uncanny, absurd and sometimes terrifying world of the show perfectly. It's a balance of nostalgic and refreshing that is hard to find in media. Especially in works that portray the aesthetics of children's concepts for an adult audience. Also its uncanny humor and tone is incredibly funny and charming. I always come back to watch this show just to rediscover my adoration for it again.

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Uri Zamir is an artist I discovered in Künstlerhaus Bethanien during the trip to Berlin. His style immediately caught my attention and I fell in love with every single work in the exhibition. What captured me the most was his balance of humor and the grotesque. I also really enjoyed the way he combined the medium of sculpture with antique items associated with the upper class. By subverting these items with absurd imagery, they loose their honored position, which is a very clever way to further satirize what we view as sacred.

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A Studio Classroom assignment where I had to make a "Mind Map" of my creative journey. By playing pool, I'm trying to understand and incorporate art movements into my practice and 'win'. It is a gamified depiction of how I tackle and research art, because I treat experimentation as 'play'.

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By far one of my favorite pieces of media ever. Ever since I watched "Severance", I couldn't get it out of my head. I fell in love with everything this show had to offer, from it's theme's to visuals, directing and writing. I think what captured me the most was it's unique way of storytelling. Severance doesn't rush to fill the viewer's head with information, it throws us into the world and we are left to slowly figure things out just like the characters we follow. I believe why I gravitated towards it so much is because the themes of alienation in capitalism really resonated with me at that time. I felt like I was watching an absurd, but honest depiction of the systems we live in. I want to learn how to make art that gives me the same feeling of being 'seen' as "Severance" did. That is why the show has been stuck in the back of my head every time I sat down to create something new. I can't help, but take inspiration and incorporate parts of it into my own work.

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Severance - Official Intro Title Sequence  2022 / Credits / Opening 4K  ( Apple TV+ )  | extraweg

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Liminal

Liminality is a concept of transitioning from one state to another. When stripped away from constant noise, a liminal state becomes incredibly uncomfortable for most people. I wonder, why do we feel so uneasy in quiet transitional spaces? Is it really the unnerving question that becomes hard to ignore, the thought of where will it all lead to? Why can't we bare the silence?

To answer, I must first find myself in a liminal space. Or could it be that I am already in a state of liminality, I just didn't notice it because of all the noise. Stuck between birth and death - alive.

Maybe because we are alive, the silence is so terrifying. We, deep down, are aware of what waits on the other end, the outcome is hardly comforting. That's why we try to forget the fact that we are constantly walking. We cling to the noise because if it becomes quiet, we can hear every footstep leading us to an end.

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"Form and liminality, just as the limit and the unlimited, produce together a formative experience and formation. This is meant to help us understand the nature of transformative events, it is a technical term for sociological analysis, something that happens in real life, for an individual, a group or an entire civilization. Suddenly questioning and even canceling previously taken for granted certainties, thus forcing them to reflect upon their experiences, even their entire life, potentially changing not only their conduct of life but their identity. The change depends on some factors, the strength and the extent of the change, the external reference points and the presence or absence of new models."

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During high school I wrote a lot of essays about "The Metamorphosis" for my Literature class. I would hardly enjoy mandatory readings, so it was surprising how much I resonated with this novel. I saw myself in Gregor and it meant a lot for me to feel 'seen' like this at a vulnerable time in my life. In addition, "The Metamorphosis" ended up being one of the biggest contributors to my love of absurdism in general. I even made a sculpture inspired by the novel some time ago.

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Šarūnas Sauka is a Lithuanian postmodernist. I discovered his works through my high school art teacher, she drew comparison between our styles and advised me to check him out. I instantly became obsessed with his art, so naturally, I studied his style. His artworks tend to be grotesque, the principles of painting are close to surrealism. The work's themes are pretty provocative, irony and absurdism are a prevalent characteristic. He often portrays biblical imagery, it's not rare to see depictions of hell, paradise and purgatory in his works. Images of the human body are also frequent, it is decomposed, mutilated or perverted. The work is deeply contextual to the terror of Soviet occupation and the effects of cruelty Lithuanians and other Eastern Europeans faced. I was lucky to see one of his works in a group expedition in the MO Museum back home in Lithuania.

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Artist Statement: “Once I woke in the middle of the night, got up, and took a white shirt that hanged over my chair. As I did so, I realized that the left sleeve was very long, so I began to pull it. It was so long that it went out of the room, all the way into the bathroom. After pulling it, trying to get to its end, I found myself in front of the darkened bathroom, pulling stronger and realizing that someone or something was pulling from the other side. For me, this vivid dream is a representation of the darker side of the human psyche, which pulls us into inner darkness, as well as our often futile resistance to that pull.”

Dragan Bibin is an artist who is known for exploring the human condition in his works, particularly the darker aspects of human psyche. I am especially fascinated by his collection of paintings "Deimos". Deimos was the god of terror in ancient Greece, a fitting name for such an earie collection of artworks. With his work, Dragan is able to present ordinary reality in a suggestive way, giving the impression that something isn't exactly right. The uncertainty is very unsettling to say the least.