Chingona Rising: A Master’s Class

This process piece was the final project for Cultural Rhetorics. While I am proud of this video and the painting I created, I discuss recent revelations which made major revision necessary before posting.

This piece was created to illustrate the impact of layered “writing” by allowing the viewer to experience a  short story that is layered piece by piece in real time. I sought to demonstrate the depth and texture different types of “writing” add to storytelling, the more impactful our stories become.  

A trick question posed at the beginning of my Writing, Composing, Making class became a semester-long pondering I created into my best answer. Below is the description I submitted with the video.

 Rather than using this project as a vehicle to quote readings, I decided to employ them, much like in the piece I incorporated into my presentation. 

I played with sound, from leveling the volume of my voice against the volume of the music, to trailing it off at the end. Imagery--perhaps lack of--at the very end also adds to the trailing off as the image dissipates, while the music fades in darkness. Some of the images coincide directly with words as I use them to add impact to what I am saying for example: the words "hurt" and "lost" in the conclusion are used in unison with VERY SPECIFIC images.   

The use of my texts in the beginning of the video was intentional as THAT is what I had always thought writing was. It is AS A RESULT of our readings that I see there is so much more to writing than what is contained in those texts. 

This project is an attempt to show the progression of understanding through a myriad of writings, editing (removing each person from the family photo), something I would not previously thought of as writing (the divot in my toy box), and what you wouldn't know is by NOT using those things I didn't feel added to the overall sequence of stories or served a redundant purpose.