Cecilia Dougherty
The above image is of an arrest in progress on the G-Train platform at Bedford-Nostrand in Brooklyn. The other people on the platform are aware and are witnesses, should anything tragic occur. I believe Black Lives Matters has raised everyone’s consciousness about understanding what happens when a person of African descent interacts unwillingly with police officers. I don’t know why this man is being arrested. No judgment.
Animation and Orwell
I’m working on a new series of animations inspired by George Orwell’s 1984, first published in 1949. To say I”m “enjoying” it would massively miss the mark. It is a scary book and is ever more relevant. Or, it takes these 75 years for what we’ve been doing to ourselves (?) and to others to become fully evident.
GIF Animations 2018-2020
Series below is from the collaborative project called In-Between Theories, which I did with artist David Dasharath Kalal. Visit the In-Between Theories site and read our non-theories at https://www.inbetweentheories.com/. I put some of the animations below together for an installation in 2018 using an iPod as the viewing platform. The iPod was mounted at eye-level on a wall in the gallery at the College of Staten Island.
I’m going to pick up the ball and add a new series based on George Orwell’s book 1984, which feels particularly relevant NOW. I will post these as they emerge.
theories… click image for animation
Other Animations, mostly for iPod or iPhone
This is called The Apartment, from 2015. I made it after learning that I was being evicted from my apartment. I had 2 roommates, had lived there since coming back from Europe in 2011, where I was in school earning a PhD. My landladies lived upstairs. They didn’t like my personality and I didn’t want to live communally with them, so I was out. It’s okay. Personality is only ego presented to please others and I have a hard time doing that, always have had a hard time pleasing folks with my “personality.”
The Apartment was installed on the wall at the La Mama Gallery in NY in 2015, and at the opening, people, friends, fellow artists, formed a line, beginning with Ben Coonley, of people filming people filming the piece. Impromptu and absurd, and very funny.
This animation is called The Scenography, created in 2010. I was learning how to use a particular software for architects and interior designers. I was also in-between homes, living in Europe, going to grad school. Not hardship, obviously, but a little bit unsettled. As I continued creating environments, they became really uniform and then I too the scene outside, to the southern border and created a wall and a border crossing.