Petra Szeman
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  • Home
  • CV
  • main quest
    • videos
    • not videos
  • side quests
    • commissions
    • DRAWINGS
    • GAIDEN
  • Dress the artist
  • TEXTS, TALKS & INTERVIEWS
  • Notes
Petra Szeman

Monomyth: gaiden / Part 1 - 2.

Monomyth: gaiden is a series of videos centred around instances in which real life can be experienced as a film.

Structured as the first part of the hero’s journey trope, Part 1. Departure (2018) explores the artist’s relationship to her digital avatar Yourself, as well as the processes involved in the creation of a multi-layered image world.
As a self-aware protagonist moving along the frayed edges of fictional and real worlds shaped by narrative traditions, Yourself attempts to navigate landscapes that have become oversaturated with movies and fiction. Through the disentangling of these realms comes an assessment of ideas of a singular truth, and an attempt to pinpoint the shifts and discrepancies in a linear personal narrative that arise when journeying through an elusive multiplanar reality.

Part 2. Initiation (2019) follows the protagonist Yourself as she treks through liminal spaces, investigating broader ideas of time and motion through worlds via anecdotes of pilgrimages inspired by pop-culture.
Through the accumulation of realms, avatars and lived experiences arranged within a linear timeline, Part 2. Initiation suggests a perspective that expands beyond a straightforward succession of frames as defined by narrative order. Using journey tropes as a stepping stone into constructing complex image-worlds that allow for time expand sideways, the video aims to open up ways for multiple layers of experience to co-exist within one non-localised identity.

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