Monday, March 29, 2010

Stalkers delight





So far, I would say this is most definitely the most fun project to execute that Hannah has given us and I was pretty excited to try it out. Unfortunately, my sister came home and I had to go to New Hampshire, but as soon as i got back i went to get started on this even though the weather was pretty terrible. The first car i followed a white suv made its way to the mall and so i followed. It was a dark young woman that proceeded to enter the mall through barnes and noble. Now i knew i had to be very careful about exposing my cover and concealing my camera so i waited until she went out into the hallways of the mall and started snapping away for about 20 minutes. Turns out this woman came just to walk around and get a work out so i could tell she was starting to notice me when a bit on the third loop around the mall so i pretended that my camera was just a big cell phone and pretended i was lost. She took a turn down a hall that was an old food court and i knew it would be too noticeable if i followed so i stalled on my phone until she made her way back toward me at this point she was super close to me and the picture I will post shows how close i was and the funny part is that for some reason when i turned my cam on for that pic the flash must have come back on because it flashed all over her hahha and she definitely knew i had just took a pic of her and she turned around and was like wtf??? I pretended I didnt mean to take it and she started asking me all these questions and I finally told her it was an experiment and bolted. That one was the most fun out of all of the people i followed. Anyway, aside from getting caught I decided to approach this in the same way that Sophie Calle originally approached it. I simply decided I would follow anyone that caught my eye for any reason that i felt plausible and when i get tired of it I will move on and completely forget them. I enjoyed the excitement of the voyeur but i still felt i needed more control then to actually follow one person and let them take me by the leash wherever their day chooses. I found that following multiple people however was not very exciting or interesting although it allowed me to feel like i was in control. What I discovered was that people in this town are boring as shit. I definitely need to do a part two where i pick one person at complete random and follow them unconditionally for a while and really see where it takes me. I thought doing multiple people would be exciting but I think what I realized is that in order to get the full effect i need to build more of a connection to this someone the way that sophie did. She was talking about how she almost felt obsessive and consumed and when I did my own stalking i realized that it needs to be one person. I also realized how difficult it can be to actually follow someone without being noticed, the one person i originally decided to follow noticed me so i definitely needed the practice.

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