MULTIPLE SELVES is a multimedia project that layers self portrait photography and video, digital painting, animation, and poetry into a short film and accompanying printed book. A string of animated compositions, focusing on the image of my body, are tied together by a narrative that unfolds in the subtitles and a single video clip that winds throughout the short film. Each composition layers photos or videos under animated digital paintings of abstract hands that circulate around or on top of the raw footage. The impressionistic paintings use warm botanical color palettes and layered brush strokes to invoke movement that is then realized by the animation. Altogether, the layered effect brings a sense of otherness to the self portrait, creating an alternate world for me to play with the sense of self and potential of multiplicity within it. 

While the visuals and soundtrack are measured and calm, they cycle through examinations of my body in relation to the constantly growing and moving painted hands. Taking inspiration from Sarah Bahbah’s continuing practice and Christine Sun Kim’s “close readings,” I use subtitles to draw a narrative through the individual compositions, using them as a door into an alternate visual world that allows me to visualize the expanded sense of self. The subtitles, in contrast to the more meditative visuals, go through the heaviness of holding your past selves with you and the sharp but joyful potential of your future self. The final combination of poetry, animation, and self portraiture experiments with the presence of this multiplicity and the contrasting emotions it brings. 

Having the project exist as both a film with no physical presence and a printed book lets it span different mediums and temporalities. They exist as translations and alternate versions of each other. Creating the book in tandem with the film allowed me to expand this alternate world in a way that felt more authentic and representative of the chaos and inconsistency of myself. The impetus to visualize my multiple selves stemmed from the multiplicity inherent to me. By giving myself the room to explore that idea in a fluid way, not limited to one medium or final product, I discovered that I had created portraits of my multiple selves as they exist now.  I have come to see our reality as softer, more sinuous, able to absorb inconsistencies and multiplicities within it. Multiple selves are not science fiction. They exist now, and the world opens up for them.