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Description
For this piece/these pieces, I wrote "Do I know you?" repeatedly on paper [some smaller scale preparations, then 2 A1 'drawings' and 1 layer A3 'drawing', with a mix of pencil, pen and charcoal].
For the third, smaller, layered 'drawing', I also alternated between writing "Do I know you?" and "Do you know me?", though similar, the different rhetoric implied by the contrasting questions implies a further narrative, or conversation. As if two persons were in dialogue, and the character of one was called into question by the other, leading the questioned person to be existentially reflective, questioning whether they are themselves, what it means to be an individual, and how easy it is to forget a person, and through this forgetting the person is lost - as we are only people with regards to other people, identities are social and cannot be severed from 'the other' without becoming totally destroyed.

Initially, I was scribbling non-specifically, but the phrase 'Do I know you?' crept into my mind, and I began to write it compulsively, over and over. This was at first an act of aggressive release, but then became pacifying, and meditative in the monotony.

The question had been asked of me the day previous, by a person whom I knew readily, but was not aware of me, and whom I engaged directly, outside of the social group I was usually associated with in their company. Therefore, without the presence of my micro-community [friendship/peer/social group], I was without my identity for this person - essentially I failed to be recognised because I was alone.
I had just concluded reading 'Marc Auge's - An Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity', which concluded [on a particularly despondent night; poignantly] with the proposed concept of an "Ethnology of Solitude". This thought in mind, and subsequent sociological/philosophical thoughts coupled with an obsessive return to the question "Do I know you?" made this pieces somewhat cathartic and exorcising, whilst simultaneously solemn and infuriating.
By repeating the phrase, I was attempting to rid it from my mind, but in the process it became ubiquitous; the only thought I could have, the thought of a loss of the self and the isolationism their in.

The question then slithered into another painting, one I had been trying to resolve unsuccessfully for some time, indeed I may return to it; there is something existential in terms of identity [and individualism in society] that seems a potentially fruitful source of further ideas.
Though this ties in with my current themes, I think it works more as an experiment in more broad notions of isolationism and solitude [ambiguity of the self], rather than isolation as a product of technology.

Who I am when I fail to be recognised?
Alone, I am no one; insignificant in isolation, an unmemorable individual, forgotten, and ceased to be; Nil.

Description
For this piece/these pieces, I wrote "Do I know you?" repeatedly on paper [some smaller scale preparations, then 2 A1 'drawings' and 1 layer A3 'drawing', with a mix of pencil, pen and charcoal].
For the third, smaller, layered 'drawing', I also alternated between writing "Do I know you?" and "Do you know me?", though similar, the different rhetoric implied by the contrasting questions implies a further narrative, or conversation. As if two persons were in dialogue, and the character of one was called into question by the other, leading the questioned person to be existentially reflective, questioning whether they are themselves, what it means to be an individual, and how easy it is to forget a person, and through this forgetting the person is lost - as we are only people with regards to other people, identities are social and cannot be severed from 'the other' without becoming totally destroyed.

Initially, I was scribbling non-specifically, but the phrase 'Do I know you?' crept into my mind, and I began to write it compulsively, over and over. This was at first an act of aggressive release, but then became pacifying, and meditative in the monotony.

The question had been asked of me the day previous, by a person whom I knew readily, but was not aware of me, and whom I engaged directly, outside of the social group I was usually associated with in their company. Therefore, without the presence of my micro-community [friendship/peer/social group], I was without my identity for this person - essentially I failed to be recognised because I was alone.
I had just concluded reading 'Marc Auge's - An Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity', which concluded [on a particularly despondent night; poignantly] with the proposed concept of an "Ethnology of Solitude". This thought in mind, and subsequent sociological/philosophical thoughts coupled with an obsessive return to the question "Do I know you?" made this pieces somewhat cathartic and exorcising, whilst simultaneously solemn and infuriating.
By repeating the phrase, I was attempting to rid it from my mind, but in the process it became ubiquitous; the only thought I could have, the thought of a loss of the self and the isolationism their in.

The question then slithered into another painting, one I had been trying to resolve unsuccessfully for some time, indeed I may return to it; there is something existential in terms of identity [and individualism in society] that seems a potentially fruitful source of further ideas.
Though this ties in with my current themes, I think it works more as an experiment in more broad notions of isolationism and solitude [ambiguity of the self], rather than isolation as a product of technology.

Who I am when I fail to be recognised?
Alone, I am no one; insignificant in isolation, an unmemorable individual, forgotten, and ceased to be; Nil.