How To Lean Forward, Test Solutions:
GeoVanna Gonzalez

The installation is inspired by “how to” culture: a recent internet-led phenomenon that offers methods for obtaining knowledge conveniently, without personal human-to-human guidance, through instructional manuals, images, and videos. Gonzalez investigates the “how to” method by using and reimagining the poem Its really very easy to do good these days, from the series tutorials, written by Martin Jackson, as an instructional guide to navigate throughout the installation. The segmented landscapes explore how aesthetics can be used as a strategy for survival in our local and global environments through simulation, adaptations and or camouflaging. For example, the branded water bottles that appear through the installation are used as a hydroponic system for growing plants; presented as sculptural objects; and as a subject in her video piece. The water bottle takes on different roles and shapes– it blends in– and in this way, represents the adaptability of the body within the installation.

By way of this adaptability, this installation explores what it means if individual desires can be vectored, solved, or deleted at the click of a button. We choose modifications and alterations, aesthetic and social branding for ourselves in order to align or distance from certain classes, subcultures, or other groups in society. Now that this fragmentation of the self is easier than ever, what of us is left, what of us is real, what, or who, in reality, are we?