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Project 2 Completed Proposal

Project 2 - Completed Proposal
Title: The Bennie Bucker
Abstract: A study on the Bennie Bucker—a fictional character who exemplifies the signifiers of millennial success within the framework of Corporate America. The final project is displayed visually through three physical mixed-media pieces, two videos, and one short story.
Proposal: Bennie Bucker is a character I am developing through my artistic practice. Drawing inspiration from personal relationships, work experiences, and trends in contemporary culture, I will present visual imagery and textual materials crafted around aspects of the Bennie’s existence.

Bennie Bucker is a young data intelligence analyst at ClickIT, a fast-growing, well-funded advertising technology company in the city. He is in the millennial age range (25-35), his job title is a Data Intelligence Analyst, and he spends his days at work analyzing customer data through targeted advertising technologies and present his findings to executives, which in turn increases the corporation's profits. He holds progressive political beliefs as part of his identity while maintaining no engagement in civic or community affairs. He has a limited higher education, yet is outspoken about current events, believing himself to be a well-read, intelligent person, and he has lots of internet followers that reinforce his moral superiority. He is obsessed with politics and sports, and he spends most of his free time consuming food and alcohol at social functions every weekend with people from his social class, and doesn’t question the transgressions of his coworkers or friends.
The completed project for Project 2 will include six different elements: two videos, three physical mixed-media pieces, including a digital collage of photographic imagery, a painting, a drawing, and one short story. For the installation, one monitor shows a two minute video on loop that follows Bennie on his lunch break from the office shown from an outsider’s perspective. Inside the black box a projected video of the same length on loop displays a first-person vantage point of Bennie getting ready for work in the morning. On the wall outside the black box, two works on paper depict Bennie in a more figurative sense: a drawing sketches a series of faces that resemble Bennie enjoying the fruits on his position, while a painting imagines Bennie at leisure. Another digital image abstracts Bennie into a contemporary politics image, making connections between his celebratory actions and those in power. A short story, located on the desk, locates Bennie as a character within a larger scenario as told from a critical narrator.
Background: This project is a departure from my previous work related to the news media, as I am choosing a composited human subject to focus on. It is also a project that serves as a type of anthropological study—one that explores the daily life of a subject that is valued within the capitalist system from various perspectives.


Significance: Each of these media are deployed in order to define Bennie from a different perspective, and discover how they can be integrated effectively into a larger installation. What can video reveal about the character that a painting cannot? What are the different understandings one can take away from a short story when placed next to a collage? The project intends to leave the viewer with an emotional reaction toward a subject that they may recognize features of in their own lives. Through Bennie, I am interested in probing how success is defined through image and social behaviors, raise larger cultural questions of how social capital is accumulated and what is valued under the capitalist system specifically within the American corporate culture, and ultimately take a critical position on Bennie’s actions.

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