“Icons of Boredom centers the overwhelmingly present but often underrepresented presence of boredom in an ill life. This immense and persistent boredom also greatly complicates time. It compresses, freezes, and fast forwards it all at once, while everyone else moves forward as normal. Icons of Boredom is a reflection on a powerless time in my life, in which I was so ill I could do little else but lay on the couch and watch what was available to me. I grew to hate most daytime television shows over this period, including the ones featured, but Icons is not meant to be a critique, rather an acknowledgement of the amount of time I spent with these hosts and a retroactive reclaiming of power over that time. There is an interesting community you feel a part of when you watch a lot of daytime television, to be present and bored when most of the “productive” world is otherwise occupied.  You are the outcasts of society, island of misfit toys. The stay-at-home parents, the elderly, the sick, and the dying, all band together and watch boring, low cost television. These hosts, to us, are our Icons of Boredom.

Icons of Boredom (2023)

16mm, Mordançage