Summary

The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts explores accessibility, memory, and experimental filmmaking as a tool for accessing the inner self. In the Fall of 2019, while traveling across the United States, I taught camera-less film workshops in which I asked participants to express their “inner self” on a strip of 16mm film. These “visual autobiographies” are a synthesis of expression and memory in an abstract form. To capture my own inner, I documented the journey on super 8 film, and drew animations of the landscapes that drifted by me during my travels. My footage is stitched together with the collected consciousness of the many people that I met in these workshops; my memories in conversation with theirs. Each person’s contribution calls to mind one of my own memories, which relates back to the collective memory of the universe.