Artnography: Prelude

I started to blog when I first left home after high school to study abroad. Little did I know that online publishing will morphed from long proses to short status updates to 144-character limit and as of late beautifully curated pictures and hashtags in just a decade. While I continue to express and share my life online in various platforms throughout college and well into my adulthood, I felt trapped because I had to adapt to these formats and speak a language that is no longer mine. As my online identity solidifies out of my control and big tech companies profiting off my well-documented online behaviors and market value, the more I write, the more I censor myself.

So, to break the vicious cycle, I choose to write anonymously if that means I can write freely again. I hope to fight off the critic within me by writing earnestly and openly about the life I am swimming through cautiously. As a thirty something, there are a lot more I wish to tackle that I have not previously dealt with hands on.

The term artnography came up as I started this account. My close friends have commented on the fact that beyond a keen observer of people and cultures, I am also an ethnographer. I could comment and analyze people and place I encounter in depth through a lens of an artist. You could say I am a geographer, but I happen to make art too. Hence artnography. My interest in art stems from my interest in rituals. Rituals are what people practice as humans. Being human is the most difficult skill to grasp though there are tons of wisdom and knowledge out there.

I will start with my most recent encounters and anecdotes and see how far I will go in this artnography trip.