For my final project my goal was to explore how our physical space, in this case our bedrooms, transform and grow with us throughout our life. I wanted to depict feelings of nostalgia, home, and girlhood. My personal space deeply affects me and is an outlet of self-expression. Though I’ve changed my room several times growing up, and now have lived in three different spaces throughout college, I hold my childhood memories close to my heart. Since before I can remember, I have held a camera in my hand. I have been editing documentary style videos of different aspects of my life over the years, and wanted to create a collective project which examines the relationship between personal space and life transitions. Thus, I turned to my friends, my sister, and my own experiences to discover what it means to grow up.

 

My process consisted of going through home videos to find footage of me and my sister’s childhood rooms, as well as asking my friends to send me footage and personal anecdotes. I also found my old camcorder and recorded videos of what my room looks like in my parents’ house now. After collecting all of the footage, I organized my video into distinct “chapters” for each person. To start the chapters, I used the sound of a mixtape changing - sourced from Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia, Ultra - in order to distinguish the change of scene. I also used excerpts from Ocean’s “Strawberry Swing.” The song talks about growing up and memories of being a child, and it encapsulates the feelings I wanted to explore in this video. In the second verse he says, “Say hello, then say farewell to the places you know. We are all mortals, aren't we? Any moment this could go.” This line draws on sensations of ephemerality of moments and times in our life, much like how our rooms act as an ever changing transitional space.

I had several sources of inspiration for this piece, including Beatriz Cortez’s “Childhood Bedroom”, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (2016), Emma Chamberlain’s “My Childhood Bedroom”, and Sean Baker’s The Florida Project (2017). I was intrigued by the idea of a memory palace, whereby we reimagine a specific place in order to recall memories. Through the use of found footage, color, and sound, I hope to raise questions such as: How do you define one’s personal space and things? Does a childhood bedroom always have to be a permanent physical space? Why do we hold on to certain items? What does it mean to grow up? This project is still a work in progress, as I hope to continue to explore themes of nostalgia and the transition to adulthood in future pieces.