Roundabout

Artist Statement

Dedrick McCord

Radical Amazement

Roundabout

In my Video Essay “Roundabout,” I attempted to conceptualize the everyday experience of an inner monologue, for the viewer. I felt like the inner monologue, is the most constantly oppositional experience that many of us have in our lives. So while keeping the content of this video light and almost childish I dig into the seriousness of a person’s rotating thoughts that many people have each day.

I used the form of a meditative essay so that I could work with the stories narrator to help him work out his problems. The essay speaks about feeling awkward and dealing with times when it’s nearly impossible to speak with your peers. The narrator’s thoughts trap him outside the conversation and get him nowhere, or you could say they lead his mind in circles. This is where the title roundabout came from.

When I began thinking about the visuals I knew right away that I wanted to juxtapose pictures of happy people with monotone audio. So for almost all of the photos I just sat and took pictures of my friends while they were talking.

The audio was much more difficult to come to terms with what I wanted. I recorded most of the audio alone in the basement of the library however I also recorded a conversation my friends were having to see if there were any good points to weave into my essay.

Artist Bio

Dedrick McCord is a Freshman at the Evergreen State College. He was raised in Los Angeles, California and writes primarily about his childhood experience there. Dedrick is currently working on a better understanding of many different subjects so that he can choose an appropriate career path. Although his current major is undecided his largest interest lies in musical studies as well as playing music himself.