Letting Go

Artist Statement

Ian Strouse

Radical Amazement

Letting Go

My video-essay, “Letting Go” is an examination through a poetic narrative style of how we try to let go of people and the past, often tangled up in objects, places, and in our memories. The piece is not an attempt to work through my own demons or problems, simply an attempt to capture and explore what it feels like when one finds themselves struggling with the past. The literary text is rhyme and meter poetry organized in small stanzas, the literary genre that I feel most comfortable and expressive with, and for the visual track I decided to try and tell a simple story using only inanimate objects that all have some kind of personal nostalgia or sentiment in them as a compliment to the theme. The writing and the audio came easiest to me during the production of the project, but I had a harder time figuring out how I wanted to tell the story with images, although once I committed to an idea, it all came together rather neatly.

Artist Bio

Ian Strouse. Freshman at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa. Background in poetry and film. Worked as editor/director of Tri-Caster system at Vancouver School of Arts and Academics. Hoping to work in the film/media industry after graduating from Evergreen.