Beginnings Project - Carissa Salazar

When we decided to do a project with the theme, "Beginnings" I knew I had to do it in a video format. It was fitting because I am not a filmmaker nor a videographer, but that didn't stop the artist in me from trying something new. The marriage between audio and visual ended up revealing parts of my vulnerability in art-making that I haven't tapped into before. I am not one to be behind the camera, so I was surprised with the direction my intuition took me: to reveal videos of myself I would otherwise not share with the public, and pair it with my spoken word that I would rather have people read in their heads.

It was a humbling experience to struggle with a new medium, a new style of story-telling, but there was something inside me that knew exactly how I wanted my video to feel like, sound like, and look like. In short, this project was extremely meta. I wanted to share the emotions I experienced during the pandemic, and how I healed from feelings of desolation and self-deprecation. Like that experience, making this project was not easy, but with the thought processes that I worked hard to mentally train myself for, this project was completed.

Everyone has their own definitions of what a beginning is, and as genuinely as I can, I am happy to share you mine.