Stadtgeist

I believe that you can never truly experience a city unless you are out walking around in it, and being a newly minted Minnesotan (transplanted from Florida), I decided to begin documenting my new surroundings. What better way to do that than to walk around St. Paul during my lunch hour?

I began to document the things on my walks that I loved. The tunnels and bridges, the tree lined streets, the parks and fences. I also started shooting footage around the barn where my family boards horses, and I even tried to film my commute through downtown Minneapolis every day.

I wanted to capture the feeling of being isolated in the city; of being surrounded by people, yet utterly alone. A ghost in the city. A stadtgeist.

Stadtgeist represents to me the idea of birth/rebirth. Becoming something new, and crossing into new territory.

Stadtgeist is about experiencing life. Or is it death? The beginning and end are both about crossing thresholds, and the middle is all chaos and hallucination. Is that the afterlife? Is it just life? After all, almost everything in Stadtgeist is real footage from real places.

Stadtgeist is reality layered on top of itself and rearranged. It’s seeing all sides of experience at once, in a chaotic arrangement of light and sound.

Stadtgeist is meant to leave the viewer with more questions than answers. Like all art, the interpretation is left to the viewer.