“Remember to expand your rib cage”
Created by OU students Gabby Spillers, Marissa Alvarez, James Evans, Will Hardwick, Kaya Cannady, and Luke Pingenot, and featuring music by musician Ethan Wilcox of Oklahoma City, “Remember to expand your rib cage” is a visual collage of collective memory fragments along with past moments and surreal wanderings of the mind, broadly influenced by the uncertain and chaotic climate of the world in the past year and its conflicting effects on the self. In the past year, things such as isolation, hyper self-awareness of the body, mental health issues, a sense of lost time, and a perpetual search for light have all permeated the human experience, in an individual and group sense. While touching on these themes, this work is presented in the form of a time capsule that sheds the conventions of what has been traditionally worthy of archiving for the future. In various forms, we have chosen to archive our past, our everyday, and the surreal escapist scenes that have played through our minds during this past year. They are all right next to each other, and we hope they question what memories and ideas are worthy of archiving.
