Mikhael Antone-D’Angelo
Artist Statement
My Creative projects deal with the underlying themes that shape our everyday lives. Social constructs that are taken for granted or subconscious drives that affect our sense of self and place in society. Having grown up in a middle class American suburb I struggle with general ideas about expectations of place. I find the suburban lifestyle and landscape to be a concept and or construct of the imagination. Hopes and dreams are placed into homes, cars, purchases and implied social status.
My photographs and videos deal with people and spaces and are direct reactions to the contemporary American landscape. Whether it’s the subjects reacting to their environment or the landscape is itself as a strange and isolated example of an inner landscape.
In the project, American Dreaming, Thru the use of photography and video I “document” the “Non-places” of the American Landscape. Non-places can be described as the shopping malls, Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Cineplex’s that are the contemporary American landscape. They are the places without “Locale”, without personal identity. These places have corporate branding but they lack a broader human experience.
In the film based project Schema, I respond to the beauty of the natural yet unnatural landscapes of Newport, RI. A resort town with grand turn of the century mansions, manicured lawns and manmade “natural” vistas, it resembles a sense of beauty that is meant to inspire awe and imagination, while displaying money and power. It is a strange juxtaposition that speaks to how we can build worlds.
In the project “Sense of Place”, I focus on the memories of coming of age in an American town. Landscapes portray the inner landscape of place in society: Old mills, churches, empty fields and forgotten landfills illicit an imaginary space of isolation and lost dreams.
“Sense of Place” explores the juxtaposition of landscape and identity. I focus on the landscape of “Other Spaces” or hidden spaces, the spaces where one may wander or hide without organized identity or to escape an unwanted reality.
In the experimental video shortsSuburbia: An exploration of the subconscious landscape, I transpose the subconscious landscape with the conscious external landscape. Shooting HD video of abandoned and operational strip malls, big box plazas and McMansions both foreclosed and inhabited. Images of lonely shoppers, parking of cars in mass parking lots and for sale signage combined with editing, angles and soundtrack, elicit feelings of compulsion and emptiness. I am exploring an atmosphere of questioning (without narration or dialogue) about stereotypical ideas of success and or the “American Dream” and our current state of consumer compulsion.
In the documentaryTo a Man, I focus on middle class young men growing up in suburban Staten Island. Interviews about the American Dream, religion, race, gender roles and money are juxtaposed with the landscapes of industry, shopping areas and nature. These young men reflect the changes in Middle Class America and examine the social constructs generally attributed to the straight white male.
“To a Man” is an investigation in to a generation raised by TV, filled with commercialism and forgotten by history. It focuses on six young white middle class males and the borough of Staten Island New York. The locations mixed with their stories and reflections paint a picture of a world of big box store and landfills, of super heroes and drug abuse, of tradition and change, of localism and rejection.