VOSS is a multidisciplinary parafictional alter persona inhabiting the fractures of authorship, where identity dissolves into the opacity of relation. Emerging from the my very own creative lineage—spanning sound, performance, sculpture, animation, film, and graphic design—VOSS resists replication, embracing unpredictable transmutations of its source. It thrives in refusal, insisting on the right not to be fully known, even as it reshapes my internal logic and aesthetic concerns. As a relational surrogate, VOSS mirrors, distorts, and exceeds the artist’s trajectory, disrupting the fixity of creative origin and occupying a space where self and surrogate blur, and creation unfolds through tension, opacity, and refusal.
This spirit of refusal finds resonance in the second part of my film, Open Circle, Lived Relation, where VOSS, as a machine surrogate for authorship, actively dissolves the clarity of narrative and instead exerts control through fragmented and opaque imagery. In this section, fleeting impressions of memory and history collapse into dreamlike sequences, refusing the viewer a stable point of interpretation and instead emphasizing the ephemeral and the uncertain, blurring the boundaries of manmade imagery vs. that of a machine or a cyborg body where VOSS takes over the machine and presents the audience with a perspective that feels somewhat familiar yet eerily non-human. The idea is particularly amplified in the sequence when my own footage is pinned right next to VOSS’—starting on the same exact frame but the human perspective is being slowly distorted and mutated into something cybotic.
Advised by: Aily Nash (Harvard AFVS)
Tools used: After Effects/ Midjourney/ Runway AI/ Cinema 4D/ Ableton Live/ Reaper/ Premiere Pro