Hanover Park
This piece is a proposal for longer form work using 3D software to examine phenomena at the cross-section of modernity, history, and pop culture; to take a page out of Umberto Eco’s essay Travels In Hyperreality, the real and the “hyperreal”.
For this project, I ventured out via Metra train and stranded myself in the suburbs for two hours to collect footage of a space that I consider to be soulless, environmentally irresponsible, and unnavigable without a car. The space I selected could have been in any suburb in the continental US, but in this case was the “Village” of Hanover Park in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
I singled this space out for 3 reasons: One, the name “Hanover Park” has connotations of “European-ness'' (i.e. the city of Hanover in Germany) as well as royal connections (i.e. the house of Hanover, which ruled over Great Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries). Two, despite the name’s connotations, Hanover Park very closely resembles some areas of the Michigan suburbs where I grew up. And three, the population of Hanover Park in 1960 was 451, and by 1970 it had jumped to over 11,000. I interpret this as an indicator that this space developed to accommodate white flight.
Once footage had been collected, I applied a distraction from this beigeness. I used 3D rendering software to create three costumed figures (or “dudes”) performing bombastic, fantastical, sluggish animations. I took these animations from Mixamo一an online resource for 3D character rigging that was made to mainly cater to independent video game designers. I designed thick, textureless digital clothing for these dudes based on historical sewing patterns from Historic Costumes and How to Make Them by Mary Fernald and E. Sheldon as well as numerous internet sources. For the second figure, I copied an outfit on a servile extra in Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (1977).
These dudes burst on the scene, flatly overlaid on the suburbs footage, not interacting with the space, isolated in their earnestness. Radiating out from them are gradient lines that color and obscure the background. Open-source sound effects announce their arrivals, along with electronic music ripped from the 2001 ongoing fantasy MMORPG, Old School RuneScape. The colorful sincerity of these dudes contrasts humorously with the disinterested, disinvested landscape.
Upon first impression, these figures could appear to personify medieval/fantasy archetypes, as historical characters flung out of time and lost on the wrong continent. They could also just as easily be modern American cosplayers or historical reenactors, inhabiting the space but engaging in some subculture to temporarily distance themselves from modern cultural norms.
I coded these figures as men, specifically men who read as white. I think white men struggle uniquely to connect with each other meaningfully in an anti-community, misogynistic culture that devalues vulnerability and platonic relationships outside of the workplace. This lack of connection can lead to bizarre, disruptive behavior, a desire to connect to other people over niche interests, or a risk of developing extremist world views.
In this piece I propose several investigations: How do isolated people escape their realities, in both harmless ways and destructive ways? What role do historical or high fantasy media like movies, tv, and video games play in these coping mechanisms? Where does that proclivity for Middle Ages-adjacent media (which Megan Cook describes aptly as Dirtbag Medievalism) come from? How does isolation contribute to the creation of online communities? And how could those communities be spaces in which fantasies are lived out harmlessly, or, on the other hand, where extremism can be allowed to spread?
I invite the audience to project whatever motivations or narratives onto these dudes that they want, but more importantly I want to consider the function and the futility of elaborate daydreams and immersive fantasies in a hermetic, prescriptive lifestyle. In an increasingly destabilizing world, I want to explore the implications of historically-fixated escapism.