I have decided to create a face cast of my brother. Here are photos of me applying the plaster bandage to his face. I now have the plaster bandage cast, so all that is left for me to do is fill it with plaster once it is dry. I am also going to put a loop of wire in the back of the mask so that I am able to hang it when it is finished.
The purpose for making the face cast is that I aim to create a video piece, where my brother (Taylor) will use an iron bar to hit the face cast which will smash it into pieces, then he will pick up the pieces from the floor one by one and try to put it back together. We are using an iron bar because this is what the Serbian men used on Taylor when they hit him in the face.
This is a sort of representation of what happened, how he was broken and he had to try put the pieces of himself back together, back to how he was, and even when the pieces are all back in place, the cracks still remain. Meaning that although he is healed there will always be the traumatic scarring in his mind, he will never forget it.
It is also saying how we may heal and get over certain events in our life but we are never completely the same after, things change us in life and we have to accept the cracks as a part of who we are.
Also, the fact that he is smashing his own face cast shows his anger in some ways, and represents how low he felt about himself, how he said that he felt like a failure, it shows him destructing his self confidence.
I am hoping to create this video the week commencing 11th April, as this is the week my brother has off of work so I will be able to take him into uni and hopefully use one of the spaces there to film it.
The thing with this video piece is that it has to be done right the first time because there is only one face cast.
After filming this video, I was thinking of gluing the face cast back together and then displaying it alongside the video for my degree show.
