HP Concert Series

Process Overview

This project began with initial ideation, followed by creating the posters that set the visual tone. After that, I built the website and developed the Instagram page to extend the project into a digital space. Once those were complete, I printed and distributed fliers at the Snider Plaza Tree Lighting by placing them on cars throughout the area. I then emailed news outlets while adopting the persona of a concerned Highland Park housewife and posted a corresponding fake alert on Nextdoor to expand the narrative. The project culminated when I received a response from a major news outlet.

Artist Statement

My creative process centers on using whatever digital or physical tools I have in ways that are both shocking and meaningful. My work is almost always comedic; whether provocatively or simply through its own absurdity. I expose the strangeness of everyday life, from a statue of water guns drenched in fake blood that critiques school-shooting culture to a neighborhood hoax revealing how communities ignore mental-health struggles for the sake of appearance. I highlight the absurd through the absurd.

My practice is satirical and unsettling; I prefer a joke that builds tension rather than releases it. Influenced by Dadaism and the remixing of pop culture, my works are highly conceptual and layered, often combining multimedia and physical design elements that intentionally juxtapose and disrupt one another.

Abstract

“The HP Concert Series” is a multimedia project that utilizes social media, graphic design, web design, and culture jamming techniques to hoax a town in such a way that highlights how affluent neighborhoods discuss mental health, public disturbances, and appearance. This project uses parody, cultural acupuncture, and media hoaxing to examine how affluent towns and media discuss, or ignore, mental health, public disturbances, and appearance. This project uses provocation to get a reaction to start a conversation about mental health in these neighborhoods.

Culture Jamming Techniques Utilized

Subvertising

Posters styled like legitimate event promotions.
Clean, standard typography and layout for concert posters.
Using the neighborhoods own aesthetic against itself.

Detournment

Uses a real person with a real history.
Inserts this person into a fictional, hyper-local event.
Forces viewers to question what they think they know vs. what is real.

Media Hijacking

Successful in getting an official institution to treat the fictional event as news.
Demonstrated how easily information travels when it fits a narrative
Inserted a fictional narrative into the media's purview.

Satirical Critique