000001 methods

What:

I-485(Vanishing Point) is an 18-page document-zine and a desktop performance over several Zoom meetings. It investigates a friend’s green card marriage that took place in Las Vegas in 2019. Photographic images from the wedding and the desert landscape are arranged, juxtaposed, and attached to the i-485 form which is designated to be used by a person in the United States to apply for lawful permanent resident status. The work is meant to be “reviewed” within a “folder” or on desktop screens, through the reviewing, it attempts to approach an edge in a relationship and a bureaucratic system.

How:

I first went on a road trip with my friend to Las Vegas, where I performed as a photographer to document the wedding and also as a friend to participate in the event. The work developed from a series of photographs later to a form of a document-zine that can travel through (virtual) spaces. Eventually, it was presented through a Zoom performance in which the work became a semi-fiction story being told along with the document itself.

Why:

The project is performed as an investigation of a green card marriage that happened in the desert of Las Vegas. It intends to discuss an ambiguous marriage and later became a project exploring the friendship between me and my friends. It questions the role of wedding photographs as evidence and tries to re-contextualize the landscapes of the American West within an immigrant story.