There’s one aspect to ground that can’t be properly translated through a screen. Ground’s format is meant to be a flip book and, more importantly, it’s meant to be flipped with alternated hands. When flipped this way, the motions mimic clawing upwards, almost like the speaker within the pages. I wouldn’t say this impacts the Ground as a story, but I do find it to be a key aspect of Ground as an art piece.
Ground’s subject matter is simple enough, the experience of being buried underground is a relatable metaphor in its own right, but the pain resurrection can bring is often overlooked. Being brought back from the dead, metaphorically or fictionally, often does nothing to address the cause of death. While that concept wasn’t present for Ground’s first incarnation, it became a guiding point for the finalized version of the piece.
Ground is a bit of a complex piece for me. Ground is autobiographical fiction. The piece itself tells you that nothing in the piece is true, but that this is your, or rather my, truth. Simply that it’s been altered to be something worth sharing, something besides the fifteen year secret that you kept because telling it wouldn’t be worth anything. The longer you kept it, the more pointless haring it would’ve became and you’d only look dumber for keeping it. Even if you didn’t, how does one share someone suffocated you to the point you nearly blacked out by accident? The only lie Ground tells is that you were ever buried to begin with, but that lie infects every other aspect of the story as it’s told. A story that mirrors the truth in every way with the sole exception that it takes place six feet above where you wish it could have, that way it would be more respectable.
