Paper Cutting Design Statement

“One Giant Leap for Mankind.”

    The concept for my paper cutting piece was formed around the idea of the formation of  conspiracy theories. Naturally, the best theory that I could think of was the moon landing conspiracy as it is well known and has been around enough for long, thought out theories to develop. I chose to show the formation of these ideas through a filmstrip, a modern day tapestry if you will, which allowed me to show step by step distortions of the original story. To provide an atmosphere for my piece, I used stars and nebulae cut out of the positive space provided by the paper. The filmstrip itself shows one thing being added into each frame to cultivate the conspiracy theories, for example the first frame is the constant and in the second frame, a fan has been added to make the flag start waving. Each new frame represents the new findings that come up in retellings of the moon landing story. The distortion of the filmstrip as it is bending and curving represents the distortion from the original story.

    The paper cutting itself was a big challenge as well as conceptual development. Despite the amount of paper that I practiced on or the number of mockups that I made, I was still surprised by the behaviour of the paper. Even after the practice that I did, it was hard to gauge how the paper would respond to cutting at such a large scale of 6’x3’. The greatest challenge that I faced in paper cutting was the piece pulling apart where cutouts were too vast and anchors, too thin. I even had to use artist’s tape a few times to reconnect or reinforce certain areas. Through time, I was able to navigate the murky, rough waters of large scale paper cutting, and my final product was a success.