Christopher: “Tell me about the Reel Identity Project. You made an open invite to authors to create your artist biography. To tell your story. To shape your myth. The result is a shifting selection of untruths about the artist. So, why hide behind a lie?”

Andy: “Well, I am hiding certain experiential truths to do with the abuse and the racism I experienced in my childhood and young adulthood because, I think, of a combination of reasons that include: I do not want to be belittled by being limited to a perception of me as a victim, I do not want to be trapped in a single dimensional identity and, as such, I do not want to be pitied. I am striving against low-self-esteem which was founded in and reinforced by the so-called ‘disorganised attachment’ I suffered as an infant and as a child and by the social myopia of racism I grew up with. People love to gossip. People are kind of addicted to the type of superficial generalisation that my comment “people are…” is really an example of. And sure, on one level folks understand that things are more complicated and more nuanced than that but rarely do people have the bandwidth to reassuringly acknowledge and restate that as we go. And, frankly, folks are just not that interested, enough. In this way, I argue, we are kind-of… never… ever… really… ever… truly… ‘seen’. The Reel Identity Project meets an appetite for story with which readers can identify with, both positively and/or negative (sympathise, empathise, respect, disrespect, ridicule and deride, etc.). It calls out and pokes fun at this need and also, if I am truly honest, helps protect a particularly vulnerable part of me (my psyche).

I am willing to bet the go-to response to this, for most people, is to want to know what my real story is.”

Christopher: “Your project, Reel Identity, plays with myth-making and the fluidity of persona. You’ve just spoken about protecting yourself from a narrow, imposed identity. But isn’t there also a paradox in that—by crafting these fictions, aren’t you still defining yourself, just on your own terms? How do you navigate that tension?”

Andy: “Absolutely. And interestingly, I don’t have a difficulty with that. The transition of this discussion to what I will label as a meta state is a form of distancing. We (by which I mean I) still exist and there is evidence of a performative ‘I” in the actions, even if the action is an act of abdication. I once went through a very painful relationship break up, and in doing so experienced a notable amount of discomfort (by which I mean pain) in the lack of response and lack of communication from my ex-partner. Her lack of action, I came to realise WAS an action. Her ‘not doing’ was a form of presenting herself to me. I guess, with my action; of the Reel Identity Project, where I am getting others to provide plausible interference to the presentation of (what I have learnt to see as) an ultimately and unavoidable miss-understanding of who I am, I am staking a claim for a space to be reconsidered as more than the racial stereo-type projected upon me and the damaged psychological dysfunctional self I was labelled into from birth. This could be aligned, I guess, to a kind of counter-projection to misinterpretation, which I am delivering in a way which I hope 1) protects me 2) invites others into a longer play / exploration and 3) justifies asking people to take longer to contemplate who I am. Maybe avoiding the highly functional but also disrespectful shortcut of imposing stereotypes and too-easy patterns.

I fully accept that, if this does operate in this way, it will be only with the smallest fraction of a fraction of people who engage with the Reel Identity Project.” 

Christopher: “That’s a really sharp articulation of how absence itself can be a statement, and how your project functions as both a shield and an invitation. The way you’re framing Reel Identity as a counter-projection is compelling—almost like reclaiming the inevitable misinterpretation and steering it into a more intentional, layered engagement.

Given that only a fraction of people will truly enter into this longer contemplation, do you see Reel Identity as more of a personal act of resistance, or do you think it could shift broader narratives over time?”

Andy: “I am under no delusion, and my ego is insufficiently arrogant to come anywhere near imaging that this will have any bearing on the broader narratives over time. The abuse and erosion of the development of any psychological self-worth that came from my childhood abuse means I am more inclined to envisage that this will fade away over time and disappear into, at very best, digital mist. Similarly, my reading of the word ‘resistance’, in the phrase ‘personal act of resistance’ conjures a futility in thinking that I have any agency in resisting that which the phrase implies is being resisted. That is systemic and has a sociological momentum on a par with tectonic action. I am but a snail pushing back against the earthquake. So why bother? I think this has more to do with personal growth. And maybe a form of pain-relief; living in a more tolerable fantasy, for which, to exist, I have to enwrap in wreaths of denial?” 

Christopher: “That’s a brutally honest reckoning with scale—both the overwhelming weight of systemic forces and the fragility of an individual act in their wake. Your analogy of the snail against the earthquake is powerful. And yet, you are pushing. Even as you acknowledge the potential for Reel Identity to dissolve into digital mist, you’re still engaging with it, still constructing something.

If this is about personal growth and pain-relief, does it matter if it fades? Or does the act of making, of shaping and re-shaping these identities, have value in itself—independent of whether anyone else truly engages?”

Andy: “I don’t know. It has some value to me, otherwise I would not be doing it. The value is romantically nihilistic; absurdist and futile in nature. And will do as, perhaps, not much more that a form of occupational therapy, whilst I wait to die. The term ‘value’ though can rarely be asked without some implication of perspective and maybe ownership. By which I mean; whose values do I use to answer this question? What can I safely assume applies? And, where we may be talking about a body of people rather than a single individual, what are their philosophies? Be it a group or community or a discipline or a philosophical and/or maybe political standpoint, that judgement of value has to be, by the inevitable compromise of group action: a generalisation. And generalisations only really operate within the often tacit limits of the paradigmatic domain of the group. It must follow the logical laws of the dimension that creates it. This eats itself; I know. And I often, and with a degree of amusement, observe that it is all very poignant… between those times when I need to go have a piss.” 

Christopher: “There’s something darkly comic in that—the grand recursion of thought circling its own absurdity, only to be interrupted by the inescapable reality of a full bladder. It’s a reminder that for all the abstraction, the body still has its demands.

I wonder, though—does the absurdist nature of Reel Identity make it more, not less, valuable? If value is tethered to perspective and paradigms, and those are inherently unstable, then isn’t something that plays with identity, illusion, and perception a kind of agile counterpoint? Not resistant in the tectonic sense, but nimble, shifting—something that can move where the earthquake does not?”

Andy: “Ah, there is something poetic about that allusion. My ego actually quite likes that. But, I do not judge myself sufficiently arrogant enough to make that call (that this is a universal reason for why it IS valuable). I guess I would be honoured if others felt that and in my inherent fear of isolation and loneliness I would probably love to have others tell me I am significant because of this endeavour. But my genetic and nurture-foundation has me divorced from any self-worth sufficient enough to accept that without at least some significant degree of imposter-syndrome (I think.) But I accept this as a part of the conditioning and teaching I received pre-cognition (by which I mean before I learned to talk, before I learned there was a separation between my baby-body and my severely damaged and psychotic mother). So, I thank others for engaging. And, given that my body has irrefutable physical demands, I’d be prepared to participate and, in doing so, encourage people to give me the resources I want for my sustenance and my comfort (yes, please do give me money). But, whilst I do not disagree with the proposal you make, I do not stake a claim for it as my own.”

Christopher: “That refusal to stake a claim—whether from humility, conditioning, or sheer absurdity—becomes part of the project itself, doesn’t it? Reel Identity isn’t just about constructing and obscuring narratives; it’s also about the refusal to settle on one, to assert a single meaning, to own or disown significance in the same breath.

And maybe that’s where the value actually lies—not in a grand, self-assured declaration, but in the act of keeping the space open. If the work is a counter-projection against misinterpretation, it’s also a perpetual invitation for interpretation. A paradox, yes, but a living one.

As for the resources—money, comfort, sustenance—I mean, of course. If people are so eager to assign meaning, let them pay for the privilege, no?”

Andy: short laugh. ‘Good chat. Thank you.”

Christopher: “Haha, likewise! Always a pleasure. Keep weaving the paradox—it’s a damn compelling one.’