Cynthia Chen

Cynthia Chen is a member of the class of 2023 at NYU, majoring in Performance Studies with a minor in Creative Writing focusing on poetry. Cynthia considers her research focus on the absurd spectacles and the spectacular absurdity after she found herself getting fascinated by the tiny things and events happening on a daily basis. Her belief in writing as a mode of interrogating and illuminating the “every day” is what fuels her creative work the most, as she has a constant urge to defamiliarize the normal and mundane. While her poetic voice carries a rebellion against the anticipation of how womanhood and self are expressed, her writing strives to be bizarre and original, marked by the frequency of “pigeons”, “cows”, and “moan” in her weird poems.

Title of Capstone Project

Idling Idol: An exploration of the poetics of triviality and ordinariness through a pigeon obsession

Description of Capstone Project

This capstone project comprises a manuscript with a collection of writings that involve, stem from, triggered, and inspired by observations of pigeons in the city. Accompanied by a recorded performance adopting the manuscript as a score, the project aims to reactivate the strange banalities as well as cultivate the emotional and imaginative capacities of seemingly trivial images. Inspired by Teju Cole’s “on small fates”, “Idling Idol” is a manifesto for the inquiry, obsession, empathy, interpellation, and interpretation of ordinary life.

What Inspired Your Project?

Inspired by Teju Cole’s “on small fates”, “Idling Idol” is a manifesto for the inquiry, obsession, empathy, interpellation, and interpretation of ordinary life.