Maker Faire Hudson Valley 2023
A Reflective Intervention
Home: New York, United States
A Reflective Intervention (2020), created by multimedia artist Amanda Peckler, is an interactive documentary and transmedia project that documents and engages Generation Z and how they define their most salient core beliefs.
http://reflectiveintervention.amandapeckler.com/
Makers
Amanda Peckler
Amanda Peckler is a multimedia artist, storyteller, and harpist based in Nyack, New York. She is passionate about creating healing spaces and experiences that help people connect within themselves and one another, whether it be through multimedia tools or the harp. Amanda's career has led her to work on award-winning documentary film sets, edu-tainment teams, multimedia installation work, and most recently, narrative television shows with HBO Max, Apple TV+, and AMC. She also served as a Fellow for the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative’s Storytellers’ Institute where she directed and developed an interactive website and living archive, Neshama: The Jewess Soul, exploring Jewish womanhood in the U.S. Peckler currently serves as producer, editor, and co-host of House of Neshama, a digital platform and podcast off-shoot of her documentary project.
https://amandapeckler.com/
Jodi Peckler
Substitute teacher by day, versatile art creator by night. Jodi Peckler is a multifaceted artist, working across a variety of mediums including fabrics, beading, and installation. As the co-founder of the New Design Decorating, she has over 25 years of professional experience in Interior Design and Decorating. She also has a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. Jodi has offered her wealth of experience with the community through art workshops held at the Haverstraw Art Alliance, Haverstraw King's Daughters' Library, local schools and beyond.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodipeckler/What Inspired You to Make This?
I am a firm believer in the power of storytelling to help us heal and connect with each other. This belief has led me to create projects that tend to ask people about topics we may not discuss out loud with others or certainly, not typically in public settings. I find the topics of religion, spirituality, and ultimately, what we all believe in as people, while all so incredibly deep and even essential to how nearly every human moves through the world, are no exception to the unspoken list of topics to be kept out of everyday conversation. I noticed this especially while creating my documentary work surrounding Jewish identity in the United States; whereI felt the call to ask my own community to explore questions that I didn’t think we were asking ourselves, especially young people like me, who have been emerging in adulthood for the past five years or so. Another key influence was a Pew Research study that sparked discussion about this “new generation” aka Generation Z becoming of greater significance in the public sphere. The study “declared” this new generation to be the least religious generation than ever before, as a key trait. As a zillenial born in 1998, forever awkwardly straddling the millennial world with the one of Gen Z, I am no stranger to feeling misunderstood by older generations who have attempted to define me and my peers. So, I felt fired up to truly ask my peers questions that I felt these kinds of studies and articles continued to miss. Of course, I can’t deny observations like the one of the participation numbers becoming increasingly low amongst young people in traditional religious institutions. But, even that data can’t tell you if my peers and I, despite this, still believe in a higher power or not. Or it can't show you the ways we have reclaimed or reimagined religious or entirely secular rituals in our everyday lives. Or if perhaps, there’s completely new sources, outside of traditional structures, we turn to when discerning “good” from “bad.” In a lot less words, I was not convinced that older generations understood what core beliefs or values truly drive my generation. Beyond that, I also was not convinced that we've been given proper spaces to fully reflect on it ourselves. And so, the thought-provoking journey that continues to be, A Reflective Intervention, had begun!
