The People’s Cinema: Sublet Self

The People’s Cinema: Sublet Self is an open-air sculpture and 24/7 public screening environment that reflects C.T. Jasper’s ongoing inquiry into the emotive, symbolic, and spatial dimensions of cinema. Built as a continuous plane, it transforms into a communal viewing structure where seating and screen emerge from the same surface. It draws from my preoccupation with cinema as a space of collective reverie and fragmented memory.

Rooted in the idea of “thinking on screen,” this project aligns with a philosophical approach to cinema, viewing it not merely as storytelling but as a means of contemplating image, rhythm, atmosphere, and rupture. The screen becomes a membrane between self and other, present and past—a space where viewers engage not only with content, but also with the material and psychic architectures of the cinematic experience.

This work extends from Jasper’s broader artistic practice, which often operates in the liminal zones between documentary and fiction, presence and absence. It interrogates the porous borders between viewer and screen, physical and imagined landscapes, and the mundane and the mythical. The People’s Cinema: Sublet Self specifically draws attention to the subtle and surreal power of certain cinematic moments—what could be called the “thingness” of cinema. These are objects, gestures, or atmospheres that transcend narrative and become charged with visceral, often contradictory, affects. Whether such fragments were gathered from obscure regional films, personal archives, or even popular cinema, they all carry with them the sensation of being displaced or estranged, like talismans found in a foreign land.

At the heart of this project is the evolving concept of “sublet self”—a term that plays with the idea of temporarily renting identity or occupying space within a rigid social structure. It reflects a condition of impermanence, alienation, and adaptive selfhood that echoes the immigrant experience, the instability of labor and housing, and the fragmentary nature of belonging in contemporary society. The People’s Cinema: Sublet Self becomes a lens through which viewers explore cinema as a site for personal, intimate, or socially grounded narratives, works that trace individual and collective experiences shaped by displacement, marginalization, or quiet resilience.

In this way, viewers are not just passively watching; they are inhabiting a constructed, foldable space where collective identities flicker on the surface of the screen, momentarily leased but never fully owned. The cinema is no longer a fixed institution, but a mutable, inhabitable condition—an interface between memory and myth, between public space and inner landscape. It invites not only spectatorship but also participation in a shared act of philosophical, emotional, and social reflection.