Week 24Omer Fast is a contemporary video artist that works with repetition, the de-construction of narrative and the re-staging of existing films. In this way, he is very much like Johan Grimonprez except Fast doesn't directly use found footage. I was especially drawn to Continuity (2012) which is about a middle-aged couple that has lost their son to war and invites male escorts into their home to re-create a homecoming that never took place. Fast describes his style as "like a TV movie" which is theatrical and revolves around the idea of the domestic home. Fast likes to stay away from the linear story and uses repetition to create disruptive visuals within a narrative with no climax. Below are some of the things he mentioned about his work that I find incredibly accurate, authentic and relatable to my work: "What does technology represent and probably why it's so seductive is because it allows us to do something that is very implicit to our nature--the super human nature to see without being seen, to affect somebody without being present in the place. It is literally to be almost god-like." "I think what these surreal elements and these grotesques do is that they point to something which is not conscious, which is not in a sense real but psychologically goes for what these characters are feeling, what in this case is a particular case of trauma..." "By sheer repetition, you are able to re-experience something that you've seen. So if I make a particular gesture or if I say a particular sentence that I've repeated, as a viewer you are reminded of whats happened before and you begin to develop a very comparative sense of what has happened, and what is happening now. Also, you may not listen so much to the words, but you might watch the gestures of the people, you might watch the way they interact with each other, you might pick up on some more subtle queues that are the periphery of the picture, and it encourages you to look a little bit more critically and also to think about your own memory of what you remember from what happened previously and how information is changed as its repeated." Fast on non-linear storytelling in film: "I'm interested in the stuff that gets in the way [of the big reveal], with more and more questions, you create a sense of productive confusion..."
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Week 24Rachel Maclean is a Scottish digital print illustrator and video artist. I was first introduced to her at the Tate Britain, when she exhibited her video installation titled It's What Inside that Counts (2016) . Her video is displayed in the center of a dimly lit room, accompanied by a series of large banner-like prints of the walls. The film is cartoon-like, where all the characters are played by Maclean herself in costume, make up and prosthetics. The film underlines out behaviour online, impossible standards of beauty and perfection, and the consequences of our addiction to social media. The entire film is shot behind a green screen and the characters, along with the backdrops, are colorful, saturated, comical, creepy and sometimes gory. The entire video is overwhelming and bizarre but the view cannot help but keep watching-- much like the effects social media and the internet. Maclean creates a fantasy world that is overall disturbing, gory, violent and at times sexually horrifying. She is able to keep the attention of her audience for the entirely of the video. She is successful in displaying a very powerful, bold and clear message, which is something I find rare in contemporary video works. The visuals and the narrative she created made me rethink my presence in social media and the effects of the internet on my daily life. It is so overloaded with information, metaphors and symbolic meaning, I had to watch the video twice at Tate Britain to fully grasp all the nuances. It was still equally as engaging and traumatising as the first time I viewed it too. I was also throughly impressed by the original music and songs written for the video. It was musical, melodic and catchy. 'We want data' was a song that stuck in my head for days! It has a very addictive quality to it that worked very well in line with the concept of the story. Maclean's video, along with all her other artworks exhibited under the wot you :-) about? (2016) series, was one of the biggest inspirations for the off-site show project #sticky. Though Maclean didn't use original emojis in her video, she did use generic emoticons. She inspired me to use the idea of iconography in my own work to create a relation and recognition (a reference) to an event, culture or person. Her ideologies and theatrical satire continues to inspire this video work. I hope to engage with the audience in the same way, where the viewer thinks about identity, cultural displacement through their own experiences. Week 23: Creating New Narratives with Found FilmJohan Grimonprez is an artist that I discovered a while ago. He uses a series of found film clips along side his own to create new narratives and contrasts, similar to how collages are made. The film is considered an essay film and Grimonprez can be considered a director and film maker more than a video artist. He jumps from past and present jumping around different clips but keeping a documentary style approach. He includes his own narration like documentaries usually do but also includes different found audio. The viewer constantly has to read to the clips, trying to distinguish what is found footage, what is the artist's footage and what is the co-relation between all the different footage that creates the artist's narrative. The essay film Double Take (2009), directed by Grimonprez and written with Tom McCarthy, is set during the Cold War period combining fictional and documentary elements. It stars a fictionalised persona of Alfred Hitchcock and features footage of Alfred Hitchcock and commentary along with impersonations (doppelgänger) of him. Even with real-life found footage, he contextualizes for the purpose of its own narrative, making them fictional. It is supposed to capture the rise of television and media in a domestic setting while ensuring the commodity of fear during the Cold War. I am inspired by the use of found media clips that creates new and fictional meaning in a new context. The viewer is always engaged, drawing connections and recognising elements with the found footage and is always questioning what is real and what becomes fiction/fantasy. I want to use that within my video in a more simplistic approach. Grimonprez also uses alliteration and repetition but I would like to emphasize that within my video. My video installation will include filmed footage from my public performance and will be disrupted by found footage from SIA commercials that feature The Singapore Girl. It will create the contrast between me as the Singapore Girl and the commercialised image of the Singapore Girl in media. Unlike Grimonprez, I would like to stay away from added commentary has I am not really going for the documentary approach to the film. Below are some highlights from the film that interested me the most. Snapshot 1: The beginning of the film, show a professional voice actor who is listening and learning how to mimic Hitchcock's voice. The commentary includes the voice of the real Hitchcock along with new commentary by the voice actor. It creates a parallel story to the one already proposed. The film follows the story of Hitchcock meeting himself from the future. The impersonator sets the scene, "They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him. or that he will kill you. I can't remember which but the gist of it is that two of you is one too many. By the end of the script, one of you must die." This is paired with several found clips of twins, shown in snapshot 2. Snapshot 3 and 4 is interesting for several reasons. The main reasons are its domestic references in relation to commercialism and media and the repetition of the clip throughout the entire film. This snapshot showcases the first instance of the found footage which is a commercial for Folger's coffee in the 50s. The clips come up in the film repeatedly, and some of them are exactly the same footage. Each time the clip is introduced the viewer is reminded of it and its similarity. However, the because of the sequence of other footage in between, it creates a new perspective of the found footage. Snapshots 5 and 6 Most of the found footage is quite old (a time before colour television). The black and white footage helps the reader understand what is old and found footage. It is then contrasted with coloured footage, which is footage created by Grimonprez in 'present day'. There is a beautiful transition from those two contrasting types of footage going from black and white to colour. The transition is overlaied with a found audio by the real Hitchcock, starting with the phrase, "By an odd coincidence...I am attempting to assist my brother Alfred..." which can be seen in the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Snapshots 7, 8 and 9 introduce a Alfred Hitchcock doppelgänger. It includes interview clips of the look-alike and also "behind the scene" footage of the filming of him. It creates a fictional setting in a form of a documentary and creates different perspectives of the same event.
Week 23The iced gems in London are slightly different from the ones sold in Singapore. They have different coloured icing and have a slightly fruity flavour compared to the one in Singapore too. I was essentially going to use the Singaporean ice gems but it they are not available in London and it would be too expensive to have them shipped from Singapore. I will be using McVitie's Iced Gems which can be found in Tesco or even a larger Sainsbury's.
Week 23This sketch encapsulates the important elements of my performance. I also included some details of why I will be using these elements.
Week 23: Iced Gems as 'The Souvenir' |
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