On wednesday 23rd april,at UCS, I met with Matt the film technicain who worked with me and showed me how to edit 3 small films made of the shoreline sea sky and horizon, I edited parts not nessesary and linked the 3 films into 2minute bites…then uploaded them onto a R- DVD, ready for either t.v or a projection. unsure of which at present so have given myself options.
I also collected my Deckchair from argos in preparation for the installation based on “Mediation of Nature” (Shoreline) onto tv.This installation is influenced through research done in my dissertation and inspired by Jean Bourriauds ideas on simularcra and the Hyperreal. He says “We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.” Writer and 1960’s Situationist, Guy de bouard and artist, Nam June Paiks ideas on how tv encourages the passivity of the viewer.In my work I attempt to make a point of our growing disconnection from nature, especially within Western society, how we tend to see ourselves as not part of nature we see nature as different to be used a commodity… yet as humans we are part of nature.Discovering through research that we spend over 90% of life indoors and dont use 54 of our natural senses due to this disconnection from nature society thrives on capitalist, consumer, commodity, we increasinlgly are alienated not only from other people but nature also.
Through the work I am attempting to alert and encourage the viewer to consider their own standing or /alienation in relation to nature and aim to encourage the viewer to respond in someway to consciously and actively reconnect with nature.This reconnection is also my own personal response and journey to reconnect with nature having come to terms with my own disconnection and realisation nature plays a key/fundemental role in our wellbeing.
Research done in recent times by Jain Malkin has shown the “effect of nature on humans …thoroughly studied…shows humans have physiological and emotional responses to nature.”
I am reminded here of my research on Polish Artist Frans Krajcberg who having experienced trauma associated with the loss of his family to the Holocaust eventually left europe for Brazil where he lived a cave in the forest for a number of years… recovering from his ordeal his art emerged from the nature around him.”In the aftermath of war he wanted to run away from humankind.”
Krajcberg said “Nature gave me my strength,pleasure of feeling,thinking ,working, and surviving…up to now I have not dominated nature I have learned worked with it.
Krajcberg says “The problems imposed by technological evolution are pollution…Artistic thinking confirms with sorrow that contemporary society is a commercial machine.”
Krajcberg,Brazilian Sculptor /Artfocusmagazine.com by leon Kaplin,1999.
T.V. Opiate of the people.
William Irwin Thompson said ” We are suffering a kind ofcollective hypnosis, a cultural trance that prevents us from seeing things the way they really are.”
Also artist Gwyneth…….
