Summer residency at i-park

I wrote this on the 19th, when leaving I-Park. But have only just posted it up now….

19th July

And suddenly its all over, I’m back in New York, sitting in a café on the lower east Side drinking coffee and feeling bewildered by the noise, people and buildings. Back to city life, even if its not my city. We ended the residency with an Open Studio day, in which people came to I-Park to see our work and to walk around the beautiful grounds. It was great to see and interact with everyone else’s work, and feeling the kind of collective spirit which had developed amongst us.

Unbelievably I managed to finish my film, and despite my usual massive reservations about whether or not its any good, I’m really happy its done. Despite being sorely tempted I’m also scared to look over it again, to edit things in or out, now that I’m away from the place. Its so strange being so absorbed in a place and making a video which now on reflection is completely about the experience of being there…the video is more of a diary then I had thought initially. The other thing that has changed is the addition of the strong narrative element which seemed to divide opinion amongst the people who gave me feedback. I find it hard to resist narrative elements (which makes it sounds like donuts or something, which in terms of the lean conceptual style expected in video art, it probably is). Still trying to decide how to end it- I even did some just-in-case filming at Grand Central Station, which is very ornate and boasts impressive Art-Deco architecture. Of course that would change the whole thing, having a little ‘woman returns to city’ moment, and it would probably intensify the narrative element. So I may never use it.

Apart from all this, was the sadness of leaving the wonderful land of I-Park. One of my video clips was entitled ‘leaving on a rainy day’, it was one of the more sombre ones; in a case of life imitating art, the morning we left there was a cataclysm (is that a Greekism?) and I found myself leaving in the rain and feeling sad to say goodbye. But happy about the new friends and the memories!

The deluge has finally struck, after days of humidity building, and the rain is coming down in solid sheets, making a wonderful melodic percussion on my roof and windows. I tried to attach the umbrella to my video camera but it was impossible to film in this kind of rain and I got soaked within about 1 minute of being outside. So, I’m hiding indoors again. At least it means the air will be clear and light later on, which should make for some good sunset skies I could do some filming in.

We did a group activity this week, which involved a visit to the casino, Mohegan Sun, which (like most casinos in America) is run by the native American Indians, and its built on their reservation. This gives rise to some weird rule-flouting, like smoking indoors, and (obviously) gambling, which is mostly illegal here. The interior is purposely mind-bending, an enormous circular cavern with a pathway that seems to lead around it but veers off in places, and true to cliché, there are no clocks, and no sign of natural light. They even bring you beers at no charge when you sit at the slots, which gives the impression you are being lulled into a suitably numbed state necessary to blow $50 without thinking. We all bet about $15, which didn’t last long, although one of our party, Matt, managed to win $19.50. Its pretty depressing really, especially as its all made out in faux-native furnishings and ‘sculptures’, including several animatronic wolves. Something that made an impression was during the fireworks and band playing (up on the roof, after the truly impressive sun had set) that hardly anyone was drinking, and there were no beer pulling stands, unlike what you would see in the UK. It seems like Americans get their kicks from food, rather than booze.

Other than that fun, its been work on. I’ve been filming every day, and uploading every day, which gave me the idea of doing this as short term film project, which is only online and tells a kind of story over the course of a time period. Its funny how being here, to start with I just wanted it to be a record of every day, mundane activities, but as time wears on, I’ve been more tempted to experiment with more bizarre, unusual and ‘gothic’ tableaux, I suppose just to see something different visually. And also, it amuses me. But it also becomes like a story- everything starts off normal, and then, through being in solitude in the woods, stuff starts going a bit weird…the resident becomes a captive of the woods and their imagination. I have decided to call the project ‘The Resident’, to reflect this- it’s a record and parody of the residency in nature experience.

Suddenly the end seems in sight, but I’m trying not to focus on that. There is still a lot to do, and incredibly I’ve not been back into the Devil’s Hopyard properly, which I definitely want to go before leaving. There is also the cemetery where the Willeys – a local family whose sad story ends in multiple murder and suicide- are buried I could visit, this will probably give my project an even more sinister turn.

Today the heat was unbearable. The mercury hit 110 Fahrenheit, which is 43 degrees, and definitely the most intense heat I’ve ever experienced. Filming outdoors during the heat of the day was out of the question: I did try, got as far as the lake and then had to come back to the cool of the air-conditioned studio. It means I’m having to do my filming at night or get up really early in the morning to try and catch sunrise plus the hours before the sun hits. Everyone is pretty much hiding indoors.

I did attempt filming at night, having looked up a few night time taglines- unsurprisingly they are mostly within the sad/ scary/ spooky spectrum. The actual filming is quite tricky as you have to carry torches, candles and the camera kit, but more than that it’s the bugs: they are a plague in this evening heat, constantly circling and buzzing. I got bitten all over my arms during this filming attempt and am now too scared to go back out there, meaning today has been pretty unproductive. Having looked over the footage I realise how hard it is to avoid the Blair Witch/ schlock horror movie clichés. It might take a little experimentation, and of course I may never use any of it, but I try not to worry too much about that- every time you try something out, there is a movement of the cogs somewhere at the back of my mind and you can never tell what will come out of trying random ideas out.

Meanwhile Francois, one of the artist here, said that the videos of the woman wrapped in fabric and with fabric on her head had reminded him of the debate happening today in France’s National Assembly discussing the proposed ban of wearing the veil in public places. Interesting connection.

Anyway, being trapped in the studio has meant time to do a bit of reading, I found a book called ‘the writing on the wall’ which is all about text in art. Its interesting because (so far) its talking more about the interface of the graphic/ conceptual in written language (rather than other aspects, such as spoken word/ image relationships which you come across in discussions of video, or instruction/ score in art works). It mentions for example the mistrust that existed in Plato’s time about the written alphabet, that it was a dangerous technology would lead t the degradation of memory and to factual inaccuracies as well as deception being passed down throughout the ages through the distancing of author from reading that written language allows; then the separation of the act of writing, i.e. its performative aspect and its origin in the body, from the alphabet through mechanization and the printing press. There was an example of a protestant altar piece, where visual depictions of holy scenes are eschewed in favour of written descriptions, using text that was meant to be as undecorative as possible- the idea of the visual as sensual, as seductive, not to be trusted, and of the word as purely conceptual, therefore closer to God. In terms of the project I’m working on here, the relationship between word and image is more important; there is a sense of battle for supremacy between the ‘instruction’ (i.e. the tagline) and the resulting ‘action’ i.e. the video, the image. The question is, can the image stand alone? Or is it precisely about the two together, the meaning the two generate against one an other. More on this later.

Happy Holiday! It was a day off on Monday following July 4^th, although it didn’t affect life here very much. We got into the spirit of things as best we could, by staying up beyond 12 for the first time and going down to the lake to light a fire and listen to the bawdy bullfrogs. I’ve revised my earlier assessment and now would describe them as sounding more like a chorus of twanging rubber bands. Except for one who sounds like a donkey.

Other than that I have been hard at work filming and editing, as usual it’s the latter that takes ages, runs into problems and is more boring. But there is pleasure in having a daily overview of all the footage I’m shooting, and the fact I’m uploading it all to Youtube means I’m having to organise and correctly label every clip, then cross it off the list of instructions so I don’t repeat it. Some of the more generic taglines are being repeated, for example those that involve yoga, meditation, and reading because I tend to do those every couple of days. Others are much more specific and take a certain amount of location scouting and lo-fi prop planning: like the ‘woman wrapped in fabric sits in the sand’. It was absolutely roasting hot when I did that one, and being cocooned in heavy sheet fabric was quite an endurance test. Obviously with those actions there is a purposeful misinterpretation of the description, which was probably aiming for a kind of deluxe, sheer fabric and a sandy beach setting, rather than mud green bed sheet and gravelly sand. However I must be doing something right as someone contacted my channel to say the videos were ‘awesome’ (clearly American) and did I want advice on how to get featured on Youtube? Not sure I do, but it made me think I could have success with selling the footage.

The daily routine of organizing footage, charging batteries, making lists, crossing things off lists and then filming and repeating the whole thing again if there’s time means I haven’t been considering the ‘final outcome’ film very much. At the moment I’m looking to get the database as full as possible, with the intention of then writing a script from the taglines, so that the text becomes a kind of storyboard of which the video footage is the illustration. But I was contemplating working the other way round, so that I start to hone in on the final text and then make sure I have the clips to go with it- that way there is a definite set of instructions that must be carried out in order for the film to happen. Also I like this idea of hidden labour, since the clips I’m uploading are mostly fragments from the whole piece of footage, particularly so for the mediation and reading ones. Of course the viewer takes that on trust- I may have just sat down for 30 seconds and called it a wrap. But that’s part of the fun.

Finally one thing which is winding me up no end is the lack of visible sunset. I can’t find one anywhere and if I were to cycle it would mean returning along unlit roads which everyone has assured me would be dangerous. I am going to peruse some forums to see if there is any mention of good sunset points in East Haddam- otherwise it will have to wait til I get to New York.

Concealment

Had a productive day, both on the filming side and on the editing/ computer side. A word of advice for technophobes out there: working out how to use these new cameras, with only internal or flash memory, is quite a hassle; they don’t advise you that you’ll also need to spend $40 on some conversion software, and that you’ll need to be willing to faff about with preferences and compression rates once you’ve got it. Or maybe they’ve just made it hard for Mac users.

Anyway I am attempting to upload all the videos I’ve made to Youtube, since this software (Voltaic) has a nifty setting which sends everything you convert straight there, and of course I still have a channel on there from when I was doing my Facebook diaries. Unfortunately it’s failed so far, and, as usual, no reason given as to what the problem is. Cue another 2 hours reading forums to try and make sense of it.

But IF it succeeds, I was envisaging a kind of diary/ bank of videos, all replete with appropriate title plus instruction, showing the results of my interpretation of them, like a score with corresponding action. This would allow me to use the footage in different ways, firstly as already mentioned in a kind of daily database fashion, then also shortened into 20 seconds fragments for selling to stock video sites and finally as footage for the separate film I’ll make as a result, which will have no audio but will have a voiceover instead. I think that’s the plan so far. See below for one of the videos, and also to go to Youtube channel.

Meanwhile, yesterday we went on a day trip to New Haven, home of Yale- and IKEA. We even went there for lunch as Sujin, one of the artists, had yet to experience the specific pleasures of IKEA. Lunch was pretty good though.

New Haven was pleasant enough, we went to Yale Art Museum which was also pleasant but hardly exciting, there was quite a wide (but not especially extensive) range of work, from African to 20^th Century American and European. The visit paid off though, as I got an idea related to the stock videos and titles of paintings. Will think about this more and return to it later on, as it could be my plan is about to change beyond repair.

Finally, its Independence Day here this weekend. Americans get to gloat over getting rid of us, we get to gloat that we don’t even need an Independence Day…the joys of petty national rivalries. Not that anyone here actually gives a toss, but it’s a great excuse for barbeques, hot dogs, burgers, beer, corn, you get the picture, and in fact we are starting early since that’s what’s on today’s menu. Especially corn since our chef, Bob, inadvertently ordered 8 bags of corn (instead of 8 ears) so our kitchen resembles a corn-field and we will be eating it til next week. Lucky it tastes so good then.

I’m off now to try and catch the sunset for one of the video clips, which might involve a bit of a hike since here, deep in the forest, the trees cut out the sun’s descent. There must be a vantage point somewhere though, up near the falls.

Action 2: what could be more boring that watching someone meditate?