University of the Arts London

It’s been a really busy couple of weeks around here. There’s a month and half left until my final hand-in date. A month and a half until I basically finish my degree. How crazy is that…! After 3 years of the biggest mix between being happy and frustrated with my work, I have grown so much and I am so happy to have gone into Graphic Design and developed more art-based work.

I’ve been working on the notions of space, body and movement through my projects and recently developed more images on my personal explorations of space. When I first became interested in this subject, my main concern was ‘How do I make empty space visible?’. Somewhere along the way, I somehow left this question behind – and moved on to other ones, which I feel are just as interesting.

Last week I spent some time at the photgraphy studio and these photos came out. By re-enacting the same exercises I had done before with white objects (chairs, table…), now with a black chair onto a black backdrop, I (all dressed in white), became the negative space. As I wrap myself around the chair, my body adapts to the angles and curves of the chair, and becomes the only think that’s actually visible.

I’m happy with this inverting of spaces in a 3D format – not only inverting colours/spaces digitally on a 2D format, but experimenting and manually producing inverted environments. All of the images I’ve produced so far made me develop my interest for the search of geometry within the body – this will be something I’ll re-consider with these white-on-black photos.

Memória is a project I’ve been continuosly working on for the last few months. The initial idea for it was triggered by Descartes’ notion that ‘We are the sum of our experiences’.

I pondered about this statement and what it meant to me. Looking into my personal experiences and memories, and gradually collecting them in a kind of ‘diary’, I came to the conclusion that a lot of the events/memories I believed to have helped shape my adult personality were stories my parents had told me. Real stories, mostly of things that had happened to them before I was even born.

I was intrigued by the effect of these memories I didn’t own on my own personality. I knew about these stories and even had images of the events floating in my head, whithout having even witnessed them. This phenomenon is what some call ‘Post-memory’, and has been closely linked to descendants of Holocaust victims and to the way stories related to the Holocaust were so present in their upbringing. My memories were far less traumatic, not even comparable to a tragic part of history like the Holocaust, but seemed to still classify as ‘Post-memory’.

After searching through these deeply personal stories of my parents, and asking them to record themselves speaking about them a few times, they became incredibly uncomfortable – about sharing their personal memories with complete strangers and being exposed in such a way. This discomfort was quickly passed onto me, as I increasingly felt guilty about exploring my parents’ private ‘intellectual’ property with almost no regards to their feelings.

Through this, a new concept was born within the project, and I developed this video. It became a visual exploration of the distortion and appropriation of memories and, through sound and repetition, an exploration of discomfort.

This is, still, a work in progress, as I feel the video still needs to be tweaked here and there. The colours aren’t quite right yet, but the general feeling is created. I wish to use this video, alongside other versions of it, and create a tryptich, through three separate projections onto different walls within one same dark room.

Memoria, Ines N.S. 2013

This last project I’ve mentioned, Space // Movement, has been really engaging for me. I got to a point where I felt I had so much material to deal with, I didn’t know how to approach it, how to edit it and make it into a final piece/final pieces.

I went back in my research and sketchbooks a little bit and felt the need to interpret and explore space on my own terms. Almost everything I did with the dancers, I had tried previously myself, and recorded it all – but only viewed it as a necessary exercise to gain familiarity with the subjects of moving/dancing and space. Looking back, I realised I needed to look into these personal explorations in more detail and start developing them, aside from my collaboration with the dancers.

I reflected on the notions of positive and negative space, applied to real life objects and spaces. Through this, I started a series of performative exercises in which I would become the negative space around everyday, homely objects, wrapping myself around them and engaging with them. This resulted in a series of photographs – which, for some reason I have yet to fully understand, I seem to prefer over videos.

Following these exercises, I moved on to different objects and spaces – I became interested in those I see and use everyday (like the bathroom, and the kitchen). All of these experiments resulted in photographs too.

From the photographs, I’ve been analysing the shape of my body when adapting myself to different spaces/objects. At first I made a very simple analysis, just by tracing the outlines of my body with a pencil onto tracing paper – obtained an unrecognisable shape. I then observed these shapes and attempted to discover some sort of geometry in them, by drawing straight lines where I felt they would be (if I were a geometric shape).

I obtained a series of geometric compositions, on paper – and suddenly felt everything had become incredibly 2-dimensional. Reacting to this, I recreated these geometries in space, using yarn and tape onto the walls and floor.

I am pleased with the sculptural pieces I have achieved, but feel they need further experimentation and development. I plan on reconstructing them as freestanding pieces and exploring the new shapes from there.

Last week was a good week. I’ve been at my favourite stage of my projects – experimentation and production. I have surpassed the stresses of idea generation and have, at least temporarily, silenced most of my self-doubt.

Recently I’ve been working on several projects at once. This has been an essentially good experience: it allows me to jump between projects and leave a particular one for a moment when I’m feeling stuck and need to think about other things.

I’ve become increasingly interested in abstract concepts, and my work has been developing towards subjects related to space, body, movement and time – either as related subjects or separate.

Space // Movement is a project I’ve been working on since October/Novemeber. It’s a collaboration with four London-based dancers, who study Theatre Dance at London Studio Centre. It started as an individual project of mine, which dealt with the notions of empty space and how 3-D negative space could be inverted to become positive space.

This quickly lead me to thinking about the concept of body and how one’s body occupies and moves in space. Struggling to understand movement on my own, I contacted these four dancers and started an open collaboration. We’ve worked on the ideas of spatial explorations and interpretations through movement essentially on an improvisation basis.

At the same time, I felt the need to try and represent movement in a more permanent and physical way to a recording made on a camera. Through attaching drawing and painting materials to the dancers bodies and having them dance on paper, we managed to trace out movement and the body, to record it physically, as it happened.

I presented this project at my class’ Interim Show ‘Medium Rare’ at the Truman Brewery in January – the one you can see in the video. The performance included almost all aspects explored during previous exercises, bringing them together as one. The dancers and their movement produced a painting, which remained as evidence for the rest of the show.

I think having a performance as an exhibition piece was crutial. It allowed me to stress the notion of movement being ephemeral and belonging to a certain moment in time, one which you can only experience once – and after it simply watch recordings to remember it.

This is a project I feel could go on for a while, but for now I’m producing prints from several photographs I took, putting together the clothes they wore as evidence and the painting produced at the show, as well as making a final publication, which takes the viewer through the process, using mostly images.

This is my first post here on Degrees Unedited and probably my first ever blog – or at least my first individual one.

The end of my BA in Graphic Design and Illustration at London College of Communication is near, and all the confusion/self-doubt/slight fear associated with it has settled in. I start this blog aiming to understand my own work better and, consequently, develop it further and improve on how I present it to others.

Despite being in a Graphic Design course, my work has developed to become very much art-based, and less “commercial” I suppose. This seems to simultaneously be working for me and against me – which I’m sure is a feeling resulting from final year jitters.

Ultimately, I hope to use this blog to ease my own doubts and develop the way I express the ideas that lie behind what I do. And, who knows, receive feedback from people that aren’t already familiar with my work.

On this note, here is a link to my website, which is under constant tweaking:

http://ines-ns.com