Here and there:
It’s been a few days since my initial visit to Wakefield’s Westgate Studios.
Going over the material I gathered (video and photographs) a couple of thoughts have been chasing themselves in my head.
The first is the notion of here and there… the process of going somewhere completely unknown, how one seeks out the familiar (street furniture, shops, etc) to use as markers to establish a map.
And the other a looser, more abstract idea, to do my with my own practice methods, concerning the role and importance I assign to my physical engagement while making work.
VIDEOS:
Looking at the videos one thing that I was thinking about with travelling to the Westgate studios was what happens when you go some where completely new… the disorientation… the similarities.. Architecture, retail shops, street furniture and how one reads them and tries to create using familiar points of reference to create configurations formulating a map/plan, to make the unfamiliar familiar.
Inside Westgate I tried filming surfaces, rather than spaces or spaces between, quite often un focused or very close up. Filming the views outside again filmed details, brickwork, surfaces, snippets.
The outside views were very different to those in Durham City which is far smaller geographically, the buildings aren’t so grand and are lower, so there aren’t (from Empty Shop studios) the vista views out across the town and over to the countryside which for me is a big feature at Westgate Studios.
PHOTOGRAPHS:
With the photographs I concentrated on surfaces; on textures, details. Also on some broader shots of the studios and the light in them.
I am interested at this point of the idea of here and there… interior/exterior/ Wakefield/Durham… close to/far away
Perspective… how we perceive/ how we communicate…product of our environments/culture (local)… that contemporary society seems in many ways breaks down those understandings/differences/local identities,.
The photographs are a product of a quite rigours physical engagement on my part (not using tripods for longer exposures, physical control needed in obtaining certain camera angles/shots) in order to create controlled images which very subtly allude to a physical engagement with a place.
While I was thinking about this side of things the notion of how an application of extreme control over the physical body in the arts often is seen to award a cultural status (e.g. as with dancers.)
I wondered just how much the awarding of status for the subjugation of the un-predictable nature of the human physical body extends, particularly in relation to the arts.
That is something I would like to look in to more, though not necessarily in the time frame of this residency but as something to take forward in the future.
