I’ve recently re-shot a film I made to improve the footage and incorporate sound. It’s just had its debut at the 51zero arts festival in Medway allowing me to view it critically for the first time.
The new stills are much more effective. I’ve now worked closely with this collage three times — once to create it and twice to video it — and each reiteration of the process improves my knowledge and relationship with the piece giving better end results. Presumably I’ll reach a point when familiarity builds contempt, but I haven’t found it yet! The new footage shows a stronger control of composition and focus. The piece plays with concealing and revealing, offering tantalising fragments of a whole image whilst hinting at the entirety of the whole, uncovering the complete piece only towards the end of the animation. In the first version of the film this didn’t work correctly whereas version two is much more successful.
Experiencing the final film in large scale format in a gallery setting made me feel uneasy. The stills are calm and roll out at an evenly measured pace whereas the sound is unpredictable, harsh, and somewhat jarring. Ultimately, this disjuncture is interesting but it’s vital the sound track is played at the right level so that it begins as subtle background susurration building to a more intrusive crescendo towards the final third of the piece. Most viewers acknowledge the sound as relating to tearing or cutting but the final third of the track has a different nature approximating the whispering of multiple voices. This was neither planned nor intended but suits the feeling of displacement the work strives to create.
The inclusion of sound definitely improves the work.
The film’s length (just over 5 minutes) feels right; long enough to establish its point without becoming over-indulgent.
I don’t know where I go from here. My feelings are that shifting a collage to animation delivers a work of art that’s clearly very different to the original montage — both have their own place. I suspect film will re-surface at intervals within my practice to deliver very specific results in very specific circumstances.
Link to my film
Vanitas are a style of still-life painting originating from the Netherlands in the early 17th century that bring together objects together objects that symbolise the inevitability death, the transience of life, and the vanity of achievements or pleasures.
My piece is made from appropriated images collected from contemporary fashion magazines, physically cut out then turned into a digital collage. Each was chosen primarily for conceptual reasons. It is uncommon to find figures in vanitas paintings but the female form is central to my practice so I’ve picked passive, perfect female figures, disrupted them using division, thereby denying an assertive gaze possession of a whole, complete form.
Thoughts behind my object choice and general composition are inspired by Petrus Schotanus ‘Vanitas, Still Life with a Globe’. Jewellery, accessories, clothes and birds of prey refer to wealth and power, whilst a wristwatch and flowers offer symbols of transience and death. Wall art references arts and science, and succulent plants spilling out of the vase hint at resurrection and eternal life. Objects tumble in disarray suggestive of the eventual overthrow of the achievements they represent.
Constructing this image was more difficult than it looks! After several failed attempts I realise the key is to work from background forwards building up layers gradually. Although there is a nod to perspectival accuracy, ultimately the results are intentionally somewhat Surrealist. Colour-wise, I’ve looked for rich tones but not stuck slavishly to the traditional vanitas palette.
So far the base image (shown) is composed but needs printing, mounting and painting. The painting will further mar the perfection of the image offered and my goal is to relinquish control and deliver chance.
I feel like I’m talking and no one is listening.
I send thoughts, words and work out into the world to little response or reaction.
Do I have anything to say others wish to hear?
Perhaps this is an inevitable August slump when little happens and the art world winds down on its annual holiday? Could I have been too distracted recently with the effort of being a Director of Making Art Work pushing my own practice into second place? I might be suffering some sort of post-MA crisis as the next lot of art students graduate and the annual anniversary of finishing my course looms? Almost certainly my approach needs re-thinking and more patience to suck it up and keep on trying?
Being an artist is a lonely game. I’m aware I’m not the first to say this, but as I write I’m sitting in my office typing away alone as usual. God this sounds pathetic, but perhaps acknowledging the issue will trigger a step forward?
I’m aware of getting too caught up in my own head space. If few are listening this feels beyond my control – I cannot force it to happen – so perhaps I should stop worrying and concentrate on uncovering a solution that works better for me? I feel a bit better even as I post this; the issue needs confronting in a similar way that the image I’ve attached seems to challenge one as she looks out of the page!
This is the initial piece in what hopefully is destined to be a new series of work rather than simply an idea that peters out and dies.
I’m aware I’m possibly working on too many things at the same time. It can’t be helped; it seems to be how I’m made! But this series isn’t pure flight of fancy; it does have a practical purpose as it’s destined for a show in Maidstone Museum in November if I can manage to sort it out! Anyway, back to the task in hand…
The piece seems to work really well aesthetically – it received a lot of enthusiastic feedback from those who’ve seen it. But there were also gentle hints of a wider issue perhaps most simply summarised as lacking conceptual rigor. It’s possible I’ve been seduced by the joys of form, colour and materials at the expense of rationale for making the piece in the first place.
Words seem to bring me back on track; jotting down key phrases, then editing, sifting, and sorting these until they’re pruned back to bare bones, holding them in my mind as I make version two. They make slightly unusual reading – a saturated, condensed, highly focused output – but they help ground me.
In this case, the key phrases seem to be:
The gaze – an impermanent point-of-view. Shifting. Unstable. Tenuous. Fleeting moments.
Luxurious indulgence. Opulent richness. Theatrical surrealism. Distasteful seduction. Mass consumption.
Desired. Collected. Possessed. Consumed to the point of destruction.
Disruption. Disjuncture. Constructed conflicting truths. Nothing is intact but fractures allow illumination to escape.
Contradictions: perfect – imperfect, passive – aggressive, real-I – fantasy-I, collude – resist.
Block. Damage. Undermine. Destroy. Obliterate.
Over the last two weeks I’ve been part of Clare Smith’s wonderful Stitched Time Project, and it has surprised me with a few wider lessons.
The Problem Solving Machine as a device to address thorny issues
This approach requires a few key carefully sourced ingredients to operate:
– Raw materials
– Space
– A simple and repetitive task that requires completion
– Artistic time given willingly by multiple participants over an immersive period
The outcome is a non-hierarchical group structure with dynamics that feel embracing, welcoming and non-threatening. Easy conversations result; periods of companionable silence followed by spontaneous discussion flowing along unexpected and unplanned paths. Intimacy with one’s co-conspirators quickly evolves providing an enjoyable, effective way to exchange information and air problems, but with the immanent power to uncover innovative, unusual solutions.
Authorship and collective / collaborative working
Considered in its widest context most art isn’t the sole work of one artist-originator but emerges from the subtle interaction of ideas garnered from a wide range of sources. The fundamental rules and instructions for the Stitched Time Project originate from Clare Smith, but decisions made beyond this initial starting point are determined by individual makers and each stitch sewn bears their mark – a personal drawn line.
Given this, does the project ultimately deliver joint authorship? Are its members collaborating or working collectively? In my mind, collaboration conjures ideas of people coming together on an equal footing to deliver something, whereas collective introduces an element of hierarchy in terms of roles. It’s interesting Clare Smith’s asked if the opposite could be true based on a thesis read recently which suggests ‘collective is about joint authorship, while collaboration is more about single authorship’.
Co-operation is a necessity – it certainly allows far more complex projects to be delivered than the sole artist working alone – but how / when does it undermine the position of artist-initiator and is it a cause for celebration or too high a price to pay?
At the moment, I don’t feel the need to answer these questions; merely to frame them for further consideration.
Stitched Time Project information
