How does the new film I’ve just finished connect to my other work of collaged women’s faces?
Both are about fracture and disruption – shaking things up to allow space for a hint of the ‘Other’ to seep through – constructing new possibilities of my own making.
Both shift lines of power and control away from where it stereotypically would reside. The nature of the resistance is subtle but present, manifesting as a refusal by the image to remain intact and thus available for possession.
Somewhere during the course of making the film my relationship to the subject matter drifts. It began as a liminal experience connected to a regular use of the train for work and study. Reading Marc Augé introduced thoughts of places of transport as barren, inhuman non-spaces the opposite of Utopia. However, the more I filmed and the more I engaged with the project itself, the greater connection I felt to the journey and the space in which it took place. Passivity was usurped by active engagement with sites as they sped past and with the train as a creative place of making, wrestling control back towards the self.
I wonder if the feelings of connection and control will dissipate now filming this particular journey has ended?
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My other blog: inspiration
