I was going to stress myself out by during the traditional super stressed all nighter, where I try and fill up more of my sketch book, do a page on each artist I have looked and other things like that but when I looked at the list i relisied this was an over ambitious goal for the the time I had left. It also seems like a pointless thing. It only really satisfies the grading matrix, its not the most motivating motive.
I do constatly look at art, I don't think I need to prove this. If I need to prove anything it is my analitical skills. Not that I know a lot of different artists by looking at their wikipedia page but actually take the time with the work this dosen't happen by quickly compiling a few sentenses cut from other peoples views and reasssesmbling them in your sketchbook.
I think my sketch book this semister has almost been the residue left from work rather than me working things out myself. I spend most of my time reading and watching and trying to write but I get most of my ideas, although thats not the write word, walking to and from uni or when I am having a shower but this is true of most people I think. Whe n you have ideas or thoughts like this though they aren't all together. I think you can fool yourself into thinking you know what you know but when you try and write it or say it you relise that what you think dosn't make sence, or you were thinking of two ooposing things at the same time or that your great epithany when you write it down wasn't as smart as you thought it was.It is important to try and write down what you are thinking so that you can look at it objectivly, this is mayby something I haven't been doing enough and it is far more important than proving that you know of artists.
My thinking has been muddled this semester. I have been trying to figure out what I am really intersested in, but that is a stupid thing to do in the end because you don't pursue that you just end up doing it. Its like those people who pursue happiness, you don't do that you stop worring about it and let it come to you. You really know what you are interested in. So what are my interests? I don't know why are you asking me that?
Thats a stupid thing to ask because people are interested in a great deal of things or at least interesting people do. Yay! I'm soooo interesting.
The question is focus not interest and thats just a matter of choice. The truth is I have lacked focus rather than interest. I almost feel like picking a random theme uot of a hat to work on in forth year that seems like just as good a way of choosing as any. I am uncomfortably speaking like this because I get the feeling that I will look back and cringe at comments like these when I am older and know better. What matures in an artist is not the thing looked at but how its looked at and then of course how that vision is realised.
I don't know how far my work has matured since last semester, but the difference between 3rd and 2nd year I feel has been considerable. I still need to make a real jump for 4th year. This semesters work has been stuck in the clump that I got to at the end of last semister, i am using many of the same techniques and I fear this might be a bit of creative lazyness seeping in. There is a thought process where its like I have an idea how can I can display this with my body doing a futile repaeted action and then how will I display that usinga mix of TVs and projections. It is starting to feel for me a little formulaic. Its becoming a default setting rather than pushing myself and boadaries. I need to do something that surpasses this or at least does not conform to this because the last thing i want to do Is repeat my self and get bored of my own work.
Going back to the subject of researching artists there is a tendancy to look at artists who are doing art that similar to the work your doing. Of course this is a nessesary thing and it would be stupid not to do this you need to know the history and the different ways the subject has been realised but i amm allways scared that you can dig your self into a hole. Its a fear of ending up knowing everything about nothing Hmmm a minite ago I was talking about how important focus is. There is also the fear of being a jack of all trades but a master of none. Both end sof the scale sound good and bad in different ways. No wonder I am lost.
This has been a theme of this sememester. I can't help but get roped into absurdism when even the really insignificant issue of what an art student should do in his 2nd semister of third year is surrounded by grey paradox. being lost in thisway also makes It harder to make a sketchbook because when you are lost you don't know what is significant.
I would love if I were more people, graham doppleganger pictures look like a wish come true because then I could do everything but sadly I don't have the cloaning abilty on hand. I will just have to prioritise and make choices like everyone else.
while Looking back at the semester I might aswell write alittle about the final videos I concoctded:
I don't know whether i should talk about the main piece that we discussed in the crit because that has been quite roundly evaluated so I will skip on to the other videos.
I made a few videos of the light in the hall. The most significant one is lightbulb Pendulum. This was half inspired by the scene in psycho in which the mothers corpse is reavealed and lila knocks the lightbulb when she steps back in horror. The moving light give the illusion of moviement to the mother dead corpse so that she became both living and dead at the same like she is in the rest of the movie. This living death is something which has always been part of photography and film. It fits with the feeling of being trapped from my staircase piece. I have amplified this idea by making the lightbulb in my film swing back and forth forever like a pendulum and dispaying it on a Tv. It simulatanously references the passage of time while also staying the same and going no where. The light bulb goes from pole to pole only to reapeat itself. constantly changing but remaining the same. Its back an d forth movement is also ment to remind the viewer of hypnosis, pointing out the fact that when the TVs on your eyes always end up watching it even if the programs of no interest what so ever. I remeber during last semisters exhibition there was this we kid who spent almost the hole time staring at my work, just because it was displayed on TVs. It's strange almost like to use a chilched example moths to a flame. These were the sort of thoughts that were going through my mind when makin up that piece.
I also made a video called two masks. which is basically two tvs playing the same video, though one is slightly a head of the other timewise. Visually it looks like one face laughing at at another face that is crying. Both over acted (both faces are the same face,mine) as the videos play the laughing one changes to crying and vice versa so the sympathies change. I really hate the one thats laughing its so heartless taking happiness in the others pain but then the crying one starts laughing and the laughing one starts crying, and the power shifts. The titial obviously refers to the two masks tradgedy and comedy and tries to show the artificiality of these boadaries. Things in life eliude the boundaries and structure of fiction. It is obviously also talking about the ability to tell or understand how someone one really feels. There is where the tital kicks in again. The tital does its job. I don't know if the tital is two obvious or even if the whole idea is a little run of the mill. I still like it though. I think it is effective in trying to judge the characters what are the laughing or crying for. They are laughing/crying at each other. Its like they are struggling for supreamacy and when one finally gets it the victory seems hollow or they realise how cruel them are and they fall. neither ever really wins they slip between failure and success. It reminds me of my attitude to my work, at the moment I think I am totally brilliant but when I started to writting this I was feeling pretty depressed about the quality of my work. Maybe it because i'm now listening to upbeat music with flutes in it and ooo la las. I'll listen to something miserable when I write about the next video to see if it has any effect. With all this elesivness and pointing out that there are no boudaries the piece is contradictory in that it is very much in a set structure a very simply structure. Its strange.
The next video I made was called Jump for Joy which consisted of a video of me reasoably small in an expance of grass jumping with a voice (stuart) offf screen, behind the camera, barking commands such as jump higher and smile more and admonisments like "thats not good enough" in the style of a overbearing father at a childrens football game. Its a single unedited shot. Its quite amusing however perhaps a little slow, Its also a bit of a one liner. It was developed from the script I wrote called "Brinng" where the main character was stuck in a pointless job in which he could never succeed. In this I have slighlty changed the idea and also reduced the staging. I'm talking more about the idea of how even our liesure and emotional lives are governed and controled like everything else. There are social pressure to feel the right thing. A jump of joy is ment to be a spontansious act not a rehearsed and reapeted one. Play is oringanally an exploratory thing, where you learn about the world but as you get older play gets more and more consricted and rule ridden. A game like football you have to obey the rules or you are playing wrong. How does this fit with the last video where on of the points is the elusivness of reality. Well it shows in a way how we deal with this by building rules and systems that allow us to play together nicely even if this is restrictive and leaves you sometime doing seemingly pointless activitys in order to survive or having to repress your feeling in order to fit into expectations.
The next video is plinth. Its a bit of a half baked thing, which hasn't been distilled down to a level that i am happy with as you can see with the three versions of it there is still alot to work out. This is less important to me than the other videos. I enter with a pair of jeans in a white space with a plinth in it. I lay down the jeans carefully and stuff my outer garmets into the legs then arrange the boots at the bottom of the jeans so it looks like a pair of legs, then I push the plinth onto the jeans, with the ends of the stuffed jeans sticking out so that it appears comically like there is a person squished under the plinth cartoonlike. I then leave.
I haven't got any real reasons for doing this. I was thinking about narassism and art and how much any piece of work talks about the artist. What do you leave in an art gallery. I don't know really what I was doing. It was a spur of the moment thing i saw a plinth and I wanted to make a film. I suppose when you try and make an honest work of art you try to bare more than just the surface but the art work is also a surigate in a sense. It represents you as much as it represents what the artist had in mind. People if you are well famous refereto a piece of work as "a (artists name)". I suppose I was trying to workout these sorts of issues
The last video on the dvd isn't really worth talking about.
To finish I'll just throw in some art works that I enjoyed
This is "Paradox of Praxis I (sometimes doing something leads to nothing) by Francis AlΓΏs. It is a nice simple piece. In which the artist pushes a block of ice (the type street vender use to keep the drinks they sell cool) around mexico city until it melts. He is exploring many of the same themes that I have tried to but has also managed to bring in a political side to the work as well, something which he often does, by referencing the street venders who despite all thee efforts are trapped by there difficult curcumstances.
The next is a wee monologe by ivor cutler. His works I find really funny and has that strange dark human children have as well as a child like wonder at the world yet he's still has this stern dour scottish voice that pushes it into brilliance. It also brushes the profound in an odd whimsical way
Right thats me.
I wish my sketchbook was a little more ledgible
but it isn't.
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