In class this week we started to think more about the different strategies and approaches we could take for our documentary films and also how to plan them.After readings all of the readings I realised just how important it is for our pitch to stand out and engage an audience.

Chloe and I really need to focus on planning a pitch that conveys our project in a concise and clear fashion, and explain our idea as if no one has ever heard about it before. In the reading How to Craft the Perfect Pitch for Project Film Supply & Make Your Dream Movie a Reality, it states that “if your vision isn’t being seen correctly, chances are your film won’t be seen either-at all.”

I really want our pitch to be engaging to the whole class, as I want our documentary to be engaging to a wide demographic. As it states in this week’s reading, Understanding Documentary Proposals, “A strong proposal will implicitly point to the wider significance and context of the story,” and therefore hopefully encapsulate a wider audience.

I think that sometimes documentaries about galleries and artists can be aimed at a very selective audience, however in Chloe’s and I’s pitch, I really want to highlight our aim to tell the story of the relationship of the two artists and what inspires them. I think that the incorporation of their story will hopefully avoid what could be just another art documentary.

Furthermore, this week Chloe and I thought that we needed to discuss the wider thematic implications of our story, as we obviously both had opinions of what it was however had never really discussed them together. I thought it was important to discuss this as it is something we have to mention in our pitch quite a bit. We agreed mostly, but because we are doing most of the pitch separately we thought that it was okay to include our separate opinions of why the film is significant to us and what we think its thematic concerns are.

As it states in the reading, What is a Synopsis? An Outline? A Treatment?¸our pitch is the “way of discovering and defining the fundamental essence of a project’s story,” and after learning that this week, I look forward to knuckling down our ideas.

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/creative-couples/AC1621V001S00

Ideas for Chloe and I’s Documentary for Gertrude Contemporary inspired by Creative Couples Documentary:

• Including photos from when the 2 artist met at ISCP
• What inspires them- clips about what inspires them
• The documentary starts with their separate stories and then progresses with them meeting and being inspired by each other and how that allowed them to grow as artists
• Then talks about their process
• The music is really engaging and upbeat- goes with the type of art that their create
• The story of how they come up with their art
• Has a humorous side
• What is art for you? What does it make you feel?

“How to bypass the mundane and banal questions to get real stories and deeper insights from people. It’s all about reframing the questions and focusing on specific stories or experiences and feelings rather than facts.” – Kim Munro

This week in for Documentary as Action, we continued to talk and practise conducting interviews. At this time, it is very important for me to stay focused and do all of this week’s reading as Chloe and I’s documentary for Gertrude Contemporary will have a lot of Interviews in it. Chloe and I talked and we defiantly want to include an Interview with Mark, The Director of Gertrude Contemporary, and interviews with the two artists, separately and together.  After our chat about who we will be interviewing we decided to also have an interview with the director in order to gain a different perspective of the two artists. Actually, just writing this now… I think it could be also cool to perhaps do some Vox Pops interviews, maybe conducted within visitors of other non-for-profit, independent, or artist-run galleries, and ask them about what they think of the exhibition and if they think they will be visiting? – This is something I should talk to Kim about.

Furthermore, in Friday’s class we got out the big documentary cameras and microphones and practised conducting interviews with two class mates whilst they were doing an action and explaining it. So we went up to the library, picked up a book we enjoyed, and explained why we liked it. I was really happy we got to practise this type of interview as this is something me and Chloe will defiantly we including, as we will be filming the artists whilst they are installing their artwork. I felt that this was definitely harder to film as the camera was hand-held and was heavy, however looking at the footage, it felt intimate and engaging, and sometimes if the camera is still is can feel quiet locked-off. Because Chloe and I will be using a DSLR camera this will probably be easier to do, however I do think I need to keep practising these types of interviews. It is not that we have to have the camera hand-held, however I did think it had a good effect and is something we will consider doing.

In addition, we had a talk in class about how we need not only to think about our own vision, but the vision of the non-for-profit organisation. I think my vision will be pretty similar to Mark’s vision as I have been watching a lot of Gallery and Artists documentaries and they all seem pretty similar, however, next week when we meet with Mark, we defiantly need to discuss his vision as well. Something that I have always done whilst making media is showing the participants the producing process as I go along, so I get their tick of approval and in this case, hopefully have the film used as a promotional video on social media for Gertrude Contemporary!

In this week’s tutorial a lot of the conversation in class revolved around the types of interviews that we would want our documentaries to include.

I realised that in order to conduct great interviews in Chloe and my documentaries we need to:

• Find out more about them before the interview begins
• Ask myself what matters to me about them?
• Research to make a list of questions in the first place
• The order of the questions I will ask
• Needs deliberation and reflection
• Really important thing is to be listening to the answers to know the next thing to ask (it’s easy not to listen because you are as nervous as they are)
• Making formal decisions about whether me and Chloe are on or off mic (I think yes and it gives the audience an insight to the sort of relationship me and Chloe have with the artists)
• Don’t ask yes or no questions
• The type of questions we ask determines the kind of detailed answers you get
• If we want to ask the tough questions first or more simple question as first to make them relaxed
• Realise how important for the camera people to listen and the camera people to watch
• How we will manage personal or emotional material?
• Ask the crew to see if they have any other questions to add? An inclusive and fantastic thing to do
• Have everything we think we need
• Maybe we can even give the artists/curator the chance to ask us some questions!
• It’s a special thing to talk to someone while they’re working/while they’re busy (quiet special)
• We could incorporate show and tell type interviews

Moreover, we also discussed the importance of sound and I had a think about the potential of sound and how me and Chloe could use it. In Media 3 I had a bit of experience with mixing sound and using sound programs however I still do not have that much experience. I think it would be really good to experiment for with sound so I think for Project Brief 2 I will use sound in a lot of different ways and with the sound on sound programs as well. For example, I could film kitchen noises and then mix them up to make a more chaotic sound, or film outside and then heighten use it on top of an interview conducted outside so that the outside environment is emphasised. These are basic ideas but I would need to think about sound and the ways in which I could manipulate it to tell the story of these two artists.

Why do I really want to make a film about a non-for-profit art gallery?/artist?

Should it be used for marketing?

Should it be to tell an interesting story?

Should it be for both purposes?

What style would I use? Observational? Expository?

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:

• Presented across Gertrude Contemporary’s two galleries sites in Melbourne during October-November 2017
• Spanning textile, video, installation, photographic and intervention works, the exhibition focuses on the ongoing relationship between the artists and the material and conceptual
• empathies they share in spite of the different cultural, political and economic context within which they live and work.
• The exhibition takes as a starting point the year 2008- the year in which the artists first sparked a connection while in residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York – and culminates with ambitious, new collaborative work developed specifically for the exhibition.
• Repertoires of Contentions reveals many parallels and strong ties between the artists: their cogent interests in socio-political structure of power and their innate stance of dissidence; a desire to challenge any established doctrine, policy, or institution.
• The exhibition proposes the artists’ practices and individual works as forces of contention, asking whether poetry and release (catharsis) can be achieved through acts of resistance.
• Repertoires of Contention will be presented primarily to Australian audiences, but they also aim to attract the growing Latin American and Hispanic communities of Melbourne – A group that is regularly disregarded and underrepresented in Asia-pacific.
• By painting an Australian artist alongside a Mexican peer, the exhibition also seeks to foster a convergence between these geographies, positioning Latin American practices within a wider, global dialogue and vice versa.
• Depending on the success of additional grant applications, the exhibition will potentially tour to a venue in Mexico in 2018.

 

CURATORIAL FRAMEWORK:

• Repertories of Contention is a focused pairing that allows the remarkable synergies between the two artist’s practices to come to the surface.
• The exhibition title refers to a concept from a social movement theory used to describe the range of tools that protest groups hare and which they can deploy to further a collective agenda.
• Both the artists borrow from such modes of resistance and at the same time transcend their immediacy by articulating them more broadly within the aesthetic of dissent.
• Rather than advocating for a specific political or ideological stance both artists are interested in the poetics of sabotage, the act of destabilization itself and the complex relationship between protest and art.
• The exhibition is a post-national exploration of the semiotics of power and the forces that oppose it, asking whether art has the potential to be a tool for dissent.
• In terms of its timeline Repertoires of Contention takes the year 2008 as a starting point which marks the beginning for their dialogue
• At this time, both artists’ research focused on political systems, surveillance methodologies and state apparatuses employed to enforced and uphold particular political ideologies. Government censorships was central to their early conversations.
• While Garifalakis had embarked on a series of works called ‘cover-ups’ which alluded to blacked-out documents censored by the government, Sugura had also recently completed textile works that replicated censored documents from the CIA. Although their research have been independent, the similarities between their interests and approach were remarkable and they have only continued to grow over the years.
• The curator met Segura in 2009 where she included him in a group exhibition called ‘Names a Places’ at Firstdraft Gallery in Sydney and have since remained in close contact with him and attentive in his practice. It wasn’t until a few years later, in 2011 that Segura introduced her to Garifalakis and shortly after the curator commissioned a series of texts and artist pages/interventions from both artists for the issue of a magazine she guest edited (Das Super paper) Garifalakis included three collage works by Mexican artists that were part of a Melbourne exhibition that responded to the infamous Mexican tabloid Alarma! (Known for its explicit depictions of violence interlaced with sexual imagery) and Segura wrote a series of brief stories of coincidence and concurrence- incisive, honest and event humorous accounts of ‘localism’ and encounters abroad.
• In the following years, she was invited by Garifalaskis to write the central text for his solo exhibition at a state gallery and it was around the time of that exhibition in 2014 that they began and to converse and give shape to this exhibition.
• The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive curatorial text that captures the ongoing dialogue that has taken place between the artists and her over the years, and contextualizes it within the major global shifts that without a doubt have had an influence on their practice.

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Tony Garifalakis:

• Born 1964, Melbourne, Victoria; lives and works in Melbourne.
• Completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at RMIT University in 2000.
• Recent solo exhibitions include Mutually Assured Destruction, Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane, 2011; Affirmations, Daine Singer, Melbourne, 2012; Angels of the Bottomless Pit, Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide, 2013 and Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbournem 2014; Mob Rule, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2014; and Warlords, Hugo Michell, Gallery, Adelaide.
• Recent group exhibitions include Dark Heart, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2013; Monanism, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, 2011; Negotiating This World: Contemporary Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2012; A Postcard from Afar: North Korea at a Distance, Apex Art, New York, 2012; and Theatre of the World, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, 2012.
• Garifalakis has undertaken several international studio residencies, including at ISCP, New York, in 2008, and SOMA, Mexico City, in 2011 Garifalakis’ work is held in numerous public collections in Australia including the Museum of Old and New Art, Artbank, Monash University Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Victoria.
• His work is also in private collections in Europe, UK. Australia and the United States of America.
• Garifalakis is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide.

Joaquin Segura:

• His action, installation, intervention and photographic work has been

extensively shown in solo & group exhibitions in Mexico, USA, Europe &

Asia, in venues such as Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Museo de Arte

Carrillo Gil, La Panaderia and Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in

Mexico City, along with El Museo del Barrio, Anthology Film Archives, White

Box and apexart (New York, NY), LAXART, MoLAA (Los Angeles, CA), Museo

Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain), National Center for

Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia) and the Modern Art Museum of Fort

Worth, TX.

• His work has been widely reviewed and featured on major art publications &

newspapers such as Flash Art, Adbusters, Art Papers, Codigo, Art Nexus,

Artillery, Discipline, Celeste, Reforma & The Washington Post. In 2008/09,

Segura was an artist-in-residence at the International Studio & Curatorial

Program, New York, NY and at the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica,

1. In 2012/13, he undertook artist residencies and research stays at Hangar

– Centre de producció i recerca d’arts visuals (Barcelona, Spain), MeetFactory

– International Center of Contemporary Art (Prague, Czech Republic) and

Impakt Foundation (Utrecht, The Netherlands).

• Segura is a founding member & board advisor of SOMA, Mexico City, and is

represented by Arena Mexico Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City

 

 

My idea: Gertrude Street Project

Repertoires of Contention

Joaquin Segura (From Mexico City) & Tony Garifalakis (From Melbourne)

Curated by Ivan Muniz Reed (From San Francisco/Sydney)

Our idea: Me and Chloe Delos Santos could make a short film that documents the install, potentially with short interviews with the artists and curator, who will be able to present for the install and opening. The project will bring together recent works as well as new works made in collaboration, teasing out some of the interactions in the artists’ practises, who both share interests in systems of control, surveillance and censorship. The artist have known each other since 2008 since they were in residence at ISCP in New York at the same time, and have shown together on a number of occasions in Mexico and most recently in Sydney.

-Documenting the install over time

-Incorporating footage of the works themselves

-Incorporating footage of the artists installing the works

-Incorporating footage of the artists discussing the works

-Discusses the relationship/connection between the two artists and their works

-The similarities and differences between the two artist’s works

-Incorporating footage from the opening

-Could begin with their separate background stories and then how surprises  the audience how despite their backgrounds being so different, they are deep down very similar.

-Could incorporate Mexican music?

-Perhaps we could aim our documentary audience as the same audience the artists are aiming their exhibition at

After reading all the readings and Kim’s blog post, I have come to the conclusion that before I begin making my documentary, I need to do a lot of thinking on how I can portray my subject as honest and true to what it is as possible, and also how to form a trust and honest relationship between me, as the filmmaker, and the participants (socials actors), or whatever subject I choose.

One way that I can achieve this that is mentioned in the readings, is that I really need to think about the questions that I will be asking to the participants, and perhaps think about how they might understand it/answer it as no one ever knows how a social actor may respond when in front of a camera or being interviewed.

In addition, I think that incorporating the three technical approaches which shape ‘technical documentary.’ (Web documentary, transmedia and interactive documentary,) that was mentioned in one of readers could potentially be something to consider for my documentary. Because my documentary will probably be about a non-for-profit gallery/artist showing at a gallery, I was thinking I could annotate on top of the footage with authorship, curatorial information etc. I think this was a really cool idea as well as it is still abiding by documentary obligations and expectations, and it promises to communicate something is honest and real.

Furthermore, I also found the 5 points that set in standards of ethical journalism which were mentioned in the reading ‘Ethical Challenges for Documentarians in a User-Centric Environment’ quiet relevant when considering ethical documentary making, and is something that I will defiantly come back to whilst making my documentary.

In the reading it also mentioned how it’s quiet important to expose the nature of the process with the major participants in the documentary and is something that I will defiantly do whilst in the production process of my film.

‘Another quote that resonated with me in the reading Navigating the River: The Hidden Colonialism of Documentary, was how “they wrestled with what story they could tell from their footage, but more importantly, what story they should tell” that was spoken by the boys who came to that conclusion after much rejection of their documentary.