drowning.

I kept it simple this week. The concept of an essay film was one I struggled to grasp and to be honest I’m still not sure that I got it (I feel like I end up saying that a lot). This has been a bad week, so it makes sense that that was the vibe I latched onto for my essay film. Plus I love a good metaphor. I resonated with the personal aspect of the essay film and the idea of posing questions rather than an argument with concrete conclusions. But at the same time I feel as a creative I often how to curate a finished work that it’s hard to think of trying to create a work where the end point is still in motion, where you pull back the curtain and let the viewer see the process. In some ways the concept of an essay film feels like the behind the scenes extra on a dvd.

I also wanted to do the footage myself, and I’m kind of disappointed that I didn’t get to do the whole film from scratch, so I think I struggled with that. In some ways having the visual already was a good exercise, and the parameters were kind of nice, but in other ways because my understanding of the essay film was that you provided a very personal take, I struggled to implant that onto footage that I had not filmed myself or conceived of myself.

But I’ve managed to produce something. And I don’t hate it. I think I enjoy the mismatch between the visuals and the audio, I also hope that my audio puts doubt into the visuals, as poses questions about what one is watching unfold. Truth is a construct built differently by everyone and this time I offer you just the building blocks rather then the finished masterpiece. Build your own truth folks.

Sure this video means one thing to me, I had one intent. I offer you the idea that for this video we try for death of the author. I constructed one narrative, but it is not the only one, it’s not the only story that this tells.

 

tw: implied suicidal ideation

 

Category: reflections, soft choreography, video | 3 Comments on drowning.

Prince: A poem film (maybe)

I always have to make things difficult for myself, apparently. Could have done the poem that I had a whole plan and ample resources for but no, had to go with the one that ‘spoke’ to me. So, the poem that I chose to transpose into a film was The Black Prince by John Ashbery. I think what drew me most to this particular poem was it’s content, the story that I felt it was telling in-between its words. So in making a film I tried to draw that narrative out of the poem. I composed my own narrative which I think thematically compliments the poem and composed a video which I wanted to feel a little bit like a fairytale, the way reading the poem did for me.

I’m in lockdown. I had limited supplies at my disposal and limited options for filming. So the answer; art from an artist who never progressed past lollipop trees (me) and an actor who was less then willing (my housemates cat), plus an actor who really had no say in the matter at all (a cat toy). From those building blocks I composed my masterpiece, and yes lets call this a masterpiece because it is a spectacular flop.

I don’t think this experiment worked at all. I hesitate to say that this might be the worst film I have ever made. It’s mostly that it’s a jumble, it doesn’t feel cohesive, still all over the place and I’m not sure it even fulfils any of the requirements of what a poem film should be, though to be honest I’m still a little confused about what those requirements are.

If I were to pose an argument about why it should be considered a poem film I would back myself with these points. One. It is a transposition, or translation of a poem into film form. I have directly taken my inspiration from a written poem and tried to carry it across. Two. All poems in one way or another are stories, stories have narratives even if they aren’t clearly defined. Therefore a story is just an extra complicated poem. Three. I’ve attempted to use my own stylised film elements that might recreate the feel of a poem being like I wanna be a story but to the left. These include what iMovie calls the “green screen” effect and I call “fading out my cat so he blends in but also kinda look like part of him is missing”. I also used a slow-motion shot at the start. I also purposely chose to include rhyme and repetition in my voice over to kind of mimic the flow of a poem, which I also feel fits in well with The Black Prince as that poem really does read a little more like a story then a poem, its what we call freeform.

Anyway at this point, it is what it is. So here it is.

Category: soft choreography, video | 4 Comments on Prince: A poem film (maybe)

Content Warning: how film can violate the body

content warning: suicide, self-harm, gore (blood), wooziness inducing images, consent issues, sharp objects, screaming

 

Phenomenology considers that “tactility is a mode of perception and expression wherein all parts of the body commit themselves to or are drawn into, a relationship with the world that is at once a mutual and intimate relation of contact” (Baker, 2009, p. 3). It considers the world and at through the body and the moment where the film and the viewer intermingle and where that ‘touch’ of the two creates meaning.

However if it is a touch relationship between two bodies that Phenomenology seeks to explore what happens when one side violates that relationship? When the touching is non-consensual? In that consideration it flips the play between bodies into something more sinister.

In looking at Phenomenology I choose to examine how discomfort can be used to influence the body and how one can play on the body’s instinctual and empathetic reactions to elicit meaning making.

I drove inspiration for this experiment from Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty which could be described as a “struggle between art and work, experience and representation, impossibility and reality” (Gorelick, 2011, p. 274). The theatre was focused on physicality and on being able to represent an in-betweenness that could often not be described through language. It also required the audience to be an active participant as it played on shock value and disrupting and decivilising.

It also focused on the approach to showing “life” as it existed in all its cruelties, hence the name. Artaud was a man who spent sections of his life in mental faculties and was described to have madness (Gorelick, 2011). These create a person with a certain worldview and honestly I can relate. The idea of trying to show “life” and in life body, because I feel like the two are linked inextricably because the body as a moving, feeling vessel is therefore very much alive, but the dirty, uncomfortable, confronting side of life that must have been his reality (and it definitely is mine) was very appealing to me.

In bringing the two together I intended to explore uncomfortabllity and violation in the space where the touching of bodies and the audience creation of meaning occurs. Here I hope that what I created spurs bodily reactions, probably of revulsion in the viewer, but the point is that the reaction is not intellectual it is visceral, instinctual creation of subjectivity of the body to the film.

I would also presuppose that “life” is something that can only be experienced through the body therefore applying Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty applies a certain kind of experience between the two bodies, but the point is that it IS an experience. It is not something that can be intellectualised but something that exists between two moments, two bodies, an intangible something. That concept of “life” is interesting because life is something that must be lived and the way that we live in through our body.

Not all experiences are pleasant so in my usual devils advocate go for the weirdest option possible I choose to investigate what it looks like when the experiences that are created in those spaces are uncomfortable, confronting and force the viewers body to react in unpleasant ways. I explored different ways that this relationship could be exploited in both the visual of body horror and the sensory aspects intended to upset the viewer (for example it starts with a very loud scream). There are places where gore is the main element, and others where the implications are much subtler, such as a sequence where I tilted the city skyline back and forth, and put an ocean sound over the top intending to simulate something akin to sea sickness. I also relied on rhythm, particularly the rhythm of the body as there is a heartbeat line that runs throughout most of the piece. I also relied on a ticking rhythm, but with no climax, such sounds usually promote anxiety in people hearing them as we expect sounds to come to an end somewhere, or reach a natural climax and this one doesn’t.

Furthermore as primarily a writer I chose to use words at the beginning of my film to explore the way (contrary to Artaud’s thoughts) language could become part of this liminal space, reaching out and creating part of the equation where the language itself was intrusive and touching the viewer in a sense that it required an instinctual reaction.

I definitely discovered a lot in the process of trying to make something to fit in with the theory given that the finished product is simultaneously not what I intended to create and exactly what I hoped to create. I was not aware of the darkness that I was going into when I started, just hedging my bets on what sounded compelling and challenging for me to create. Now I think I ended up with more questions and with a deeper understanding of the insanity required to create this kind of work and think oh that seems fun.

I guess applying it to my own practice it’s about coming at things from a different angle rather then plot and narrative but about considering how do you want the viewer to engage and react to the work. It also relates to my own practice because it allowed me to explore much darker themes in a more visceral way then I have had permission to explore them in before and in a slightly different medium and from the angle of looking at how the bodies (both of film and of the viewer) would respond to each other, and allowing that to create the meaning.

I don’t quite know if it worked, if the exploration that I created allows for meaning to be inscribed in the places where the touching of two bodies is being violated, and how a certain kind of meaning can come from being disturbed and confronted, how that expands an understanding of the world, of life, of how the body interacts with it. I suppose the if it woks depends on the viewer. There will certainly be those who it’s too much shock value for, those who don’t understand, those who hate it, but I guess on the flip side the instinctual reaction of any of those means it worked. As long as there was some kind of reaction, some kind of meaning ascribed, and some kind of bodily response, then I guess that that was the point.

references: 

Barker, J 2009, The Tactile Eye: touch and the cinematic experience, University of California Press, Los Angles, USA

Chamarette, J 2012, Phenomenology and the future of film: rethinking subjectivity beyond French cinema, Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK

Gorelick, N 2011, ‘Life in Excess: Insurrection and Expenditure in Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty’, The Meaning of Life, Vol 33, no. 2, Wayne State University Press, pp. 263-279

 

Category: soft choreography, video | 3 Comments on Content Warning: how film can violate the body