The film has now been completed, ready in time for the group tutorial. We’ve been playing around with the setup/display of the screens because we tend to think that having a display that’s relative to the work adds an extra dimension that a lot of artist’s films miss sometimes. Ideas we’ve been considering have been to do with certain references to things that have been mentioned in the actual film. This includes when there’s a mention of the TV in the shining being on but not plugged in, which resulted in us dropping a cabled for one of the TVs behind the wall and the other TV actually having its own extension cable to make it a little more obvious that it’s plugged in. Another thought was to have a kind of wallpaper or in some way edit the wall on which the TVs are hanging. We even considered having some photography lights up but thought that this was a little forced and obvious as opposed to the subtlety we were originally going for. The tests will continue until the open studios Friday when we’ll make a final decision.
Monday we attended a lecture by Rebecca Ackroyd which we had mixed feelings about. We had experienced her work before the lecture at the Zabludowicz Collection and weren’t completely taken by it but found it thoughtful with regards to the space it was in. this lead to us hoping that some extra context by the artist herself would bring it to life. Unfortunately this was not the case; every time she sounded like she was about to say something which might tip the scales she would manoeuvre round it. An example being a sentence like this which came up fairly frequently. She said something along the lines of, well when I first visited the space I knew that I should really embrace the architecture since it was fairly overpowering, so I really wanted the work to do something about that. What is she referring to here? Do “something” what something did she want it to do? The notion of the work reflecting the environment is definitely an important one and something that is highly engaging but the vagueness of her intention was slightly frustrating. However, this didn’t distract from our thoughts on the work and in fact, the reason that we’re being so picky about the way she was discussing it probably means that we were just eager to learn more. And who knows, she did preface the talk with the idea that she’s not as good at talking about what she makes anymore and perhaps that’s set her free. One of the more poignant things she said was that the work is focused around a loss of familiarity which she described as visitors potentially feeling un-comfy. This comes out of using recognisable imagery such as body parts or everyday objects (carpets or blinds) but editing them in some way to set uncertainty in motion. This felt very relevant with regards to our own work – attempting to engage an audience, draw them in with familiarity but then leave a mystery or scenario unsolved.
The tutorial was fairly successful! Success here being defined as good amount of constructive feedback and plenty of applicable references to go away and research. Something that was mentioned was the line "did I mention weapons" which was too much of an attempt to be funny. We agree about this and the deadpan delivery is knowing enough for carry it through without forcing it. Another comment was that it felt like some sort of test which we had noticed before but weren’t sure if other people would too. It does definitely look like an association game/test similar to the one in Blade Runner where they ask them to image certain things and monitor their reactions. Here perhaps what is potentially being monitored is whether or not you can find a connection between the words and the imagery. Another very relevant observation was that we have always stopped and started stories because of reading; it’s quite rare to fit down and read an entire book but until recently one would always watch a film in one go. However, now with Netflix and other online providers we’re able to watch for any length of time. The point being that one is now able to almost edit a film as they watch it. Just in the same way we’ve put various bits and pieces together to tell a particular kind of story, other people may start and stop a film and get a different experience than someone who watched the whole way through.
There were some excellent references thrown our way. Something fairly obvious but certainly necessary was looking further into the idea of semiotics so we’ve got a book titled ‘This Means This, This Means That: A User's Guide to Semiotics’ which we will read through. We were then recommended ‘This Is a Generic Brand Video’ which is made entirely from stock images from Dissolve. It’s a very tight film, if not a little cheesy but it certainly makes the point about objects and imagery being blank slates and people applying meaning to them based on their own agenda or thought process.
The artist Mark Lewis was also mentioned. He’s someone we’ve been a fan of since Venice Biennale in 2009 and then had our love rekindled at a talk he gave a couple of years ago. Some truly genius ways of thinking about film and the methods by which it’s constructed and how that informs a certain narrative. We’ve since gone back and watched a couple of interviews with him and he says some truly poetic and beautiful things about the moving image such as the fact that we’ve had the cinematic experience since the beginning of time, the first time a human looked into a pond and saw their reflection, they were watching a movie. said exactly the thing we were considering when having huge gaps if silence in our video; the lack of sound abstracts the visual experience, it removes its fullness and asks us to imagine the missing elements through the visual. The link below is one of favorites of his (although it's not silent) watch from 9:18.
Laura Mulvey’s text ‘Death 24X A Second’ was also brought up but we’re yet to read it since we’re getting ready for the open studios but will make sure we do before since it sounds like the perfect book when considering narrative and the spectator. Michael Craig Martin’s 1973 piece ‘An Oak Tree’ was briefly spoke about in reference to attaching meaning to objects and words.
Then we went onto sound and how that can be a big influencer of narrative. David Toop’s book Sinister Resonance sounds excellent and is now also on the ‘to read’ list. It discusses the history of listening and how sound often functions as a metaphor for mystical revelation, forbidden desires, formlessness, the unknown, and the unconscious.
Kerry Tribe is an artist who we’ve heard of before but never really investigated and since doing so have been truly blown away. Her piece ‘The Audition Tapes’ is so similar to a work we’ve been thinking about for a while. It basically documents the casting call for a project advertised in an acting magazine as "an experimental documentary on family history and memory." The monologues and dialogues the actors deliver were developed from transcribed interviews with members of Tribe's immediate family. Each of the fifteen actors included in the tape speaks as one of four real characters. But as one watches, the stories they narrate begin to fragment, repeat themselves and contradict. Different accounts of the same events emerge and actors project their own desires and expectations onto the characters they portray.
We love the aesthetic of audition tapes and spend quite a lot of time watching them on YouTube. This is because it’s a purely dialogical moment; there’s no set, no costume and not really any other actors. It’s the most difficult moment for an actor because they have nothing to support them, just words on a page. A favourite audition clip is Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad trying out for the part of Jesse and half way through he breaks character due to forgetting a line and gets reminded of it by someone off screen. In that moment you realise you haven’t been watching the ‘proper’ performance and even though the illusion was so minimal in the first place, it’s broken right in front of you.