Currently our research is loosely based around storytelling and the ways in which elements of cinema (such as dialogue and editing) influences how artists/filmmakers tell stories. This has involved us doing some experiments with pre-existing footage, similar to the film about props, where we have taken scenes from films such as “Batman” or “Wolf of Wall Street” and removed all the shots with dialogue to create this strange echo of what once a comprehensive scene.
Another experiment was looking at the first and last scenes of a film and considering how the journey between the two has mutated the first into the last. One of our favourites being David Fincher’s film about the inception of Facebook called The Social Network (which, on a side note, has more shots with visual effects than the new Godzilla which just proves Fincher’s absolute attention to detail/desire for perfection).
Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter for Moneyball and creator of The West Wing, likes to begin his scripts on tilt, a staccato of dialogue, forcing the viewers to listen in order to catch up. His characters often speak past each other, responding with zags to zigs; ignoring one thread only to veer back to it a few seconds later. In The Social Network, he begins the story with nine pages of dialogue between the principal character, Mark Zuckerberg, and his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, Erica. It is an unorthodox amount for an opening scene, but it establishes the themes of the movie as well as character of Zuckerberg. We’ve slightly degressed into a rant about how great the dialogue is in this film but the point was that in this beginning scene Erica’s final line is “You’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.” Compare this to the final scene of the film where the lawyer Marylin Delpy says to him “You’re not an asshole, Mark. But you’re just trying so hard to be”. There’s a suggestion that there has been some sort of transformation here but one which is very subtle.
We had a personal tutorial which due to unforeseen circumstances wasn’t with our usual tutor but was nevertheless helpful and informative. Some great recommendations came through including artist/curator Gavin Wade who we were already aware of due to his text called ‘The 5 Acts of Art’ where he proposed that art is exhibition, that art is not exhibited but that art exhibits, that exhibition is a fundamental function of being human, and the fundamental process of art. He also discusses how the artist-curator position builds on this ‘truth’ to produce art that is necessary. The artist is a primary producer of art while the curator is a secondary producer (but a producer nonetheless). This is very much in line with our thinking when it comes to things we’ve curated in the past and how we’ve contributed to them in our own way, not necessarily bringing a big spotlight onto us as artists but more as facilitators/organisers.
Another excellent artist we were recommended who we were unaware of before is Grace Schwindt, who’s 2014 film Only A Free Individual Can Create A Free Society sounds confusing and thought-provoking in the best way possible. The inception of it was an interview between the artist and a German cab driver about his involvement in the progressive West German political fringe from the mid-1960s. Over 70 minutes, their dialogue unfolds across a choreographed performance featuring 11 dancers. The stage is a three-walled, open-air set, reconfigured at intervals, which divides the film into movements. The set itself sits on a hillside overlooking London. Filmed at night, this mise en scène generates a peculiar magic: a kind of esoteric Restoration masque, re-enacted by the Bauhaus. We also watched a talk where she discusses her interest in language and the pre-existing story structures - her desire to breakdown and then rebuild these forms is very exciting and exactly what we’re thinking about.
To add to the previously unheard of is the play “Six Characters in Search of an Author” by Luigi Pirandello. The basic plot is that six characters interrupt the daytime rehearsal of Pirandello's play. Abandoned by their author, they seek a new one to put on their drama. They then convince the theater company's Manager and attempt to stage their unwritten play. We haven’t actually managed to see the play but have read it (even though we understand this isn’t nearly the same thing). There are some truly heavy lines in it which are very meta, a favourite being, “A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his especial characteristics; for which reason he is always "somebody." But a man—I'm not speaking of you now—may very well be "nobody." The Father makes this playful comment to the Manager in Act II. Note the mellifluous courtesy of his speech: this rhetorical ploy is typical of the speech he addresses to the company or at his moments of relative reserve. Throughout the play, the Father insists on the reality of the Characters, a reality that, as the stage notes indicates, inheres in their forms and expressions. Here he bristles at the Actors' use of the word illusion as it relies on its vulgar opposition to reality. He approaches the Manager in a sort of face-off to challenge this opposition, one that underpins his identity. Convinced of his self-identity, the Manager readily responds that he is himself. The Father believes otherwise. While the Character's reality is real, the Actors' reality is not real. While the Character is somebody, man is nobody. Man is nobody because he is subject to time: his reality is fleeting and always ready to reveal itself as illusion, whereas the Character's reality remains fixed for eternity as art - what the Actors would call mere illusion. Put otherwise, time enables an opposition between reality and illusion for man. Over time, man comes to identify realities as illusion, whereas the Character exists in the timeless reality of art.
