/Reading, Writing & Research Methodologies 2013-TM3.01

Self-directed research essay = 1500 words

The aim of this exercise is:
(1) to further articulate your practice and to discuss it within a broader cultural and historical context
(2) to identify and articulate a methodology

Describe recent work
Identify key themes
Identify how texts you have already produced might be useful (descriptions of work, or annotations for instance)
Identify contextualizing texts (art work or literature)
Annotate contextualizing texts

Timetable:
Outline: 23 April
First draft: 7th May (review in groups)
Final draft: 15th May (review in groups)

DESCRIPTION:
My ongoing field of interest lies in a comparison of photography and video, from stillness towards moving image, shifting from analog to digital. The construction of the image itself and the meaning of it will be looked at in a rather metaphorical way and expresses some philosophical and poetic aspects of its media specificity. The investigation is based on questions about how time and space behave in a so-called time-based media. Besides the theoretical study stands an empirical research of the practical examination, which leads to the core of each element and results in an artistic outcome.
CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMAGE Initially coming from photography my work was always based on the singularity/ behavior/ nature of the medium itself. The confrontation with the video image allows me to go further with this investigation. Through thinking about the construction of the video image the idea emerges that the image as such is never present as a whole and therefore never exists all at once. What does that mean compared to photography, the frozen, petrified frame with the referent that left its mark on the film? What do we recognize on the surface while zooming closer in the video or on the other hand blow up the negative? Can we consider noise at the limit of perception as the autonomy of the image? Do we see leaves shaking in the wind or where do the subtle movements inside the frame come from? For all these questions serve on one side an observation of underexposed videos depicting nightly landscapes in a fixed frame and on the other side its counterpart, long time exposed photographs existing also at the limit of perception. While the latter is a collection of different layers of light in one single frame, the video is constructed continuously in time and space. As theoretical reference for this purpose serves Videophilosophy from Maurizio Lazzarato, he furthermore refers to Henri Bergson who also came up while studying Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 2. The main interest here is a philosophical approach to the image and the notion of time. The self-referential language allows asking abstract questions about the dematerialization during the analog digital conversion and the loss of indexicality. What means according to Bergson matter and memory and how can these questions be guided towards an artistic examination? The latter should then open space for associations and invite the spectator to a precise contemplation on the images surface and beyond.
THE GAZE The theme of perception has a prominent part in my self-directed-work, this leads subsequently to the role of the observer. For this line of research I am basically influenced of Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the observer, his presentation of different devices in the 19th century and the shifting in perception. The implication of the spectator and his part while looking at an artwork become important, especially when considering Henri Bergson's idea that the image is an artificial product of mind. The theme of the gaze is introduced in my third area of investigation, filmed portraits. As references therefore serve literature about the gaze in theory of cinema, such as Laura Mulvey's Death 24 times a second and Kaja Silverman's The threshold of the visible world. Both are linked to concepts of psychoanalysis and the uncanny. For this project the aim will be to reflect about the form of a video installation with three projection screens. They show portraits of three women filmed in a fixed frame with an additional counter-zoom (vertigo effect). The changing of the perspective provokes a subtle movement, barely recognizable. The look back to the audience and the slight deformation of the faces leave the spectator with an uncertainty about who is the one that is shifting. The Oval Portrait from Edgar Allen Poe leads here together with E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Olympia to the idea of a model that floats between human and automated mannequin. The petrifying art of photography is examined in the filmed portraits, where subtle agitations interrupt the stillness of the model and thereby the spectator.

KEYWORDS AND READING LIST/ ANNOTATION:
Paul Virilio, L’art à perte de vue

Junichiro Tanizaki, In praise of shadows

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its discontents

Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2

Henri Bergson, Matter and memory

Philosophy of mind, Body and mind problem

Jean-François Lyotard, Les immatériaux

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and nothingness

Phenomenology

Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the observer

John E.Mc Grath, The staging of the spectator

The theme of the gaze in theory of cinema

Laury Mulvey, Death 24 times a second

Mary Ann Doane, The emergency of cinematic time

Kaja Silverman, The threshold of the visible world

Vilém Flusser, Philosophy of photography

Rosalind Krauss, Le photographique

Philippe Dubois, L’acte photographique

Roland Barthes, La chambre claire

Walter Benjamin, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

New Media Art, Videoart, Videoinstallation

Persistence of vision and adaption of the eye

Maurizio Lazzarato, Videophilosophy

Michael Fried, Art and objecthood

Marc Rothko, Black Paintings