A little log of the inspirations floating by in- and outside of the walls of the school.

After a day of being stuck looking at a screen full of waves, lines and spoken things, I dropped by the exhibition 'Choreographed events' at Garage Rotterdam. There was the work Kadans 2.0 by Aliki van der Kruijs and Jos Klarenbeek. They had taken the movement of the sea as a guide for patterns in fabric. Their use of data reminded me of what had drawn me to the sea in the first place, the moments of ebb and flow that denote a measure of time only shared between the moon and the water. I had looked up the hours of the tides before going there to film, perhaps to catch a six hour block with the levels at its highest and lowest (I didn't do this in the end, the timings weren't handy and also six hours is quite long). I think I will go back to this essence for a bit, see what I can do with data, or perhaps simply with this form of timekeeping.

Also at the exhibition was a work by Heleen Blanken, of which I happened to have seen another work last Sunday as well at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. I don't think my work relates to hers at all, but it is incredibly cool.

Hira Nabi - How to Love a Tree: Wild Encounters Currently shown at Foam, a gorgeous three-channel video installation about Pakistani forests put at risk by imperialist and capitalist hands. Speaks from a sense of deep time, rather than human time. https://www.foam.org/events/hira-nabi-3h

I was thinking about what feeling, or perhaps what style I would like to explore and move into for the Eye project and I had to think back on Eva Giolo - The Demands of Ordinary Devotion with its cyclical movements, its creation of meaning through repetition and how this of course builds over time, but also doesn't need that long to do so. And on the Beatriz Santiago Muñoz's - Oriana exhibition at Argos a few months back, with how incredibly sensorial it was without necessarily focusing on that in an obvious way. How the videos in the installation didn't feel looped because there was no beginning and end, but still there was a progression to be felt.

During our introduction to podcasting with Leah Howd, she showed us an example by the podcaster/visual artist/writer JT Green. I haven't looked into her work that much yet, and I don't know what exactly it is that appeals to me so much, but for some reason her website just makes a lot of sense to me. The way of presenting everything and the messy collage-ness of it all just feels very right.

Geographies of Solitude - the texture, the landscapes, the rhythm, the playing with the medium, just absolutely gorgeous. Who wants to sponsor me so I can shoot on 16mm? :p

There must have been plenty of inspiration at IFFR, but maybe it was too much to remember. Let me try...

There were of course the films that were overwhelmingly powerful in their story, but in terms of forms and sensitivities that stood out to me in relation to my own dreams and plans, The Wool Aliens by Julia Parks was an incredible piece of very embodied and mesmerising research, definitely made me want to spend more time with sheep. Also Ana Hušman's I Would Rather Be a Stone was very inspiring in how it visualised landscapes. Again, can I find a way to be happy without 16mm?

The video installations of Sung Hwan Kim in his exhibition at the Van Abbe museum. His mythical-ness, but ever more so his use of layered materials, materiality to add layers. I should use more glass, fabric, sand, plastic, paper.

In the Handmade Film seminar, Nan showed us some chemigrams, definitely would love to play around with that as well.

The heartbreakingly beautiful Samsara by Lois Patiño. The softness of the people, the landscapes, the sunlight on the sea, the red nature shots, the courage it must take to have your viewers close their eyes for 10? 20? minutes. Stay safe, little Neema.