Tesse's Methods
Hi again!
This is an overview of the texts and things generated during the Reading and Writing Methodologies workshops.
Session one - What, How, Why - 13/09
1.
Original:
What An approximately one-minute video surrounding the events at Schieweg (my street) on the 8th of September (last Friday). Around mid-day, fire-fighters gathered around our building and put up barricades around the area. Our building was not evacuated, but the one next to us was. More and more people were gathering around and looking at what was happening, and we (my roommate and I) were watching it all from our balcony. We had no idea what was happening, only when our other roommate (who works for a newspaper) saw the article show up in her content planner, we could figure it out. Apparently, there were active constructions around the building, and neighbours had called in to report large cracks they saw running through the outer walls that they were concerned were a result of the drilling and digging. The fire-fighters were there to investigate any risk of the building collapsing.
How The event is shown through a combination of footage of the event that I recorded on my smartphone from our balcony, the online news articles about the event and screen recordings of Google Streetview, all with a particular focus on their timestamps. The images take on an investigative style, building information from inside. On Google Streetview, I look back through the years and see the cracks already having been there for the past years. My investigation mirrors the process of the people investigating the building.
Why Apart from the feeling of confusion and curiosity that we were experiencing from our close-yet-excluded perspective, I was struck by the importance of notated time in these developments. This was made clear especially through the delay in news coverage — my first footage of the event showing a timestamp of an hour earlier than the start of the “live” news updates — and the importance of the possibility to go back in time on Google Maps as a way to investigate the danger of these cracks.
Edited:
'Sept. 8th' (working title) will be a video work of approximately one minute, surrounding the events at Schieweg (the street I live on) on the 8th of September (last Friday). The work is currently in the editing process. Halfway through that day, fire-fighters gathered around our building and put up barricades around the area. Our building was not evacuated, but the one next to us was. More and more people were gathering around and looking at what was happening, and we (my roommate and I) were watching it all from our balcony. We had no idea what was happening, only when our other roommate (who works for a newspaper) saw the article show up in her content planner, we could figure it out. There had been constructions around the building, and neighbours called in to report large cracks they saw running through the outer walls that they were concerned were a result of the drilling and digging. The fire-fighters were there to investigate any risk of the building collapsing.
The event is shown through a combination of footage of the event that I recorded on my smartphone, the online news articles about the event and screen recordings of Google Streetview, all with a particular focus on their timestamps. The montage switches between my footage in which I am on my balcony observing the people observing from the street, and the 'online' coverage through which I investigate the matter from my computer. On Google Streetview, I look back through the years and see the cracks already having been there for the past years. My own investigation mirrors the process of the people investigating the building.
Apart from the feeling of confusion and curiosity that we were experiencing from our close-yet-excluded perspective, I was struck by the importance of notated time in these developments. This was made clear especially through the delay in news coverage, breaking with the idea of media coverage being instant — my first footage of the event showing a timestamp of an hour earlier than the start of the “live” news updates — and the importance of the possibility to go back in time on Google Maps as a way to investigate the danger of these cracks. Throughout multiple of my works, I aim to get a better understanding of how the concept of time functions in our society. This can be from a more systematic perspective, such as the clock and the calendar we follow, or in a more personal way, how the passing of time affects our daily experiences. This event specifically interested me in its relation to how references to times and dates are used as a way to document the order of things happening, but also how people respond different to a seemingly urgent situation after this situation has remained unchanged for an hour.
2.
Original:
What ‘one day at a time x 89’ is a fourteen minute, single-screen video that shows the daily impressions of a young filmmaker in Brussels and the elements making up her life. It shows a stream of people, events, feelings. Some are on a small scale, the way the light hits or the daily dishes. Some on a slightly bigger scale, the hands of friends, the way they hold their beer glasses. Some are even farther removed, the stories on the news, the feeds that keep coming night and day, the images of the TV shows we watch on a daily basis. They all seem so disconnected yet so inseparable, and we are losing ourselves somewhere in between. Where does the rest of the world end and do we begin?
How Over the span of three months (89 days) I recorded a sound or an image each day. They had to be things already happening, that I was observing or experiencing, but other than that there weren’t many restrictions. I used a handycam for the images, ensuring portability, and a cassette recorder for the sound, as a contrast to the digital-ness of a lot of the visual impressions, and to embody this realm of news in the sonic form of the radio. In the editing process, these many seemingly unrelated fragments took on a narrative and started to focus more around me as the protagonist, and new meanings were found through the combinations made with the image and sound. The montage follows a build-up rather than a storyline, the order is intuitive, and the lines between the impressions are made blurry by overlapping many of the images.
Why Starting this project, I was unsure what I wanted to make a film about. All of the impressions and stimuli from both my internal and external world seemed to be overwhelming and weren’t giving one clear narrative to follow. Knowing that I would not find a way out if I didn’t simply start making, I gave myself this assignment to record something every day to at least keep myself busy. Meant more a an exercise to find inspiration, this actually turned into a useful expression of what, to me, it often feels like being alive in this generation, in this era, in these landscapes. The struggle of constantly having to define your position not only in your direct surrounding, but also in the huge environment of global information that is constantly available. Rather than giving a way out of this through a structured story, I wanted to communicate this feeling and express this messy, fragmented and occasionally exasperating way of life.
Edited:
‘one day at a time x 89’ is a fourteen minute, single-screen video that gives a look into my daily impressions as a young filmmaker in Brussels, in the form of a montage of the elements making up my life. It shows a stream of people, events, feelings. Some are on a small scale, the way the light hits or the daily dishes. Some on a slightly bigger scale, the hands of friends, the way they hold their beer glasses. Some are even farther removed, the stories on the news, the feeds that keep coming night and day, the images of the TV shows we watch on a daily basis. They all seem so disconnected yet so inseparable, and we are losing ourselves somewhere in between. Where does the rest of the world end and do we begin?
Over the span of three months (89 days) I recorded a sound or an image each day. They had to be things already happening, that I was observing or experiencing, but other than that there weren’t many restrictions. I used a handycam for the images, ensuring portability, and a cassette recorder for the sound, as a contrast to the digital-ness of a lot of the visual impressions, and to embody this realm of news in the sonic form of the radio. In the editing process, these many seemingly unrelated fragments took on a narrative and started to focus more around me as the protagonist, and new meanings were found through the combinations made with the image and sound. The montage follows a build-up rather than a storyline, the order is intuitive, and the lines between the impressions are made blurry by overlapping many of the images.
Starting this project, I was unsure what I wanted to make a film about. All of the impressions and stimuli from both my internal and external world seemed to be overwhelming and weren’t giving one clear narrative to follow. Knowing that I would not find a way out if I didn’t simply start making, I gave myself this assignment to record something every day to at least keep myself busy. Meant more a an exercise to find inspiration, this actually turned into a useful expression of what, to me, it often feels like being alive in this generation, in this era, in these landscapes. The struggle of constantly having to define your position not only in your direct surrounding, but also in the huge environment of global information that is constantly available. Rather than giving a way out of this through a structured story, I wanted to communicate this feeling and express this messy, fragmented and occasionally exasperating way of life.
Session two - Interview - 27/09
I am currently making a short video of around 2-3 minutes for the pre-EYE thematic seminar. It is an exploration of the online surveillance and datafication of the sea and the coast, compared to the experience of actually being there. It does so through a combination of homevideo-like footage of me being at the beach intercut with screen recordings of live video feeds of the coast, comments of viewers, statistics of high and low tides, etc.
This project started with a fascination for the cyclical time represented by the sea. This fits within my larger interest in and research into the experiences of time and time keeping. For me, the sea represents a natural form and voice of time, with its high and low tides being clear moments where this is expressed. Although not necessarily included in my approach at first, the online data keeping, live-streaming and aiming for predictability then sparked my interest while looking into this, and when seeing which tools I was using to do so.
In contrasting these two, I open up — mostly for myself rather than in the video, as I do not necessarily intend to have such a determined message at this point in the research — the idea that the presence at the beach causes us to tune into this natural form of time. We go along with the coming and going of the waves and we feel the time and tide has progressed when we have to move our towel further up the beach not to get it wet. Our online surveillance of the sea instead translates our desire to force this way of movement into our human-created way of measuring, to eliminate nature’s more organic and fluid communication of time and change.
Something that is not yet very prominent in this video, but will perhaps become important in the larger research, is how this serves a different function for different people, or rather different “users” of the coast. For someone that intends to go fishing or sailing or surfing, it is of course much more crucial to have an idea of whether the sea will be suitable for that, than for someone simply planning to take a stroll along the coastline. So perhaps the comparison is not just between the different ways in which one person can relate to the sea, but rather how different people, representing different functions, relate to the sea.
Some themes that are present in this work have also played a role in previous works. Such as the concept of time and different ways in which this can come to the surface. But also the role of digital media, our online presence, and the screen as having become an important way through which we experience the world. However, the sea specifically hasn’t yet made an appearance in other works. I am quite happy to be focusing on it now, as I feel even just my going there regularly and tuning into its movements is already giving me a lot.
Session three - Rapid prototyping - 25/10
Session four - Rapid prototyping individual - 08/11
Protocol 1 (30 minutes)
Choose a project currently in progress. Set a timer for 20 minutes. In those 20 minutes, write down all questions, doubts, concerns relating to that project. Don’t stop writing till the timer goes off.
Output: RPD67
Protocol 2 (1 hour)
Capture the most season in one frame.
Output: RPD81
Protocol 3 (1 hour)
Find or make five ghosts.
Output: RPD90
Protocol 4 (1 hour)
What does forgetting sound like?
Output: RPD94
Session five - Proposal for a project that may or may not be made - 22/11
Tesse's proposal for a project that may or may not be made
Session six - Draft text exploring a question that motivates your work - 06/12
Is a cyclical life a stagnant one?
I think — if not for the purpose of truth, then at least for the purpose of sanity — the answer has to be no. Cyclical movement differs from being stagnant, not only in the fact that it is moving, but also in that the isn’t made of the same exact iteration every time. It is a reiteration informed by the previous ones. It isn’t industrial repetition like a dance move in a De Keersmaeker choreography, the movement comes back to create and flow into the next. I shouldn’t even say that it “comes back”, because that implies there is a beginning to return to. The repetition is not a return, it needs no outside force, it does not exhaust the mover. Its repetition is rather the natural consequence of the movement itself. The revisiting, the retracing of the steps, is done in a way that does not erase the steps that came before. Cyclical time, then, is perhaps not very circular, but rather takes the form of a spiral.
What must follow then, is that there is linearity in cyclical time as well. There is still an after and before, a next and a previous iteration. There is still the building up of a collection of events. I suppose the difference lies more within the the fact that in a spiral, a forward motion can only come from the momentum of the backwards one. Rather than having one direction to be followed continuously, the direction changes all the time, out of necessity, out of inevitability. For there to be progress, there needs to be failure. Or rather, for there to be building, there needs to be breaking down.
A linear view on time also implies that we know its start and its point of termination. A point ‘A’ and ‘B’ between which the line is drawn. That the movement is leading to a certain result, that the start of the line already has an ending in it. A cyclical notion allows for more infinity, more uncertainty, more detours. It cannot have an end-point, because the motion encouraged with the spiral cannot come to a halt. It does not need the thing moving along its lines to be aware of it, to put in the effort, to do the walking. The structure will be there even if you are not there to experience it, or if you change shapes in the meantime.
But a line you can step off. A spiral you are stuck in. A spiral can be downward.
So — again, for the sake of sanity — perhaps the cycle is not necessarily a spiral. Perhaps these ideas of shapes are still trying to put visuals and words to a notion that is unfathomable to humanity. We are not made to move like the seasons, like the waves. Our body still ages linearly. Any form of life, in its overview of it, is lived linearly. But although a life is linear in its overview, there are many cycles in a life as well. Hormonal cycles, sleep cycles, breathing cycles. When you zoom in, the line is made of circles. Our bodies are made of all these seasons, all these waves coming and going, the trees changing colour and shedding their leaves.
These cycles, however, are often seen either as a given or as a distraction. It is rarely what we think defines our life. Instead, here in the 21st century western world, a human life is judged according to achievement. To what your end-point is. Whether you reach that end-point set by yourself or others. Unexpected deviation from the line is only applauded if it still ends up bringing you somewhere “productive”. It shall not be applauded for being change in itself. We are not allowed to feel fulfilled from repetition. We are not allowed to feel fulfilled by slowing down. Slowing down is only allowed if it gives us the needed rest to speed up afterwards. And these traps are not placed for us, we need to set our own. We need to create these expectations on the basis of which our success can be judged. No expectations and no end-goals equals no life.
But who are we living all this progress for? Our ending will be someone else’s beginning, but they won’t experience the same sense of achievement from it. Are they truly happier beginning there, than if they were to start where we did? And at some point, a point not that far away, our ending will be such an ending that nobody that experiences beginnings and endings and linearity will be there to see it, value it, judge it, remember it. There won’t be much left of all our progress and development. All that it eventually caused is destruction.
So, would it be so bad to live a stagnant life? A repetitive life leading nowhere in particular? A life made only of routine and of seeing time pass?
Methods session six question and text
Session seven/eight/nine - Text on Practice - 19,20,21/03
Links to the different stages of the Text on Practice:
ToP phase one - answering the questions - Tesse