Text on methods
In the first year at the Piet Zwart Institute I’ve touched upon several new and old concepts that are incorporated in my work. I have experimented with new mediums and learned several new techniques. With this text I would like to give an insight into my artistic practice and methodology.
Research in the photographic medium
To explain my methodology I will have to look back at my previous graduation project. In 2012 I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht where I studied Visual Communication with photography as main focus. For my graduation project I made an installation and photo book dummy with digital and analogue photo’s, incorporating self-portrait collages together with found footage from strangers’ family albums, microscopical images created in collaboration with a cancer research institute in Utrecht, pictures of the sun, the moon as well as abstracted images of taken in the surroundings of my own family’s home.
Images: Untitled, 2012
With this project my photographic practice focused mainly on the collection of different types of photographic images. From this point on single images started to be less important to me than the overall combination of images. Through careful selection and combinations, I aim to create new analogies between the different materials.
Therefore my work should always be presented as a ‘table’ not as a ‘tableau’. The idea of the working table and the open possibility of changing the order of the images therefore also means that I do not work in fixed series or projects with my photographic images.
When working with photographs, my methodology consists in arranging and rearranging my ‘collected’ images. Continuing and elaborating on this practice, I have been researching the photographic medium itself, through for example texts written by the three pioneers of writing about photography: Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, and John Berger, but also others. Practically I have been experimenting with printing on different papers, different printing techniques, bookbinding and also experienced my very first visit to the darkroom.
Current work in progress
Exploring the cinematic language and research into queer cinema
Secondly I wish to develop my own cinematographic language. I do this through making short experimental films. In my research I have been particularly interested in queer (and gay) cinema as well as magic and rituals. The interest in magic and rituals started after seeing work by Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger, (see previous essay).
Ernesto de Martino described the role of rituals and magic as a way for individuals to try to regain control again in times of uncertainty and confirm their presence in the world. Considering the daily world news and the current state of affairs, humankind might well be in need of something magical right now.
Below you can find two video's of my first attempts exploring the cinematic language. Through the use of slowmotion, colorful lights, black and white, sounds of outerspace, and by not having any dialogues I try to conceive a mystical/uncanny atmosphere. You see a young man, partly undressed looking and laughing in front of the camera, while a glass of water is being poured in slowmotion and in reverse.
The second video also has no narrative but has a more performative elements to it. In the short film you see a friend of mine, dressed up in his usual attire. He starts shaving my hair while I lie on his lap, staring into the camera, he shaves of my hair. Unlike, Untitled 2017, this video not filmed in a professional studio. For this film I transformed my friend’s own apartment with the help of redhead lights and colorgels.
I see both films as starting points for the next film I want to work on. The next film will be longer and not confined to the studio only. I currently have some lose ideas which I wish to further explore.
For example I wish to react on the apparent rise of homophobic, xenophobic, and racist sentiments and (hate) crimes in the Netherlands. To respond to the increase in violent hate crimes against the LGBTQI community in the Netherlands, I am planning to incorporate self-defense for the LGBTQI community in a video project.This summer I will follow a class organized by ’t Tijgertje which has been organizing self-defense classes for LGBTQI people for the past 35 years. They practice Krav Maga which is an Israeli self-defense method which is often used by the armed forces. The techniques are based on involuntary reflexes which have evolved naturally and which we all use for survival purposes. This class will be my case study which I will experience in person and hope to incorporate in my next video work.
Research strands & and larger context:
At this point my work could be divided into three research areas. First of all I am investigating the photographic medium in itself. Secondly, I am looking closely at topics involving rituals and the occult. Last but not least I am particularly interested in queer cinema and LGBTQI issues.
A) Photography as a medium
Artist Wolfgang Tillmans greatly influences me in the way of thinking about the photographic medium in itself, but also about the presentation of my own work. He creates site-specific installations where images are interchangeable and have no hierarchy. The seemingly arbitrary images of his immediate surroundings are powerful yet intimate. We also share an urgency to react to matters like Brexit and LGBTQI issues (I still have to choose in which direction I will take that).
B) Rituals and the occult
As far as rituals and the occult are concerned I’ve been looking at how filmmaker Kenneth Anger incorporates elements of the occult in his films. I have also read about the controversial figure Aleister Crowley, who founded the Thelema religion and was a major influence on Anger’s vision of the occult. Interestingly, after reading about Crowley and the practice of so called “Magick”, I often seem to notice see references and signs in artworks I encounter (latest example being the work of Philip Guston at le Gallerie dell’ Accademia in Venice). I would like to expand on this subject matter by for example reading the book Sud e Magia (1959) written by anthropologist Ernesto de Martino. The book consist in a study of ceremonial magic and witchcraft in southern Italy. In this book “De Martino is not interested in the question of whether magic is rational or irrational but rather in why it came to be perceived as a problem of knowledge.” (https://haubooks.org/magic-a-theory-from-the-south/)
C) Queer Cinema and LGBTQI issues
Most artist that influence me are gay or queer. Besides Wolfgang Tillmans and Kenneth Anger mentioned above, I enjoy or can relate to the work of Greg Araki, Derek Jarman, Brucelabruce, Sergei Parajanov (who is not queer or gay, but I consider the work The Colors of Pommegranates slightly homoerotic), together with Alejandro Jodorovski (not gay or queer either), Matt Lambert and Alexandre Haelefi.
Someone who I am really curious about is Ursula Mayer, I’ve only seen the trailer of her film Gonda with model Valentijn de Hingh, but it seems very promising. As I understood from her interviews she is interested in gender theory and body futurity but her work is also rooted in historical research and translates itself in her films in a very contemporary aesthetic.
Besides looking at queer cinema itself I have also been interested in at how gay characters have been represented throughout the years in Hollywood (or mainstream) films. Inititially represented as laughing stock, later as the antagonist and eventually as a character who was acceptable but would eventually lead a miserable life or die, this has not been very positive. (see the Celluloid Closet, 1995). Since Brokeback Mountain (2005) won an Academy Award there has been a slow developments of positive representations of lesbian and gay characters especially in (mainstream) television series (as of which the Netflix original series Sense8, directed by the Wachowski sisters, is the most inclusive series in the representation of ‘the other’ that I have seen until now).
On another note I also feel responsible to not only embrace but also be aware of mainstream gay and lesbian politics. Jose Esteban Munoz for example questions these politics and argues that present gay and lesbian politics are trapped within the limiting normative time and present.
Future:
I think there are a lot of things floating around in my head, so for the question considering where I want to take my work in the near future I can say that I have to connect these loose dots and make my own story out of it.
Ideally I will produce a film, a photo book and present an installation with my photographic work combined with some sculptural elements which I will elaborate on another time.
Upcoming events are the video screening with the first years at Kino during the graduation festival and possibly, when confirmed, two group exhibitions that will happen between July and September this year.