ToP phase one - answering the questions - Tesse

1. What have you been making?

pre-EYE: Waving, Waving This short video 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.

in-between: Chère Alice This short video is a letter to Alice Guy(-Blaché), the person considered to be the first female filmmaker, and also inventor/developer of quite some important narrative techniques. I am fascinated by her position in film history and her (very realistic and prophetic) fear of being written out of it. This holding on to things in order for them to not be forgotten really spoke to me, but I felt less of a connection to her as a person and her style, which is part of the reason why the project came to a halt.

EYE: Little Tower This short video shows ‘het torentje’, the tower that hosts the prime minister of the Netherlands. In the sound, you hear its past uses and inhabitants, from its first use as a winecellar, to speeches of the prime ministers, to the unsteadiness of its future.

2. How did you do it? (method)

Waving, Waving I went to the beach and wanted to do something with the tides and the waves. I filmed and filmed and then I was thinking about Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ in which there is a quote ‘It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus — that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers, saying, with our entire curved and silent selves, more, more, more. I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. And so what? So what if all I ever made my life was more of it?’ I chose to interpret this quote not so much as a call for everyone to have children in order to be worthy (I also can’t image him having meant it in that way) but simply that existing more and again and yet some more is enough to be enough. I also liked the image of the comma as creating in sentences what the push and pull of waves do on the shore. I drew animated lines on the spots the waves came to a halt, creating steadiness in the fluctuating cycle. It was a bad reflex to want to do that. A bad reflex that I want to explore more. At some point I was stuck in the project, but then I came across ‘Kadans 2.0’ by Aliki van der Kruijs and Jos Klarenbeek in Garage Rotterdam. 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 thought this was an interesting entry-point to continue with, so I let go of the animated lines for a bit and instead started collecting online representations of the sea (live cam footage at Hoek van Holland and the comments left under it, data of tides and temperatures) and intercut this with my footage of my real-life trips to the sea. I thought it was funny to have the two worlds meet, so I made sure I showed up on the live cam footage as well, waving happily.

Chère Alice When the EYE Research Lab was introduced to us, I was intrigued with the idea of using their EYE Study and their access to all sorts of archives. Thinking about history and archives and old stuff, I was reminded of an idea I had some time ago to do something with the figure of Alice Guy, when I first learned of her existence. I watched a documentary about her (‘Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché’ - Pamela B. Green) went to the EYE Study, read some books there that she was mentioned in (Encyclopedia of Early Cinema - Richard Abel; Alice Guy-Blaché Lost Visionary of the Cinema - Alison McMahan) and her autobiography (Autobiographie d'une pionnière du cinéma 1873-1968). I also watched the films they had of her (God Disposes (1912); Two Little Rangers (1913); Frozen on Love’s Trail (1912)). I filmed this process, as I wanted to do something with the process of research more than with the outcomes themselves. This was probably a desire that was very inspired by Cheryl Dunye (as I always am) and how she shows her (fake) research in The Watermelon Woman. I started drafting letters to Alice, in which I tried to find a right balance between talking to her but also giving information about her to the audience, and then also trying to put my own interest in her in it. That last part was the hardest, because I pretty much lost my interest in her. Or rather, I think I was never necessarily interested in her, just in the fact that there is this woman who played a very important part in the history of cinema who is never mentioned. In my later drafts of the voice-over narrated letter, I tell her this as well. This project never really got finished, as I was having a hard time staying interested in her, but also because more “urgent” things were happening that I wanted to act on for the EYE.

Little Tower After the results of the Dutch election were announced in November, I felt a lot of anger and sadness and also the need to do something with it. For some reason, my impulse was to go to The Hague to film the “little tower” from all sorts of view-point, far away and close-up. At that point, I wasn’t entirely sure yet what I was going to do with those shots, but then I thought back on History of a Tree by Flatform, which was on view a couple of years ago in Argos (Brussels). They film a big, old tree with a drone, scanning it almost, and in the sound have battles, music, tales and histories that might have or could have taken place where the tree stands. I basically copied this idea and combined the shots of the little tower with the “internal” sounds that the walls would have carried through the years.

3. Relation to previous practice

I think I have always liked and continue to apply a practice of collecting. I don’t write out material and then go find or recreate it, but instead I gather the evidence that can make for intriguing input. These materials don’t have to all follow the same style or medium either. I also love the editing part — for which I would prefer the terms collaging or montaging, as I am not looking to “edit” the material in the sense of refining it, but rather see what new meanings can come from combining the collected things. In this, it helps to see sound and image as separate things, so there is an extra layer to make meaningful combinations in. I think these three projects are a bit more information-driven than most of my past works. In Waving, Waving, the information plays a part in the content of the video, in Chère Alice, it is how I get to know a person, in Little Tower, my choice of audio came from the information I could gather about the prime ministers that have used it as their office, and what it had been used for before the prime ministers had their office there. I think that this can really help carry the process forward. Not everything needs to be purely internally thought up or accidentally came across. When you are stuck, it’s okay to return to “facts”. I think in my broader research about cyclical time, to which I want to redirect my focus going forward, it will also help to have some more information, both in my research about the topic and how to translate it to a work, as well as in the work itself, without having to obstruct by trying to communicate it only through a narrative.

I have also been learning to think more outside of the strict digital and filmed media. In Nan’s seminar, we’ve seen a lot of examples of people experimenting with analogue film and animation, and learned the basics of TouchDesigner. What stood out most for me were the photograms and chemigrams, that bring a type of organic-ness that I find very inspiring, as well as the loop-based timeline in TouchDesigner rather than the linear one I am used to seeing in Premiere. With the Alice Guy project, I also tried out some basic paper-based animation by printing out frames from one of her films, painting on them and then scanning them. I loved this “diy” process and I think it can be very useful to occasionally break away from my Sony camcorder + Zoom audio recorder + Premiere editing software routine.

4. What do you want to make next?

I want to refocus on my ongoing research into nature’s instances of cyclical time, complicated by the (my) human reflex to make this time linear or progressive (productive). It will most likely take the shape of a mid-length documentary, or otherwise a multi-channel installation with the different scenes shown on separate screens.

I have already collected some scenes, namely the drawing of the lines on the waves, as well as a scene I recreated from Alice Guy’s Falling Leaves. In there, a young girl hears the doctor say her very ill sister will die by the time all the leaves have fallen to the ground, and the girl responds to this by tying back all the fallen leaves to the tree. I found this a beautiful metaphor to trying to bring new attention to forgotten histories, but it also links to trying to make cyclical time (the seasons, the falling and rotting of the leaves) into a human, linear one, where things that have grown cannot go to waste anymore and only become more and more and better. -> Talking about waste, what is it? When is time wasted? What does not go to waste, such as our “waste” that doesn’t rot away anymore but is dropped on an ever-growing plastic mountain.

I think I will collect more of these type of scenes, but this symbolism should also be combined with more textual/vocal/anecdotal/theoretical/narrative exploration of time, such as expressions of biological cycles, or following a person’s routine, or chasing a waterdrop through its path of river-sea-evaporation-rain-river-etc.

Part of the research is also to not simply have these scenes, but to also try to evoke different forms of experiencing time. Firstly in myself, but then also in how it is communicated to the audience.

5. Why do you want to make it?

I want to explore this to reconceptualise the experience of time and to see how our lives and minds are often structured according to a temporality that deviates from nature’s flux. It is an exercise for both the viewer and myself to allow things to come and go without feeling the need to hold on. To not feel like we are standing still when we aren’t actively going forward. I have noticed the last few years, especially after graduating from my bachelor’s, that I have been having this need to always go forward, to grow, become more successful, to follow the structure that society tells you to follow in your life. This clashes with how each day is mostly a repetition of the previous one, and the only way to grow and learn is usually by doing things over and over again. So, I think it is not so much a hard division between the two, but I want to explore how the shapes of time change when we change its scale. How the line is made of cycles, how the spiral is made of jumps. The end goal, I suppose as always, is to find some peace in this. To not feel like I have to either fight or weaponise time, but simply let it flow through me.

6. Relation to a larger context

Things that have been recommended to me in relation to this:

One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (by Yana)

Errant Journal Issue #1WHEN ARE WE? (by Natasha)

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (by Steve)

Things that I find inspiring in relation to this:

Eva Giolo’s - The Demands of Ordinary Devotion Shows repeating (and mostly circular in shape) motions that come with certain jobs/crafts/motherhood. Interestingly, I found it works better in a linear, cinematic setting than in a looped, installation one.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz's - Oriana (solo exhibition in Argos) Shows ritualistic scenes of a group of militant feminists in the forest bathing, washing, relaxing, playing in increasing degrees of mythical-ness. There is something about the installation of the many scenes that create a completely different experience of time and causality or lack thereof.

Jacquelyn Mills - Geographies of Solitude How living in nature and completely isolated changes your routine and experience of time. The clash of the plastic washing ashore against the organic pristine-ness of the wild island. The use of analogue material and nature-based media to visualise this environment.

Julia Parks - The Wool Aliens The wool of the sheep carrying the seeds to different places, unexpected results of a proces, nature “getting in the way” of productivity. But also the concept of shepherds and how fascinating their lives seem, also in terms of routine and time.

Lois Patiño - Samsara Of course, the idea of reincarnation as seeing a life not as linear but as cyclical. Even without reincarnation, we can see this cycle when we look generationally rather than at individual lives. This is mixed with the sense of constant journey, not necessarily leading anywhere, but just being in movement. And the sense of letting go, that life is about constantly letting go.

Trinh T. Minh-ha - Grandma’s Story The idea of storytelling being a cyclical ritual passed through the generation, with each retelling of it carrying the voices of the ones before in it.

Thematically, I think it relates to issues of capitalism/western productivity and its forced application; to ecology and how we go against nature’s (and thus our own) best interest and disregard its evident wisdom; to mental health and how the battle against time leads to and/or is felt more in instances where the mind is less happy/healthy/calm. I need to read, hear, see and learn much more about these links specifically, and so references in terms of this still need to come. I also think that in the end, I need to choose one of these themes to mostly focus on, at least within one outcome, or else it will all be too blurry.