User:Astrid van Nimwegen/All descriptions

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Description of the making of my latest project ‘the Gravediggers’

In march 2010, I made a 15 minutes during black and white videoregistration/long shot by using two videocamera’s, one for a total shot and one for a close-up (which I never used by the way). A friend of mine did the camerawork and I was the person who performed in the video. Four middle-aged men put into gravedigger-uniforms were my actors. I explained to them what they were expected to do without directing it too much. The video starts at the point where I walk into a farmingfield. The temperature was like 5 degrees Celcius. I only wore some white underpants and stood barefooted in the middle of a farmingfield, staring in the distance. Then one by one the gravediggers moved into the framework in a circular motion, their high hats in the one hand and a scoop in the other, me as the centre point, the first man walked the whole circle and took his position on my left side, the second man walked three-quarters and so on. The last man took it’s position right in front of me so I disappeared for a moment. They stood still for about a minute and then simultaneously put on their hats and start digging a large circle around me, putting the earth outside the circle. When they were finished, they stood still for a moment and slowly walked out the framefield on the right side. The video fades out to black, me still standing in the centrepoint. The only sound you hear in the video is the sound of the digging and the sound of birds in the background. It’s a real time piece, so I didn’t cut or edited it. Apart from converting it into black and white afterwards. The video shows a strong black and white contrast, and the best way to display it is by projecting it on a big screen or wall.

My videopiece ‘the Gravediggers’ is inspired by the pain I suffer from my mom who passed away and also because I’m caught by the circle and its movement – It’s kind of referring to the wheel of life maybe. The concept in many of my works involves the physical and psychological part we’re all dealing with. I think the gravediggers are symbolising the psychological pain I went through (it’s pain caused by an external source) I stand still in the centre point and it becomes clear that my body is also exposed to the torture. By creating the movement, which the gravediggers make, I maybe try to expose the soul and the so-called ‘layers’, which exist in our reality. And try to let the viewer feel the essence of life and hopefully the videoregistration does work like a mirror in which the viewer reflects on hisself. But in the end when I finished the video, my first conceptual thoughts aren’t that important anymore because it’s up to the viewer to see and feel what the piece is about.

Astrid van Nimwegen

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An old projector lies on its side on a small table; the sound of film running through, fills the room. A moving black and white projection of a tree in an empty landscape with the setting sun in the background appears on a small screen opposite to the projector. The film is shot from a fixed position and the movement in it seems mostly caused by the change of light of the setting sun. Closer to the projector you see the film running through and the projected tree is obviously caused by the frames running quickly one by one in-between the lens and the projector lamp. The film runs in a loop of a few seconds, the same shot runs by over and over again.

There also is a television on the floor; a black and white video of a running 16mm film is visible on the screen. The silhouette of the same tree is recognized. It appears the video is a live streaming; a small video camera shooting it, is on a tripod, placed close to the old projector. Because it is a close up shot, it differs from our own vision when we look at the projector itself.

The third mode in the installation is a Polaroid photograph; it is the same image of the empty landscape with the tree again. Here, the tree seems more like a still image of a memory.

The main thing I was interested in, was 16mm film and the difference in content within the medium film and video. In earlier works, the video camera only was used as a tool to register a movement or action in a certain time sequence. Since the use of 16mm film I learned a lot more about the history of my medium and filmmaking itself. I became more conscious about what film exactly is and why it is that suitable for the work I make.

Film itself is in certain sense making time physical in 24 images a second. Magnetic videotape does not have a physical body without the use of an interface. So by changing the medium, the content of the work shifted from something outside the medium into the medium itself.

I started a process full of experiments with editing on the filmstrip itself and exposing filmstrips in a pinhole box. The outcome was not very convincing to me. I did succeed in transforming a moving image, seen in a camera obscura, into a different movement but it was so abstract and conceptual that I did not recognized my own handwriting in it any longer. Because every frame was different, my subject, a tree, became unrecognizable while running through a projector.

But more important, by reflecting onto the working process I am able to expose a meaning of the things. Meaning grows out of new awareness. So the process itself can become the work. The same thing happens when I describe things, through description and thus a renewed consciousness, a meaning exposes.

In the book ‘essays on the blurring of art and life’ (1993, 2003) Allan Kaprow talks also about this fact. When you are conscious again about things in daily life, things change instantly. For example, brushing your teeth is a daily returning thing and most of us are unconscious about it. When you are aware of it again, the action gets new meaning. And brushing your tooth changes. So meaning lies in our own experience and in our perception and interpretation.

Allan Kaprow, seen as the father of ‘the happenings’ is also questioning the meaning of art and life in his essays; his whole theory seems based on the meaning created by individual perception and interpretation. The things themselves have no consciousness; humans give things consciousness In this concept, he explains the difference between life-like art and art-like art, which I found very interesting.

The main difference between the two is that with life-like art, life and art are inextricably interwoven; you can say that art is living and life is art. So every thing you do, then becomes art. ‘In “the Meaning of Life” Kaprow writes that “lifelike art plays somewhere in and between attention to physical process and attention to interpretation”. The object of such attention is consciousness in its fullest sense’ (Kelley, Jeff, ‘Introduction’ - ‘essays on the blurring of art and life’ p.xxiv)

In art-like art there still is a boundary and a difference between life and the making of art. ‘Traditional art has always tried to make it good every time, believing, that this was a truer truth than life’ (Kaprow, Allan, ‘the Sixties’ - ‘Happenings in the New York scene’ p.19)

‘The way we are used to see and how we are influenced in our looking’.

Mothlight (1963) is a 16mm film about what a moth might see. Brackhage collected moth wings, other insects and leaves from plants and stick them between two splices of tape; afterwards he brought it to the lab to let it print onto 16mm film. The result is an ongoing stream of the detailed wings and leaves, it looks like a movement that is converted or translated into another movement. The film gives us a completely different approach of seeing.

After reading a couple of texts about this work and seeing ‘Mothlight’ on the internet (youtube.com ‘Mothlight’) the most interesting thing about the work was that it is not about what a moth would see, ‘instead, Mothlight is Brackhage’s imagining of what a moth might see’ (Camper F. ‘Mothlight and beyond’) So by doing this he actually tries to let us, as a viewer, be aware of and reflect on our own way of watching towards the world. In other works from Brackhage the same thing is going on, he tries ‘to imagine seeing through eyes other than his own’ (quoted from Camper, F ‘Mothlight and beyond’) and by that he questions our way of looking.

The same thing occurred to me after reading ‘Secret knowledge’ a book by David Hokney in which Hokney tries to demonstrate the use of lenses in paintings from the 14th century on. ‘This book is in the form of a visual argument’ (quoted from Hokney D. 2006, Secret knowledge rediscovering the techniques of the Old Masters, p.21) It made me conscious about how our ‘seeing’ is influenced by the use of lenses. How our viewing as we once had, has changed into another way of looking nowadays. There is a big difference between a lens-based viewing and the so-called ‘eyeballed’ viewing. Hockney introduces the term eyeballing as a definition of ‘the way artist sits down in front of a sitter and draws or paints a portrait by using his hand and eye alone and nothing else, looking at the figure and then trying to re-create the likeness on the paper or canvas’ (Secret Knowledge 2006, p23). The realisation of our viewing being transformed into a different viewing became very obvious to me in the example Hockney gives us (p.142-143) where he compares a drawing of a field of weath next to Durer’s watercolour ‘Large Turf ‘ (Durer A. Large turf, 1503, Watercolour, pen and inkt) this comparison really is not about demonstrating the use of lenses but just used here to point out the change of our looking. The big difference between a lens-based picture and an eyeballed viewing is that ‘a camera looks through one lens; we look—most of us, at least most of the time—through two eyes’. (Gayford M. 2011, The Mind’s eye)

Bibliography

Hockney, D. (2006). Secret Knowledge Gayford, M (2011) The mind’s eye Camper, F Mothlight and beyond Kaprow, A (1993/2003) Essays on the blurring of art and life

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The shootingday 26th March 2012

It is two o’clock at night; the bathroom must be around 43 degrees warm now. Slowly I open the door, an awful smell comes into my nose, I step inside to carefully pull on the thin, hairy legs of the deer to shape it a bit in its natural form. The dead deer hangs in the shower, now almost defrosted by the gas heater. Never imagined it would take more then two days to defrost an animal that size… This afternoon the horns were already put on with five-centimeter large screws to turn the female deer into a male roe goat. Time to sleep now, tomorrow it will be an exiting day.

The violin player walks slowly, solemnly towards the beautiful big tree, her red dress blowing in the wind. She takes her place next to the old tree; a dead deer dangles from a side branch. For a moment she is standing completely still…. Then she closes her eyes and puts the violin under her chin. The single notes coming from the violin does not disrupt the sound of reeds moved back and forth by the wind. In the distance five hunters slowly approach with a dead hare in one hand and a rifle in the other. Resolute they stare ahead, their eyes focused on just one aim; their paths. The red car, which just passed by on the road, suddenly drives into the landscape. A fisherman steps out of the car, opens the trunk and takes out a bucket and a fishing rod. A wooden chair already stands there, apparently waiting for the man to come. He takes place, puts the zinc bucket in front of him and throws his fishingline into the bucket. There he sits, waiting… To his left and his right the hunters, dressed in green suits, again walk by in a straight line, they not even notice one another.

All are connected by their place in time and space, connected without meeting each other; all in their own isolation, connected through life and by doing what they do, creating some meaning of existence. Pursuing their own conviction with enormous dedication and awareness. All in search for their own truth, the truth that lies hidden in their being?

Two steady cameras on tripods capture this act of existence; with a stilled eye they are looking what happens without interfering.

It is not clear if the people are suffering of their situation or in their search for meaning or whether they enjoy it. Says the violin player goodbye, is she sad? Why is she wearing that red dress, is she symbolizing something? And why is the dead deer hanging there? Probably it is not even clear why they are all together in this landscape and why they are doing what they do, can such an image been read as a comment on our being in this world? Are those questions deliberately created for the viewer? Or is the work just lacking in content?

When does a choice of intuition take place and where does an intuitive choice have to become a conscious one?

By using very literal elements, you can achieve to expose a different content that is not graspable but which lies within this literacy and in this carefully build second reality.

‘Sculpting in time’ Tarkovsky, Andrey, 1986

->Some quotes from ChapterVII ‘The artist’s responsibility’ that helps me clarify my own thoughts about art:

“A film is an emotional reality, and that is how the audience receives it – as a second reality” (p.176 The artist’s responsibility)

“We are talking about the different kinds of correlation with reality on which each art form bases and develops its own distinct set of conventions. In this respect I classify cinema and music among the immediate art forms since they need no mediating language.” (p.176 The artist’s responsibility)

“Cinema uses the materials given by nature itself, by the passage of time, manifested within space, that we observe about us and in which we live.” (p.176 The artist’s responsibility)

“Why else would some groups of people turn to art only for entertainment, while others look for an intelligent interlocutor?” (p.178-179 The artist’s responsibility)

“And is it possible to help such people to experience inspiration and beauty, and the noble impulses that real art touches off in the soul?” (p.179 The artist’s responsibility)

“….. for it seems to me that if you have chosen artistic work you find yourself bound by chains of necessity, fettered by the tasks you set yourself and by your own artistic vocation.” (p.180 The artist’s responsibility)

“…. But that sort of freedom demands powerful inner resources, a high degree of self-awareness, a consciousness of your responsibility to yourself and therefore to other people.” (p.180 The artist’s responsibility)

“And it’s only possible to communicate with the audience if one ignores that eighty per cent of people who for some reason have got it into their heads that we are supposed to entertain them.” (p.181 The artist’s responsibility)

“…. And saw his task as an artist as ‘fighting’ with all his strength, to the last breath, with the material of life, in order to express that ideal truth which lies hidden within it.” (p.182 The artist’s responsibility)

“… You have to impart your own experience with the greatest possible sincerity.” (p.183 The artist’s responsibility)

“Anyone who wants can look at my films as into a mirror, in which he will see himself. When the conception of a film is given forms that are life-like, ……………. Then it is possible for the audience to relate to that conception in the light of individual experience” (p.184 The artist’s responsibility)

“A phenomenon is recreated truthfully in a work of art through the attempt to rebuild the entire living structure of its inner connections.” (p.184 The artist’s responsibility)

“….. is that nobody can reconstruct the whole truth in front of the camera” (p.184 The artist’s responsibility)

“Every artist is thus limited in his perception, in his understanding of the inner connections of the world about him.” (p.185 The artist’s responsibility)

“… it’s not up to me to keep the public happy. On the contrary: what I have to do is tell people the truth about our common existence as it appears to me in the light of my experience and understanding. That truth hardly promises to be easy or pleasant; and it is only by arriving at that truth and that ‘realism’ that one can achieve a moral victory over it within oneself.” (p.186 The artist’s responsibility)

“The artist’s inspiration comes into being somewhere in the deepest recesses of his ‘I’. It cannot be dictated by external, ‘business’ considerations. It is bound to be related to his psyche and his conscience; it springs from the totality of his world-view.” (p.188 The artist’s responsibility)

“An artist is only justified in his work when it is crucial to his way of life: not some incidental side-line, but the one mode of existence for his reproductive ‘I’.” (p.189 The artist’s responsibility)

“Art symbolizes the meaning of our existence.” (p.192 The artist’s responsibility)

“And the more precisely the central idea is formulated, the more clearly the meaning of the action is defined for me, the more significant will be the atmosphere that is generated around it. Everything will begin to reverberate in response to the dominant note: things, landscape, actors’ intonation. It will all become interconnected and necessary.” (p.194 The artist’s responsibility)

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Human constraints factory The factory for ‘directing the unexpected’ is using strict formal constraints to produce a 20 minutes video. Everything is directed except the characters’ behavior. Every element needed to create a film is fixed, framed and recorded from a single, wide camera angle.

How the thematic project was useful to me: I searched for a way to integrate this ‘factory reset’ theme into my own working methodologies and this resulted in researching the constraints and boundaries I always seem to use in my former video works. The texts from Vladimir Propp and Oulipo were thus very useful to me. So the big question was; where to close possibilities and where to leave space. In other words; what to direct and what not? Performance always has been a main element in my videos. I decided to use characters that are no actors. And to direct a bit what they do by giving them a certain prop and a set to move in but I did not direct how they had to perform in this frame. So I made a set of rules to create a 20 minutes video of which I couldn’t predict the outcome. (The critique in the 2nd trimester was that it seemed nice to create works that are less predictive.)

I did some reading about mise-en-scene and read things about Eisenstein and Brecht. The sentence ‘the Drama is in the staging itself’ made sense while working on my experiments. The second step after these experimental shootings was the idea to use every formal rule used in cinema; think of lightning, sound, music, dialogue, so by this I mean to use the raw structure underneath films and direct everything except the characters behavior. Maybe a better way to clarify is to say that I wanted to push mise en scene to the extreme. But maybe my set of parameters/rules has to be adapted out of my former works rather than from traditional cinema. I now want to build up an archive of ordinary life situations in which I use a similar set of rules. I want to spend a lot of time with my camera in villages and city centers and look for situations and people to record that speak to my imagination. I also want to write descriptions about these recordings and put them next to it in my archive. I hope it will form a bigger totality that, later, I can structure somehow. Maybe I will find a structure and a logic context/connection after shooting all these videos, which allows me to put them together and re-shoot the whole thing (in my dreams on 16mm!) Maybe even try to create a series of documentary pieces that become surrealistic because of the use of more complex rules.

Rules ‘Human constraints factory’ 27/06/2012 ASTRID VAN NIMWEGEN

Shooting #5

Date: June 28th 2012

• 1 camera on a tripod
• 1 camera angle (long shot)
• Wide shot/lens
• Aperture as small as possible 8/11
• Only natural lightning
• Only environment sound
• 1 scene framed with white lines
• Duration 20minutes
• Outcome is uncertain and the director is not allowed to manipulate this

• Character is not allowed to leave the scene in the 20 minutes
• Each character gets one prop
• Prop has to be used at least once
• Character has to pronounce one word of text at least three times on three of the ten spots in the scene.
• Those ten spots are signed in the frame with a white circle (A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J)
• Character has to choose one word of text out of the following three:

• Scream • Auw • Help

• Character 1 goes from spot A to spot F and has to pass all the other spots in between
• Character 2 goes from spot G to spot D and has to pass all the other spots in between
• Character 1 has to turn around and goes in the opposite direction if he/she meets character 2
• Character 2 has to block character 1 if he/she meets character 1
• Characters do not know each other’s assignments

Rules ‘Human constraints factory’ 27/05/2012 ASTRID VAN NIMWEGEN

Shooting #1 #2 #3 #4

Date: 28th May 2012

• 1 camera on a tripod
• 1 camera angle (long shot)
• Wide shot/lens
• Aperture as small as possible 8/11
• Only natural lightning
• Only environment sound
• 1 scene framed with white lines
• Duration 20minutes
• Outcome is uncertain and the director is not allowed to manipulate this
• Character is not allowed to leave the scene in the 20 minutes
• Each character gets one prop
• Prop has to be used at least once
• Character has to pronounce one word of text at least three times on three of the spots in the scene.
• Those three spots are signed in the frame with a white circle (A; B; C)
• Character has to choose one word of text out of the following three:

• Scream • Auw • Help