User:Loes van Dorp/Assessment 23 April

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Assessment 23 April 12.20 t/m 12.55


1* Explain as simply as possible what is your intention. Introduction project, where it is about.


This project is about things you want to remember, but somehow forget and things you want to forget but still remember.

And is a continuation of my last project 'Portrait of an empty house' in both subject and technique.


I am planning to make a short stop-motion animation with sound where I will visualize how a women deals with her memories, when returning to her childhood house after the death of her father.

It will show how memory is something we always carry with us and how a space can reveal this memories. I am playing with the unreliable nature of memories.

The memories will appear as drawings upon glass objects, windows and doors and will use the space behind it. Through the glass you are able to look back in time.

I also want to play with the drawing and its place in the space. I want it to interact with the space to make the connection between the real and unreal.

I made a study where I let a drawing on glass interact with the real space.


2* Show the current state of the project: demos/reels/sketches/preview anything that can show the most recent developments.



3* Explain how you envision the way your work should be presented and experienced in the final show? A workshop, a screening, an installation, etc? Propose two venue options and state your preference. Make sketches, maps, outlines, etc, for each option.



4* Demonstrate why the choices you made at this point support your intention. If necessary express your doubts and issues that you are facing regarding these choices.

  • The choice of stop motion or dropping frames and film.
  • Finding help with lightning the space
  • Camera......How bad is it using different camera's?
  • How high the quality of the images and what about using different camera's? (ask Timo, bring in laptop and show dragon stop motion)



Assessment comments


Annette:

Thinking about open questions we still have, there are quit a few, we have the story line but we all had a lot of questions I think about what is the motivation and esspially to this second layer of memory and how this memories are beeing mediated through the glass and the choise of tool you want to use, the existing one and also the layer you wnat to introduce with the glas of frame you will walk around and I think there are st ill quit a few points that we see that need some thinking or expellenation. Where we are curious about because we think it is very important to talk about. Like you were almsot sayting that some of the memories are interchangeable but we think maybe th are not, you have a short story and itis very crusially in what you wnat to teel en where you want to go with this story and so the story line of the house is clea but the second layer is I thinkreally important.

Simon: We general felt that it is an interesting technique to explore and that you have been reearching and developping this pretty well and it has alot off potential and you have a kind of fram work to tell this story which in the haert of it has this disturbing memories. But I think that you are quit polite about that, you don't really dig into what those memories are and then you don't push that animation in response of that either. a sheet of glass you can do alot of things with , yu can smash and break it you can recohere this animation.When you think of the quee's and svankmeijer and even willima kentridge. William kentridge is politacally charged, it deal with the appratheid and the violence being a white man in south afrika in a very confrontational way. The ques really deal with the psygo sexually teritory which is kind of disterbing Svankmeijer the same , his ALice is really disturbing and about childhood fears and I gues the sexualisation of those fears is part of it. So it feels a bit polite , like there is a vacuum you don't want to get hold on in the middle of the project. It is circling, but you could really confront. What you want to make youre project about.

Steve: The real drama of the piece, the real motivation of the piece will be in the coontent what the memories are. we have a framework. We have the frame work, which is a lady going to a house there is a lot of material evidence which spark of memories but is the memories that should be the motivation.

Loes:

Than it should be one returning memory...

Anette: It could be that it increases in intensity for example.

Simon:

I think you could profitly do some research in the kind of ways people work with desterbed kids . You could ectually find sequences of drawings that the psygotherapist made with kids who are traumatiset in some way and how they often drift and circel around a memory but get closer slowly that is what we are missing. You have to persuate me if that women is going to sit down and have a panic attakc from something she sees on the window. Why is she having a panic attack

Loes: That is what I felt too when I told you tat: why is she panicing?

Barend: We can fill a lot of that in but you don't want to juxapose that and have us gues.

Anette: It is excatly that subconcious level that we are missing in the sotry now. The idea of Simon about this drawings is interesting because there is al ot of archetipical drawing with this kids which you have to do a lot of interpetation. Like abstract in a sense.

Simon: it is transformed but it contains the charge of pain or anxiety . And then you have something interesting going in terems of drifting beteween more positive drawings and more negative memories. If you start to really get hold of thos e memories.


Michael:I am fascinated , inpressed by your technique, but I don't know you that well, but I do remember that seeing your work at the open day and that really stayed in my mind. But somehow to play with the galss in the fact that glass can reflect is maybe interseting, maybe do soemthing more that used the fact that it gives you a way to draw soemthing . But also the fact that you are ding this kind of intesnive stop motion that ofcourse also opens up. The fact that you an play with time, that real time goos by really fast when you make a stop motion. If this somehow could interplay it seems like to make it really rich.

Annette:

I think it is used a mather of layers if it used stays on this glass mediated layer or if it really comes to some stronger interaction between the real .

Loes : There should be a real struggle, between those two.

Simon:

What is very interesting is that this, you are shining away from some sense of violence , which is in the middle iof your story and even the technique at the mometn you are using is quit politely, You can have her stand outside throwing painted glasses of memories on the floor. If you go back at svankmajer, what he captures the violence of childhood in memroies that they are shocking and then he tense to formally shocking us some way. The quallity of eins comes into the technique not only in the content. And that feels like you could push it.

Anette:

Why hould you use this glass frame you are holding rather than only the object trouwve kind of aprroach that you use the glass and the reflections of the elements in the house that might trigger the memory. and that are there already.

Loes:

Because she chooses to be confronted with them and if you wnat to be in control that youwant to have the window yourself. And not just somewhere on different places in the house. Because than she can't control where she wants to look at.

Michael: Love the technique but why is she walking around with this glass, it becomes such a kind of artificually. Narratively it doesn't make sense.

Steve: The keything about this memories is she is not in controll of them and that is theviolence and that is the drama. She needs to be out of control.

Barend: For her to be in the end to confront conciousley, in the beginning she is vconfronted with these memories that she walks away from or destroyes by throwing away the glass, but once she figger out, litterarely the glass is the window to her memory . Also the long drink glass on the table. And she sees this glass pain somewhere lying around that is like going into a dark space where you are afraid of with a flashlight and saying okee I overcome this.

The risk that doesn't become clear narratively that is a challenge. I still think that is a usefull idea to have the charachter turn thi thing around and conciously going back into the space that she flad from.

Michael:

I think it is clear but it seems really artificual.

Simon: If she finds a half broken window and that she would pick that up. The risk is if you take her through the house as an audiance for your animation, your using her as a proxy for us where there is no resistence build in and I think it is the lack of resistance that he finds a plain of glass and that makes you feel that she is used as proxy. Wich has to do with the resistnace and violence .confronting what the story is about. You can push it further.

Steve: Because than you loose her motivation because she is leterally behind the plain of glass, she needs to be connected. as if the glass wasn't there.

Simon: I totally see what you are saying but I thin that one of the things that could happen naratively is that you can set things up in such a way that you no longer feel this as artificually. You could insert that artificiellity into. in a certain way . If she is in the .... of this thousand of plains of glass and finally picks one up than you would go with that.

Annette : Than it makes narratively sense.

Simon: Everything is very unresistent at the moment. I think thats it.....the problem. I think the good news, because it probably sounds like a lot of critisism . That actually most of it is about taking what you are doing further. There is not a sound bases to the project, youre not yet letting yourself go as far as. I think that has soething to do with really confronting.

Loes;

That is funny, because that is where the story is about. That she has a hard time confronting. I am not liking the confrontaion either....

Simon One way to approach it is to push it much much further, That is what horror cinema does a lot there is a really interesting film about childhood memories about parent , possibly obusive parents, parent become basically canibals so it becomes a kind of a horror filmn where basically the childs memory is that his parents are eating people and it is really disturbing and it captures brialliantly this ideau of disfunctionll family, But it takes it like 500 procenbt further and therefore becomes a huge kind of horoor film. It captures the sphere of disfunciotn, excaturation. I wonder if you shouold exacurate and then pull back. What would be the most extreem version of the film you would make, what would the father do.

Annette: I also think it is nice if there is space for interpetation for the viewer, this athmosphere needs to be really

Barend; You need to tell me hat you want to hint at

Simon: if you would be totally explicit and literal what would the father do and than pull back a bit....