User:Totoleheros

Hi I'm Toto. Welcome to my research

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Methods

CTMethods

Session 1

What, How, Why:

'Water that birds don't drink' is a documentary film about an Amazonian fisherman family, who are witnessing physical and mental displacement due to the construction of a dam. 

'Belo Monte' , is the name of a large hydroelectrical dam openend in 2016 on the Xingu river located in the Brasilian Amazon basin. The Belo Monte project, constructed to produce 'green' hydroelectrical energy, became highly controversial due to it's negative environmental and social side effects. In a short poetic film we follow a fisherman family who are witnessing negative effects in their lives, such as displacement and eco-logical disruptencies which lead to a lack of prospect on their economic activities as fishing and small scale farming.

how: In the film we focus on their split existence between their life next to the river and their life in the neighboring city, a traditional and a new way of living. The film focusses on visual contrasts and the family's reflection rather than hard factual data and information.

Why: First of all the film tries to highlight social implications and effects of the Belo Monte project on it's near inhabitants. But mostly the films tries to focus on reflection and meaning of loss of a livelihood, meaning of living close to nature vs living in the city. Next to this I personnally am interested in researching on people who are being in state of transition.

2nd take on 1st story What:

'Water that birds don't drink' is a 27 minute long poetic documentary film about an Amazonian fisherman family, who are witnessing physical and mental displacement due to the construction of a dam. 

'Belo Monte' , is the name of the large hydroelectrical dam openend in 2016 on the Xingu river located in the Brasilian Amazon basin. The Belo Monte project, constructed to produce 'green' hydroelectrical energy, became highly controversial due to it's negative environmental and social side effects. In the film we follow a fisherman family who are witnessing negative effects in their lives, caused by the dam, such as: displacement and eco-logical disruptencies which lead to a lack of prospect on their economic activities as fishing and small scale farming. In the film we focus on their split existence between their life next to the river and their life in the neighboring city, a traditional and a new way of living. The film focusses on visual contrasts and the family's reflection rather than hard factual data and information.

How: In the film I have tried to focus on visual contrast between the fisherman family split existence. Firstly we emphasited on this contrast by showing day to day sequences of their lives in the city as next to the river editeted harshly after eachother. Secondly we used a green screen effect to show the contrast of their split way of living by using it as a frame in a frame window that is showing ; a portal to the river being in the city or a showing the city being on the riverside.

Why: First of all the film tries to highlight social implications and effects of the Belo Monte project on it's near inhabitants because I think it is important to show that the social and ecological price, of projects like the Belo monte dam, can be higher than it’s benefits. But mostly for me I wanted to make a film that is focused on people who share their reflection of meaning on a loss of a livelihood, because I wanted to emphisise that these stories have a universal message and question, is the modern world really better for us human beings? I am personnally interested in researching on people who are being in state of transition, a transition from a way of living because it creates a space for us who we are as humans and how we want to live.

2nd story

What: Do I Smell Smoke? is a playfull exploration on what is on peoples minds during one of the hottest days in Rotterdam. Xaver, Toto, Lisette and Merijn collaberated for the first time to partake on i

3: What: Constructed Land is a short visual film that shows close ups on a construction of a river channel in Nijmegen (2015). A poetic film consisting of observing images on a construction side to question the relation culture and nature .In a series of close up shots we see moving land, sand and water like they were caused by natural forces, however they are the effect of human construction. The film plays with the expectation of looking at nature to question human domestication on the earth.

How: I have used the technique of zooming in on reality to decontextualize and to lose the feeling of scale. I have edited the film from super close to zooming out to reveal the scale in order to show the viewer the thing they were looking at. I have put a soundtrack under it of a very deep sound of a vulcano to empower the effect of a natural force.

Why: I am personally interested in theoretical topic of nature vs culture and tried to illustrate it with this vissual film.

Session 2

Eye Project

Steve re-sized this image

All right, so what are you making? I am currently being in the process of working on a project that is build up around the theme of ‘utopia’ the idea of an ideal world. I want to start this project by interviewing people in public space and question them if they have any thoughts on an ideal world. Besides, this, I hope to find personages that are living a very idealistic way of living. To make some portraits of people that are living a very distinct way or have some distinct beliefs.

Why are you making it? I am interested in asking existential questions on human beings. I think asking such a question, what would be your ideal world, is interesting because it allows different subjective perceptions on what is good or bad for someone. I hope to find different answers, so there will be the start of a dialogue, people questioning each other. Nowadays, there are so many catastrophic things happening, things that are not likely ideal for the human species. In the news we here bits and pieces of the reflections of the downfall of our western societies, think of environmental, economic issues. So I’m curious are there alternatives and are people really thinking about that and are people actually able to think about different kind of society? Are there common ideas about it, and how much of this is shaped by the direct context people are living in right now.

How does it relate to the other things you have done? In recent projects I have already been working with existential topics, for instance; in my graduation project; ‘Water That Birds don’t drink’, a film about a displaced fisherman family in Brazil, and were forced to change their way of living, and I am interested in what those different ways of living mean. And research on what the true human nature is, knowing that, that probably does not exist. Last year I made it small documentary in Rotterdam during a heatwave. I was interviewing people on the street and asking if they were optimistic about the future. So there are definitely strong correlations in theme and method between this project and the Utopia project.

Can you also talk about how it is different from your previous work ? So this projects will be different of course because it’s a different question time and context, but next to that I have the ambition to try to merge fiction into the non-fiction. I want to experiment with fictional scenes and blend it with a more documentary aesthetic. This combination of non-fiction and fiction in one project is something I have not really tried out well ever. However, this experiment has to be an urgent addition to the project, so that will be decided later on.

Are there any stands significant choice you have made during the making of the process? In the very start of the process there was a distinct choice because my first idea to just go filming on the street didn’t happen due to bad weather last week, and in the weekend I was out of town without camera equipment. So I decided, instead of filming interviews, I could do one audio interview at least with my dad and record it with my phone. After this, while I didn’t had any images, I used some of my own archival material to overlay the interview. It actually worked out well, and I used my own archival material, which I don’t use a lot, so these were kind of distinctive choices in putting this together and also different from how I usually work.

How does it feel to you to work with an archive project or archive image instead of start with the new footage? I guess this is definitely interesting, also the fact to use images that are not directly linked to what the person is saying, but they could be indirectly linked that allows room for some association and that is great to explore new meanings.

Text on Practice

First draft 1. What have you been making?

Over the past two semesters at Lens Based Media, Piet Zwart Institute, I have been making several video works. Most of the produced video work’s could be identified as non-fiction, socially engaged, reflective, non-linear. An exemplary work, for my self-directed practice throughout the first two semesters, was my short film: ‘The Tallinn Cruise’, a work made for the Eye Research Lab. The 4.5 minutes Eye version, that I would describe as a playful reflective investigation on clashing narratives between uses and connotations of cruise ships in Rotterdam. I see the film as an attempt to untangle different realities using the Cruise ship as a vessel. Before I embarked on the cruise ship journey, I started my research on the concept of Utopia. Throughout my practice, what could be categorized in the poetic documentary, experimental non-fiction realm, I mostly start my artistic projects off with an actual image, main character or space or place, this time, at the beginning of the first semester I started with an idea, or a concept, I wanted to explore on the notion of a Utopia. My initial motivation to work with this concept started, I think, with an urge to look for something optimistic in a time of crisis. Besides optimism there is also a fantastical, unreachable aspect to it what could be grateful for artistic explorations. However, with such a broad topic you could go anywhere, so in order to make something, I started asking people on their idea of a utopia. By asking this questions to myself first: how would other people see a utopia? I asked myself a second question: could people actually imagine a Utopia, a perfect world, different from being rich in a capitalist world? To put my thought’s in practice and to make a try-out, I went to several public street market’s to interview strangers with my questions. My market utopia interview session resulted in interesting encounters, and a short video. I was quite pleased with this first draft because it showed me that people I randomly met were actually willing to engage and think about this difficult questions.

However, being left with this interview driven video of 3 minutes, I understood that to give a wide scope I needed a lot of people to partake in an interview with me and the final product needed the time to allow for various answers and angles. This methodology did not seem to be fitting for our Eye Project with a limited time duration of 3 to 4 minutes. I needed a different angle, by the same time I went with my classmate Zhuang several times to the port of Rotterdam, because he shared the same curiosity to explore this visible/non-visible site of Rotterdam. By reading on the origins of the concept of Utopia, there is a strong connection to seafaring and early explorations of unidentified places, what gave room to fantasies of alternative societies. By going to the Port with Zhuang I tried to find links to the concept of Utopia. I imagined the life of a seaman being all the time away from home and spending their few hours on land between highly industrialized ports all over the world. I found out that there was a voluntarily-run, placethat offered a rest place outside the port area for seaman at a small village (Oostvoorne) nearby the port. Zhuang and I went there, to see if we could maybe get in contact with the seaman over there and ask if they were willing to partake in an interview. By our second visit a Chinese seaman was willing to speak about his life. This resulted in a 20-minute interview where he described his day-to-day life and reflections on his work, past and present, being away, dreams and if he could imagine his utopia. With the footage of the interview and his WeChat contact I wanted to see if I could make some kind of conversation film between him and me, however due to bad connections it was not realistic to make this piece before the Eye, so I parked it. Meanwhile, thinking of Utopia and the harbor, I biked over the Erasmus bridge and I saw this huge cruise ship docked at the Wilhelminakade , that moment gave me another aha moment for my project. I thought about how cruise ships are spaces with recreated perfect worlds and atmospheres in itself. And as I knew that cruise ships are also being used to give temporary shelter to asylum seekers. I was drawn to this strange paradox and wanted to learn more about cruise ships, cruising culture and the reality of temporal housing for refugees. A new research of reading and observing cruise ships in Rotterdam led to my EYE film. My method for making the final film consisted of different elements and methodologies. In the film I ‘play’ with different narratives and bring them together, so there is this apparent/non-apparent contrast. In the making of this film I used different methodologies and brought them together in the final piece. The making of this film was really a personal investigation and also an investigative film for the viewer. I started by taking the mode of the observer, making images of the different ships from a distance. Some initial thoughts were to go aboard of the different ships to create direct visual contrast between the tourist cruise and the cruise used to house refugees. However, it seemed impossible to access the ‘refugee cruise’ on short notice. Next to the practical impossibilities, there was a moral question, also infused by feedback of Cihad, to actually portray refugees just to make an art project. Anyhow, I struggled on how I could show different realities without being too explicit or non-explicit about it. Then I tried something new, I used myself as a presenter of different narratives between the Cruise ships. It was the first time to experiment with using both an observational mode and using myself as a physical narrator. Next to this I also found a Playmobil ship on a second hand internet site, and used it to create another simplification, characterization of a cruise ship. These different elements came together in the ‘final’ film and to me it was mostly a try out of putting together methodologies that I never used in that way.

Reflecting on my self-directed research of the first two semesters I see that it is building on my personal practice a lot. I work as a video journalist and for my first try out I couldn’t avoid interviewing people. Also, the observational mode in the drafts I made or in the cruise ship film felt very much in line with previous works. Thematically I have noticed in the eye film and in other projects that I am looking for clashes, juxtapositions, paradoxes, unintended poetics in day to day life. However, the seminar of Cihad Caner really confronted me and challenged me to look at how to incorporate, adjust or add other or new angles in my working method. A personal urgency to work with socially engaged stories was challenged by Cihad’s seminar because I was left with a general question. How can I make a social impact by making art or to what extent is that possible?

Interview Toto is slightly unclear, but has several trajectories that he is willing to explore. First looking at the eye research project, he realized it revealed he is engaging with social topics in his work. In his personal artistic practice, he is looking how to abstract these stories. He is wondering how the stories he tells will have an impact. A talk with Cihad allowed him to become more critical, and make works in relation with a subject. Looking ahead, he is also feeling he wants to work with something completely different than social things, but looking at city- scape and sound, and how to find rhythm in daily life. Showing this through sound and visuals. He wants to learn more about working with sound, and sound editing. He has an idea of making a fiction project to try and work with the concept of magic-realism - wanting to explore further on the idea where reality and fantasies start to intersect, with examples in the films of La Dolce, that are interesting to look at the verge of fiction and non-fiction. `perhaps making a short 5-minute film with actors. Toto usually works in non-fiction in his self-directed work, so he wants to experiment with the shaping abilities of fiction. Thinking about directing beforehand, as opposed to directing afterward. Toto is interested in looking at the overflow of documentaries, and is wondering if they have the power for change. He is wondering about the effect of images on people. Perhaps thinking it could be better to fictionalize his work, allowing him to hone in on particular aspects he notices in daily life, looking at the paradoxes which reveal within his work. He has an interest to explore in a more handcrafted way of telling a story, such as constructing sets. He thinks that by abstracting concepts and putting them in a new context, he can put certain topics under the microscope, allowing viewers to see things that usually go unnoticed. Working with audio, he is thinking about capturing sounds that seem out of context.

Notes and references

CTNotes

About Me

Back to base: https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Methods_lens-based#Session_two