Paula's Project Proposal

What do you want to make?

I want to make several video pieces in which I work with ordinary people such as my mother or my neighbors as the main characters. As a setting I will use their personal surrounding such as their living room to set up a space with a fixed frame in which acting can take place. Their normal surroundings become a stage on which they play themselves (or each other) as characters - characters of their own life. I am interested in the relationship between staged and real emotions and the effect of acting in everyday life. The area where I will execute the work will be the centre of Berlin and it might be an idea to use this method as a method of engaging with the people in the area.

In the video drafts with mother from last year a certain revelation of her persona and a vulnerability surfaced which I would love to discover more. I let her chose a couple of songs she than sang straight into the camera.

Not ready yet: By choosing a specific song (Annie Lennox). the method was in the piece, (unpack this!!!) it iset up but something real is taking place

Unterschiedliche Gefühle spielen

Time table

End of September I will visit my mother and do a first test. And I will ask people to join the project (Jürgen & Jackie)

How do you plan to make it?

The reading I have done so far are the writings and the research by psychologists Brené Brown and Harriet Lerner. They write on emotions, mothers, role of play (unpack more!). Now I want to additionally research the meaning of acting / reenacting to people. And by "acting" I mean an unconscious way of acting such as our everyday roles as parents, students, teachers, sisters etc as well as conscious roles played out in drama therapy for example.

Do you know Alejandro Jodorovsky and his book Psychomagic, about theater, trauma and acting as tool to heal? Maybe it is interesting for you. https://www.amazon.com/Psychomagic-Transformative-Power-Shamanic-Psychotherapy/dp/159477336X

For the proposal: make prototypes! What have you learned from them, how will you continue.

Relation to former practice

The methodology will be similar to the photos in the earlier series "Exceptional Encounters", of heterosexual men in hotel rooms. I will set up a stage in which things will be performed for the camera. In my new work I want the method to be apparent within the work itself. HOW DOES THAT WORK?? The viewer will see the normal everyday surroundings of the main character but the actions will be different than you would expect. I will be setting up conditions of intimacy, which is also part of my work as an editorial portrait photographer.

In my latest work worldpeace strong emotions are depicted for the first time in my work. This also affects the viewer, one can't help having a reaction to such an expressive face. I love the ambivolence in their expression it is staged but also real.

References

I want the protagonists to reveal something of themselves by choosing on what they want to reenact or how they do it. Drama Therapie, Verhaltenstherapie