User:Shannon

Experiments

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qtze-ur5CYC1bSQA_P6zP9cOLkQd8GUP/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fY8NrvA8oIAr07nO6yNeG6uaYYRZN78K/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tClpPzjMdkxs51biSVwvXg-ir2k4Eckh/view?usp=sharing

Questions for me to work out in remaking:

What form(s) do I want to use

Do I want it to be a film.

Or video art. This influences how I approach the construction of remaking.

Do I want it to be an essay or a story or theater. Or like the experience of going through your photos album on your phone or computer. Or like a recording of a live performance.

Think of it less as me doing this performance, and more like creating a longer poetic experience?

This is a film? There is a dramatic peak? Could be a dramatic gesture (i.e. pushing the papers off or crumpling something or tearing. Can decide the intensity of drama)

What do I want to convey these images are for me

Are they my personal photographs? Did I find them online google images or were they a box of images someone left or are they from botanical gardens etc.

(I like the idea of generic images that you don’t know where they are from

Like generic phone photography on social media. Brooklyn Botanic Garden images of whats in bloom. Like collective consciousness ‘stock’ images.)

Could also choose more of the personally framed evocative images, the ones I rest on and give time to (spoon on plate, plant shadow on arm). Or emphasize this difference between images that sort of pass by and are unspecific in terms of context, and images that have something else more personal emotional happening.

The material of the images

Now they have this flatness, they look more like images than like objects (photos from an old family album look more like objects) which is something I like. But maybe play with different types of paper to print the A4s on? Subtle differences i.e. matte for the images with skin, more shiny for the images with plants or water.

Developing the character of the hand

Who is it. Does the character change with the different ‘chapters’ and shifts in the story? How could these shifts be conveyed in terms of how the hand is ‘dressed’ (i.e. white archive gloves, or latex gloves, or gardening gloves, or red satin gloves, or rings, or bandaids, or nail polish, or dry skin, papercut, etc). And how the hands interact with the images - the emotion or mood of the gestures, the speed, the amount of touching or lingering, or putting images next to each other and then switching them again i.e. indecisiveness or playfulness or fickleness. Or ripping the papers or tossing them aside etc manipulating the images. Consider how I decide to make certain gestures for certain moments and images. And varying intensities of emotion etc.

Lighting

Convey differences in moods and chapters with changes in light? I.e. seeming natural light, or fluorescent light, or dim twilight more surreal, or a beam of light like sunlight crossing by. Like different times of day.

Speed and rhythm

Definitely want to add more time - vary the speed, but on the whole slower and give more pauses and time to digest. To maybe say a word or phrase and leave it to sink in. For the audience to rest.  Words in a sentence can take more space. Stefanos suggests atleast twice as long for the content of that script. Some parts could be faster, others slow. More silence.

Shots

Include other shots. I.e. close ups on certain images, could cut to another close up that makes a different meaning or connection from the zoomed out whole image. More angles on images to offer more dimensions/meaning?

Depending on where I go with this - could include shots of the stack of images, of my setup in making this. Of my whole table with the setup. Or moving shots.

SCRIPT

(black screen

White table surface

Hands bring in image of window)

Milky liquid full of starch swirls, as I wash the rice

every grain a seed

(bring out the window, bring in the rice being washed)

Like eggs, glossy yolks of energy and possibility

Beating sugar fast into butter, I make pockets (taking out the rice, bringing in the egg yolks and sugar) of air (straighten the egg yolks image)

Pockets of air that make fluffiness, chewiness,(dark shadow and sound of paper ruffling) pleasure

Leaving the soft sticky dough to warm, to rise

Moisturizing the skin of it so it doesn’t crack (bring sesame seed image laid on top)

Baking like science, like creation

But everything comes from something else

Nothing comes from nothing (blue bird dead image laid on top)

Spring is high season for bird deaths (bird dead on street laid on top)

From the decay, mushrooms grow, (ghost mushroom laid on top) decomposing dead plants and animals,(second mushroom brought next to it to the left, straightening the images) absorbing the nutrients (second mushroom shuffled on top of first into the pile)

(knotweed leaves japanese beetle on top) Pockmarked skeletons of leaves remain all over the garden. Japanese beetles are called invasive, eating almost everything green. (pink foxglove with beetle laid on top) They multitask, mating while feeding. (2 daylily buds against house vinyl siding laid on top with 2 hands)

Orange day lilies migrated from the neighbor’s yard (orange lily open through fence placed next to then on top) and volunteered themselves

We say volunteered, as if we control them, as though we’re (2 daylilies open against house vinyl next to the one through fence) surprised by their will to live

(almost piling one on top of other then hesitate stop -) We call a plant a volunteer or a weed, Native or invasive

As if plants are good or evil (swiping on top of eachother, swiping whole pile away)

____

(green stems leaves black flower daffodil) Deadheading keeps a tidy and ever-blooming garden

(echinacea black flower on top) Snap off the spent flowers to keep the plant focused on producing more buds instead of producing seed. (hibiscus buds laying on deck on top) Cut off its vital force so that it may perform more beauty for us (pile swiped away. Replaced with horizontal  image of hyacinths laying on pile burial)

(silence pause)

__

(taken away replaced small flowers about to be pressed)

Ive been interested in methods of preservation

Of plants and flowers

(chlorophyll print on grass on top) Printing, pressing, pounding

Trying to keep something close to what (flower pounding fern on top)  it was like

(chlorophyll print hosta leaf on top. Silence. )

The sun burns an image into the leaves

burns my skin

burns an image into my eye, the image follows wherever I look (pile swiped away)

__

(plate with spoon. silence)

When i open the kitchen drawer the smell of plastic, toxic, seeps out and emanates

The toxic particles rest on our utensils and knives, touching our food and entering our mouths

Lining the sides of my nostrils and seeping into my blood

I sniff out the culprit - a plastic ladle blackened and burnt on the lip

(ruffling. Moth on screen on top)

The pigeons like to sit on my balcony (ruffling and shadow)

They have their spot (moth on screen at dusk to the left)

They like to leave a fresh shit on my new table (the screen in the image shakes a bit in pattern)

I see the stain of moisture seeping into the wood (screen wet vase pine tree outside sunny, on top)

I know I won’t be able to wash that out, but I hope for rain to come and seep in as well (close up water drops on pink azaleas)

To push some of that corrosive uric acid out

So that not so much stays inside, eating away at the wood (little purple flowers amon brown in forest)

I stroke my plants (those purple flowers in a little jar my hand holding it sunny, to the left)

I know that they do better with stroking, with chatting, with care (hands stroke the two images of purple flowers)

I chat to them with my co2 breath

I smell the fresh air they give (pile the purple flowers jar on top) (bring in pale grey branches over water)

The rubber plant has glossy dark green leaves

The light from the window (yellow branches over water placed to the left) bounces and shifts off of the gloss, into my eyes

I follow the curves of the leaves (right finger traces a curve along pale branch), the way they reach up proud and tall (left hand gestures upwards on the yellow branch), and I feel pleased (pile yellow on top of grey on top of pile)

(japanese anemone picture on top)

When i see nasturtiums, japanese anemone, geraniums, (knotweed image on top) knotweed here, I smile

Plants from the other place from which i came - like cousins, across the world

(shadow of open hand over leaves) I say hi to them and am grateful that they are here, welcome

(sound of hand hitting desk, hands swiping this pile away with that shadow hand on top)

(no image)

____

Water droplets and pressure form clouds heavy and thick like a seven layer cake, coming in front of the sun

(image of the plant shadow on walters arm)

I miss the sun

How it streams in (hand gesturing like stroking next to the image) and feels warm, even if the air is cold (left pointer finger strokes down the shadow on the arm)

(grey window reflection rotterdam on top)

I take vitamin d in capsule form, suspended in rich oil, so my body may better absorb that which i am missing

I stand by my window in the grey morning and widen my eyes

Letting more light into my peripheral vision

Hoping that might do the trick of tricking my body

Thinking that there is enough warm and good sun to stimulate the release of serotonin

I walk (this is louder and sharper), putting my foot down, feeling the ground pushing back up, holding me up

I feel the cold stone and feel my toes become colder and stiffer

I put socks on and rub with my hands, hoping to create (hear the sounds of the voice moving, shadow) friction, (close up image of hands holding, replaces that pile. The sharp papers rustling) hoping to transfer some warmth

(hand takes that image away, paper sliding sound)

___

(new image window blinds from inside dark, droplets of shiny water a bit on the screen)

I cry and tell my mother i feel so alone

In this new place

It is hard to start over alone

(water drops on rose leaves on top) My parents make light

Dad tells me again, the story of how he came to the US

With $100 in his pocket

Leaving behind a one-year old child, their family, their language, their culture, their master’s degrees, their place in the world

To come to the states to start again

To do a second degree

To work as a delivery person, unable to read the street signs or the map and getting so lost, spilling the soup, arriving 1 hour late, to earn a tip of 1 penny.

(through the doors of housy and my reflection, on top) My dad tells me I will make it through and it will be easy, compared to what they went through. (image of spider web on top) But i don’t want to go through what they went through. i carry their journey (dark shadow over the spider web its hard to see the image rustling for images) but i hope for a new one, that isn’t so bitter, so difficult.

(the 2 orange day lilies next to vinyl siding, on top) An echo.

My mother makes light of my sadness, but she holds it inside of her as well, holding it as worry.

(swipe the images away) (no image)

____

(new image imprinted skin and hands)

I read in my new insurance policy that eyeglass lenses and contact lenses are not covered. Neither are homesickness, or pre-existing conditions. What is ever not a pre-existing condition? What ever comes from nothing? (pause)

(sweat beads on skin, on top)

I take a hot shower and the water drips through the floor into the kitchen below

I dry myself off and go downstairs to wipe up the water

The landlord has sent people to fix this three times already

I remind myself to take a shorter shower next time so less of me will fall through

We are not divided

Like the headlines like to say

My breath is your breath

We are not divided

Which could mean that me, here, is not so (window dark blue outside and moon, on top) different as me being there

Maybe when i look at this sun and watch it fade, behind a cake of clouds, i can think of the way (beginning image of the window from inside, on top) it stretches over (straighten the image) to you (swiped away. Blank table. Black screen)

10.31.22 Presentation PDF PPT

-Sweet little flower, https://vimeo.com/319400151

-Drench Your Lips In Rich Luxurious Color

https://vimeo.com/547542025/f04a862d04

VISUAL ABSTRACT: 1 minute material

GRS Hackpackt: [Royal Flora Holland Trade Fair Footage]

• Drench Your Lips In Rich Luxurious Color

https://vimeo.com/547542025/f04a862d04

• Sweet little flower,

https://vimeo.com/319400151

• The Sun Burns An Image Into My Eye

http://vimeo.com/479917305

• cyanotypes, chlorophyll prints

• sound/performance

Areas of research

• agronomy

• seed laws

• floriculture/horticulture

• flower industry and auction in the Netherlands

• considering waste and trash objects

• emotional, physical, chemical presentations of boundaries/permeability

• desire for preservation

Notebook

Reading, Writing, Research Methodologies

What, How, Why

Interview

Synopsis

References

• Index Cards by Moyra Davey

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Another Country by James Baldwin

• Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

• Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill

• Take Care of Yourself by Sophie Calle

• The Overstory by Richard Powers

• The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka

• ""Taryn Simon Unearths the Flowers that Witnessed History’s Most Pivotal Political Decisions'

• The Mushroom At The End Of The World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

• Crawling Doubles - Colonial Collecting and Affect by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc