Claudio's Thesis - INTRO/OUTRO

GRS2023 Claudio's Thesis - INTRO/OUTRO SteveSuggests

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INTRO (first chapter)

This text is titled INTRO.

INTRO is a general outline of the starting point of my graduation research project, BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES. It will present its premises, its pinciples, the thematic fields that the project will cross and address, the questions driving it, the tools I plan to use, the attitudes I will rely on.

INTRO is a self-analyisis of where I am at right now. Now that I have written my Project Proposal and I am starting to grasp what I am making yet I feel much will change and evolve and I still have many doubts to figure out. Also, it will serve me as an exercise to reach a temporary state of clarity over the next month and devise an effective and convincing way to present and frame my intentions at the assessment in January.

I will write another text - OUTRO - just before the final due date for thesis. It will be a complementary, mirror text to INTRO, an attempt at recapping the work made and reflecting on its achievements and failures, its discoveries and future trajectories. Also, a more detailed description of the form that this project will take in the graduation show.

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BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES  is a visual research project that I will carry on over the coming months, towards the graduation. During the first year I focused on a rather broad yet quite specific field of research, which I would frame as the theory and practice of image-making, and, conversely, of the experience of images, considered in their complex implications - technological/technical, material, semiotic, affective/existential - between their digital and analog nature. In other words, I have been concerned with the conditions of possibility of images by constantly lingering on their limits. This project belongs to the same research path.

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES  will be an elemental exploration of fundamental questions about seeing and being: the way we see, what we see, why we see, and where we stand. It will give form to a critical discourse and practice that weaves together and questions the experience of the world by seeing it, through light, on images and screens, the materiality of these - as physical/analog and virtual/digital objects, and the related quest to find meaning and stand in between these, living the tension between nihilism and the sublime. A personal reflection on the experience of seeing as well as a (self)reflection on the possibilities of the medium of (moving) images.

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will take the form of a cumulative, open-ended, expansive work on visual material from different sources and with different qualities. Its subjects will be (???, still defining this)

piercing light leaks and dark black holes, over- and under- exposed shots, webcam shots of empty beaches, blinding flashes and fast flickers, windows, curtains, screens, empty/lost eyes, pixels, digital noise, black and white blank frames [tbc...],

collected and choreographed together in short, stand-alone sketches/fragments. An annotation process will run parallel, unfolding meaning in written form, producing text material that will end up in this thesis work and in the final piece for the graduation show.

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will find its outcome at the graduation show as an experimental moving image work, in an installation form. I envision it either as a single-screen compilation or a multi-channel installation comprising of (4?) speculative episodes/parts, mutually interconnected yet self sufficient.

They will be exercises of/attempts at seeing. For me while making, for the viewer watching (DEVELOP THIS hint more)

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(will also evolve into a separate part OF THE THESIS? As I often struggle to clearly understand and therefore explain what I'm interested in, what and why I make, I will commit to an exercise of repeatedly writing short paragraphs trying to pinpoint the core concerns of what I make. A series of attempts at defining what I'm making - Write 1 sentence/short paragraph each day (?) in which I try to put down, in simple sentences, what I am interested in, as an artist, define the field in which i am moving. 

(WHAT) I'M INTERESTED IN (WHAT)

Through making BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES,

I’m interested in exploring the fundamental elements and conditions of vision, its limits and the notion of blindness in relation to images and image-making.

I’m interested in light and its double potential to make things visible and to make blind. Its absence and presence, its double effects on images and vision. To drown in light, or to emerge from it. To appear and conceal. To make the world exist, or vanish.

I'm interested in the fine line between visibility and invisibility, between transparency and opacity.

I'm interested in those liminal moments when nothing (or everything) is seen as something, or when something that can't be seen becomes nothing. Things becoming nothing, something, everything in and through light, in and trough images.

I'm interested in exploring the liminal states between seeing something, everything, nothing.

I'm interested in the paradoxical link between nihilism and the sublime.

I'm interested in explore the tension between pure abstraction and mere materiality of images, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium, between seeing everything and not seeing anything.

I’m interested in images and screens as supports for such paradoxical coexistence of showing and hiding.

I'm interested in the concept of blind spot. Ocular blind spots in retinal structures; blind(ing) elements in the "structure" of images (over/under exposures, out-of-focus, flickering ...); images and screens as blind objects; also, blind spots in perception of the world.

I'm interested in exploring light as a flash. The flash of light as a concept, an image, and a physical phenomenon. The flash as the basic unit of light; as a (im)pulse for/on vision. As a singular, sudden event of extreme light that paradoxically reveals and blinds. As a device for apparition and concealment, of existence and negation. As a metaphor and image for both nihilism and the sublime. Also, the flash as the fundament of every experience of moving images, and of digital screens too.

I'm interested in the failure of images. The paradox of making fail-ed/-ing images as part of my image-making practice as a visual artist. I'm interested in exploring and working on events of failure of images. Failed images as images that question and subvert their expected representative value. Images that represents nothing-ness, that show themselves as images, that are blind and that blind the viewer, both physically and conceptually.

I'm interested in the repetition and variation, in the redundancy, of images.

I'm interested in the durational experience/effect of watching.

Hereafter, I compile an expansive list of keywords that will somehow be called into question by BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES. I will consider translating it into a conceptual diagram/map to give a visual sense of their mutual implications, their relevance and position in the project. Elements from this list will be more specifically elaborated on in this thesis (A CATALOG/COMPENDIUM OF CONCEPTS) in closer relation to the actual development of the project over the coming months.

seeing/not seeing

showing/hiding

seeing/watching/staring/gazing

vision/blindness

visibility/invisibility

transparency/opacity

representation

materiality/abstraction

edges/borders/thresholds/margins/limits/interfaces

errors-glitches-artifacts-failures

flashes, flickers

immateriality-materiality in/of (digital) images

blind spots

gaze/image/screen

phisicality of images and image-making devices

depth/surface

lenses, sensors, screens, human eye structures

software/hardware, digital/analog, virtual/physical

technology/the technical

existentialism, nihilism/sublime

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A SET OF TOOLS AND ATTITUDES AKA HOW I WANT TO WORK

In working on BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES I will rely on some tools and attitudes that I want to set myself both as sidelines and prompts to guide my practice.

I want to embrace and develop an approach to images that is both, at the same time, sculptural and open-ended. A DIY, constant sketching, “non-finito” approach. Make rapid, rough, short sketches, yet consistently, as a way to explore possible forms and meanings. To keep eyes and doors open, to open eyes and doors.

I want to work with images in a more dirty, reckless, less polished way. This does not mean I want to work carelessly. But carefree. And rather give more space to a process and a practice rather than to projects. . A practice against - or devoid of - the fear and the fetish of the final result. It is the way of working that I feel more at ease with and I believe it can be the most effective one in exploring and reaching the core topics and interests of my work. This does not mean I am not interested in reaching points in which I can show completed works to an audience. This ongoing practice will produce a body of fragments whose meaning is made by their whole, and whose whole will be the foundation for the making of my final graduation piece.

I want to work and convey meaning mainly with and through images. I want to use text and sound as secondary devices to facilitate this.

While I will still be using found footage, I want to work again also behind the lens, making and working with my own images too. I plan to use different cameras. I will rely on my handy Canon camcorder as a visual note-taking device, to capture images on the go. I am getting familiar with more advanced cameras from WDKA's rental facility to be able to make more high-quality footage. I also plan to try my hand at working partially with 16mm. To do so, I will take the introductory workshop and I will become member of Filmwerkplaats in February 2024. I want to work exclusively in black and white, as a way to reduce the information to the essential elements of images that I am interested in - light and shadows, textures. I might withdraw this choice later on, but color feels superfluous right now.

I want to simplify my editing workflow. Keep my timeline slim, avoid excessive use of editing trickeries and rely more on the simple power of juxtaposing images alone.

[... add/expand/remove something?]

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WHERE I'M AT RIGHT NOW AKA WHAT I'M MAKING WHILE WRITING THIS TEXT

Working to present some more concrete plans for the assessment.

MANY DOUBTS, THE BIGGEST ONE:

IS THIS TOO FORMALISTIC, TOO SELF REFERENTIAL, NOT INTEREESTING, NOT SAYING ANYTHING ON THE EXTERNAL WORLD OUT THERE? IS IT JUST FORM WITHOUT CONTENT? IS THIS TOO SIMPLE? - THIS IS WHAT DAVID IS WARNING ME ABOUT - i am not really engaging with the topics i seem to be interested in.

HOW CAN I MAKE IT MORE MORE RELATABLE FOR AN AUDIENCE, HOW CAN I FIND ENTRY POINTS in my work FOR THE WORLD AND FOR OTHERS?

1) opening up my practice, considering using more images "of the world" - less abstract

2) considering the place that text and sound will have, the necessity to find a narrative of some sort, how and to what extent give information to audience.

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(END OF INTRO)

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