Graduate Seminar 23-24 Aitana

Thesis draft proposal

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Sesh3ThesisOutline

I want to write a series of self(hi)stories that navigate between theoretical currents, novels and films. These self(hi)stories are based on personal experiences that I have written over the last few years and that have marked me in some way. Most of them have been written in a diary. Some are more reflective and intimate, telling how I felt at a time of difficulty. Others are descriptive; often I didn't know what to write and simply described. There is also a more conversational type, where the written language converses with the drawings. The writing also speaks of conversations, encounters and moments with other people. The self(hi)stories that I will focus on for this thesis are relational, born out of moments of exchange and communication with others.

It is in these moments of exchange and communication that positionings emerge and relational dynamics become visible. When we communicate, we position ourselves, we adopt a role, we wear a certain costume. There are figures of submission, of domination, of companionship.

In my video "We are a team" I explore the toxic environment that a colleague and I encountered while working on a multinational company, while we were young women in our mid 20s the rest of the company were men in their 50s. In this environment I became very conscious of my way of expressing myself and listening. In these relational moments I have asked myself what my voice has been, how I have been able to express myself or not, what has prevented me, who has made my expression possible or impossible?

I would like to expand on these self-histories, which are born out of concrete and very specific moments in my life. I would like to explore through writing "what could have happened if", but also "what would happen if". To explore possibilities. Rational, crazy, magical, violent possibilities. I would like to play with them, to give them another colour and shape so that they become something else or they become again what they were. (Speculative writing?).

I want to develop a writing practice that embraces my artistic practice, I don't want it to defend it, or constrain it, or support it, or justify it, or validate it. I don't want it to be behind or in front, on one side or the other. I would like them to walk together and to feel at ease in a place beside me and in a place outside of me.

I would like to have a situated artistic practice, recognising that it is not neutral, but is traversed by my context. I believe that writing and reading can facilitate this.

Key issue 1= Foreign languages. Key issue 2= Disembodied voices. Key issue 3= Self(hi)stories

Rapid prototypes

21th September

Interweaved script

October 2023

Rapid text: Graduate Project Proposal

#WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAKE?

I want to make a series of pieces that resonate with the short film I am working on now called “Talking to you, talking to the other”. It will be called “struggling between definitions” (hypothetical title).

A project about fitting or not fitting into spaces/situations/contexts. A project about trying to fit (into something). A project about struggling between definitions. 

The research will have a base on language struggles, that is, on one side, I will explore what kind of errors there may be in communication, be they misinterpretations or language errors. I will also explore what kind of vocabulary, syntax and prefabricated phrases are used.

It will consist on a series of photographs, texts and videos exploring material extracted from the business world such as: bosses’s discourses, work meetings and personal relations. 
It will be probably be presented in an installation format.

#HOW DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE IT?

It is a project that I think requires a lot of gathering, so I will harvest from different sources. Also I will need new material, don’t know which one yet.

:VIDEO
::Personal sources
:::I will keep working listening the recordings I have and working with the transcriptions.
:::I will keep working on the footage I shot this summer, footage and recordings.
“Zooming out” sources
I will look for related found footage from TV and Digital archives.

:PICTURE
::I will need to define this, how can this subject be explored only by image. I think that some rapid scratches prototypes would be nice.

#WHAT IS YOUR TIME TABLE?

This upcoming months I will work on the final outcome of my film “Talking to you, talking to the other”. As I perceive it as my main point of the resonant directions that my future project will take, it will allow me to gather material on the side and divide it into different action points. 

:Sept-Dec 23
::Preproduction, gathering material, keep working on the short film.

:December 23
::Finishing the short film “Talking to you, talking to the other” (related project.)

:Jan-Feb-March 24 
::Production/editing

:End of April
::Finish

#WHY DO YOU WANT TO MAKE IT?

The upcoming project would address themes that I didn’t have the time to address in the short film but that are closely related. Rediscovering this material made me think again on some questions that were very much present while working on that company and that still resonating nowadays in different contexts.
At that moment in the company I felt there were problems but I didn’t manage to recognise them or define them, feeling stocked and unable to solve them, unable to action. I felt a haze over my head that I couldn’t touch, it was difficult to see. All the ingredients of the undefined problem paralysed me and made me wonder: what is the actual problem here? who were us, the workers? what were we doing wrong? Were we doing something wrong? and if not, what was the problem? The answers might be found around economic struggles and gender issues, I think. I will try to explore this.

( notes:
These are: the conditions which are mainly related to language struggles.
To strive through definitions taking about my condition. 
		)

#RELATION TO PREVIOUS PRACTICE

I want to make a series of pieces that resonate with the short film I am working on now now called “Talking to you, talking to the other”. The first version of the film is already finished and it is 07’55’’.
The film explores oppression at work through intimate encounters with my former colleague and friend. We shot and recorded conversations together talking and remembering the experience we had 4 years ago working on a company. We also re-enact documents that we had from this period such as recordings of meetings by reading or performing them.

Another work in progress that is closely related to this project is a video called “Ok, vale” around 8’, made up of (edited) advertising images from French photographic magazines in the late 70s and 80s. It explores the echoes and resonances of the male gaze in relation to the image-making world. Playing with dissonances between the image that is seen, the language that is read and the word that is heard, a voice over directs the rhythm by agreeing to the image that is shown and by trying to define it. 

( notes:
This video is about acceptance or submission? The systematisation of the agreements? The systematisation of the things we take for granted?
		)

#RELATION TO A LARGER CONTEXT

#REFERENCE/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rewriting Text session 2

1 What do you want to make?

I want to finish the project I am currently working on called “We are a team”, an 8 minutes short film that explores the toxic ambiance that Inês and I encountered while working on a multinational company. Inês The film is divided in three parts or chapters: Strategy, Communication and Termination and it has been recently presented at WORM as a work in progress.

In this video I’ve been working with two different spaces by two different kind of footage that I’ve called for now “the paper/the spoken”. In the spoken material, I’ve met Inês and I’ve shot and recorded a conversation where we remember the time we spent together in that company. However, if I wanted to be a more conversational material between her and me, it spontaneously became a monologue from in which she speaks and I intervene very little, just to conduce or guide a bit. In this part I was more interested in the spoken story rather than in the image, that is why, in part I’ve chosen extreme close-ups of her face and her hands with a shallow depth of field. In the paper footage, I explore through more experimental exercises different visuals within the A4, that is, doodles, drawings, written text or forms.

I feel the short film needs more time, maybe 15 minutes, perhaps little more. I still have a lot of material with Inês that I think is worth to work with and find its place on the project. On the other hand I would like to discover which role does my voice and my story has on it.

2 How do you plan to make it?

I’ve already explored the material and swam on it and even if I feel there could be new material that could be created, I am comfortable enough to take a more directed path, that means, it is time for structures and decisions. - I will decide and expand the different chapters to see if they can be extended. - I will try my voice over, with my personal point of view as narrator/character. I think this is an interesting exploration for me as it makes me wonder how do I want to present and tell the story (and if it is necessary or if it narrates itself), am I an omniscient narrator, if so, till what extend? Does this narrator know more than the main characters? I feel this point could become a further exploration. - The sound and the color grading need to be improved.

3 What is your timetable?

I think this video works as a statement of intent, I’d like to finish it by November in order to have time to reflect on it before the next project.

4 Why do you want to make it?

Rediscovering this material made me think again on some questions that were very much present while working on that company and that still resonating nowadays in different contexts.

At that moment in the company I felt there were problems but I didn’t manage to recognise them or define them, feeling stocked and unable to solve them, unable to action. I felt a haze over my head that I couldn’t touch, it was difficult to see. All the ingredients of the undefined problem paralysed me and made me wonder: what is the actual problem here? who were us, the workers? who were us, the young girls working? what were we doing wrong? were we doing something wrong? and if not, what was the problem? The answers might be found around legendary gender issues that I will try to explore.

( notes:

These are: the conditions which are mainly related to language struggles. To strive through definitions taking about my condition. )

5 Who can help you and how?

I think one of my focus now is the technical part in sound and color grading. For this I think Barend will be very helpful, also my colleagues in the master as I have very little knowledge in this field. My friend Ariela that has been working in the film industry for years, and specially in editing, would be immensely helpful.

On the other hand, talking with Te, Arabella, Sam, Claudio and Luni the last months in weekly meetings has been very useful. I feel in a very horizontal space where we can talk and reflect together.

6 Relation to previous practice

Another work in progress that is closely related to this project is a video called “Ok, vale” around 8’, made up of (edited) advertising images from French photographic magazines in the late 70s and 80s. It explores the echoes and resonances of the male gaze in relation to the image-making world. Playing with dissonances between the image that is seen, the language that is read and the word that is heard, a voice over directs the rhythm by agreeing to the image that is shown and by trying to define it.

( notes:

This video is about acceptance or submission? The systematisation of the agreements? The systematisation of the things we take for granted? )

7 Relation to a larger context

8 References/bibliography

January

Kate's notes

About the "hybrid"

• Could you be more specific here? What genres or forms or styles or languages does it combine? A list. a poem?

About the structure

• There is potentially room for breaking it up into small parts, and playing with the structure of the thesis a little further -- so that you don't feel tied to the classical structure of "this is what I am about to do" / "here I am doing it". We can discuss this!

About la Infiltrada

• Record this

About Chapter 1:

• This criterion of "almost serious" feels important! Would you consider it a feature of your own aesthetics? singing out the language of the office, seriously, not seriously, semi-seriously.
• What kind of potency or disruptive power does the "almost serious" have?

• Very much enjoying this repetition "not that much"...

• I think here or above it is important to say something about the purpose and politics of description (as we discussed). How simply (or not so simply) describing these actions matters, how describing them brings them into the realm of the visible, the imaginable, the intelligible. It takes them out of the sphere of the capitalist workspace and puts them somewhere else -- into the ream of material? of art-making? Using your unpaid time to describe them here feels very meaningful, and potentially a form of resistance...

About Chapter 2:

• Also, related to the above, it is not easy to describe well. (...) again the almost serious!

• I'm interested in what these ellipses are doing here!

• I think there is room to be even more detailed in terms of the conditions: what was your contract in each case? How much did you earn?

Also, as we discussed -- and this will be the next steps -- it will be wonderful to read you reflect on these experiences and draw out how they connect with or inform your practice. For example, the complicity you felt with Moha feels important -- these alliances that form within unlikely environments, the way you established an alternative value system of care and mutual respect within a very charged and formal institutional setting...

Notes

Kate's reflections:

 It might be useful to imagine addressing your Project that May Or May Not Be Made to a reader who is not yet familiar with your practice -- like me! or Marloes! This may help you to remember to spell out what (to you) might feel obvious, but it is actually very important. Useful information such as: how much archival material do you already have? Where is the site you imagine shooting and have you already visited it? Essential, basic Information that your fellow artists and tutors may  already know, but a new reader doesn't yet...
   
   As you imagine your projects (which may or may not be made) and set out your choices, you may also want to start phrasing the questions you expect your project will raise -- practical questions, aesthetic questions, conceptual questions. Questions that you don't know the answer to yet, but you can already sense that undertaking the project will ask you to reckon with... They might be phrased like this:
       
       What does it mean [for me] to...? [for example, work with my family archive ... / develop a new aesthetic / collaborate ]?

Resources for finding references, sources and texts

• Databases, newspapers, magazines and libraries you have access to via Hogeschool Rotterdam (from ACM to Zenodo, via Follow the Money, ScienceDirect, Taylor and Francis, Statista and more): https://www.hogeschoolrotterdam.nl/voorlichting/begeleiding-en-voorzieningen/mediatheek/informatiebronnen/databases/
• JSTOR, collections Arts & Sciences I t/m X en Life Sciences: https://hr.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/
• Monoskop: https://monoskop.org
• Monoskop's shadow libraries listing: https://monoskop.org/Shadow_libraries (including links to scihub, libgen, memory of the world, etc.)
• The Bootleg Library (if it is up): https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/