User:Elysa/Methods

OCTOBER 02 2019

EDITED VERSION OF CHEN INTERVIEWING ME

What are you making? 
 Eye project! No concrete idea yet? There are a few aspects I want to combine: Horror/scary elements, feminism, the concept ofg time. Reference film: Get out. In this film the racism itself is the horror of the story. I think it could be interesting to see if I could make something in which the sexism/misoginy is the horror. For women sexism can really feel like a disturbance in their being*. It expects from them, and it limits them. I want to see if I can (visually) express this disturbance in being through doing sometihng visual with time.

• I see "being" and "time" as very connected. And because women's "being" is constantly disturbed by sexism/etc., you could say that women live a much looser narrative(?) 

Why are you making it?  The personal motivation becoming the feminist: The disconnection I've always felt with my assigned gender. From a young age I noticed that in this society my gender meant limitation, and it had certain expectations that I felt uncomfortable with.  Reference book: The Second Sex by De Beauvoir. She wrote that research shows that most girls at the age of about 11 years old feel sorry that they're not a boy. I very much identify with that; I too had that feeling at that age.  The thing I find so interesting about horror is the mystery; the ungraspable element. I think I feel the same way about time. The mystery motivates me, and I feel like I want to grasp the ungraspable.  In a way, I feel like my assigned gender is a horror. I think it's very dramatic and maybe even tragic (old Greek definition!) to be a woman in this world? I think the film Teeth also ties into that. 

How does it relate to other things you have done?  Concept, ideology (the fiminism/vulnerability/concept of time) that is connected with my previous work. Working from strong feelings and emotions. Concept comes before the image forming.

How is it different to other things you have done?  New of moving images(new media) Horror images. In the past I've made images that have felt tense, but never something that might be actually (existentially) frightning. So I'm basing my horror images on tense images that I've done before, but it's also very new to me.  During my bachelor I gave a lot of thought about the information I wanted to pass on with my photos; what do they depict? Now I want to focus more on the medium. What could the medium do for translating feelings to the viewer.

What are the most significant choices have you made recently?  Working with new elements: horror. I'm also pursuing this interest just for the sake of it. At least it started out that way. I wanted to pursue it just because, and then I made it fit my concept.

STEVE INTERVIEWING ME

I find this a very difficult question. I want to get a PhD and work towards toward that. I feel I’m somewhere between practice based and theoretical. Previously I did a thesis about the concept of time in contemporary photography, this involved some primary research [interviews &c.].  [S: So you know your way around citation systems &c.?] The thesis was very academic.  I’m fine with that kind of writing but I also like speculative writing. I would pick a topic and read about it and pick a few theories that I find interesting and link them to each other. I once looked at the work of the photographer Nan Golding and read it through Susan Sontag, for instance.  [Steve: the voice of the essayist is one of the well-informed writer with an opinion]

[What are the conditions that would make a close reading of your own work possible?]:  Peace and quiet, a wall for the work to hang on...  [On method…]  I sometimes make lists which provide a skeleton for a text; I then connect them or rearrange them so they make the best sense; I need to be able to visualise the text.

SEPTEMBER 25 2019

DICHT BIJ MIJ VANDAAN

It’s a photobook, A5 size, 45 pages. The cover is black, and the pages inside are also sometimes black, but mostly white. On the front cover the title (Dicht bij mij vandaan) is written in white. Underneath, in smaller lettering, is written “by Elysa-James Kooijman”. When you turn the cover there’s a title page, which looks the same as the front cover. After the title page the pages with the photos begin. The selection (all in colour) is a mix of people and objects, chosen by their intimate feeling and loose narrative of the (autobiographical) photographic conversation between lovers. You get a peek into very private moments in their relationship. Some of these photos take up all of the page, while others are smaller and are thus surrounded by more “empty” space. Some photos take up two pages; a spread. At the end of the book there’s a poem, in the same type of lettering as the front cover, which puts an emphasis on the varied emotions in the photos. On the back cover is the same poem but mirrored. The photos are taken with a digital camera and with an analogue camera. Some of the photos are staged, and some are taken spontaneously. The analogue camera is used for the more spontaneous photos, and the digital camera for the for the staged photos, depending on the artist’s mood and the amount of control they wanted to have over the intimacy. With most photos the colour has been enhanced a little in Photoshop. After that, Illustrator has been used to make up the editing of the book. The book has been sent to a printing press, who printed, folded and bound the book. 
The project came about from an emotional curiosity. The artist wanted to see what photography would do for the intimacy of the relationship, which, they decided in the end, helped gain more emotional intimacy and security within the relationship. Because the process of making the photos emotionally slowed down time, creating a connection between the lovers was easier. Creating this stronger emotional connection between the lovers was important to the artist because of personal reasons and because of reasons going beyond themself. The artist wanted people to recognise themselves in this project, and make them spend more time with the feelings that they would usually try to skip or sweep under the rug.