Text on methods

[STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

In the first year at the Piet Zwart Institute I’ve touched upon several new and old concepts that are incorporated in my work. I have experimented with new mediums and learned several new techniques. With this text I would like to give an insight into my artistic practice and methodology.

The photographic medium


To explain my methodology I will have to look back at my graduation project. In 2012 I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht where I studied Visual Communication with as main focus photography.  For my graduation project I made an installation and photobook dummy with digital and analogue photo’s, where you see self-portrait collages, found footage from family albums,  microscopical images made with help from a cancer research institute in Utrecht, pictures of the sun and the moon, abstracted images of my family home environment.

With this project my photographic practice started to consists out of collecting images that can, as mentioned above, consist out of different types of photographic images. The images independently are less important to me than the overall combination of images. By ‘curating’ these collected images I want to create new analogies between them. They should always be presented as a ‘table’ not as a ‘tableau’. The idea of the working table and the open possibility of changing the order of the images therefore also means that I do not work in fixed series or projects with my photographic images. 

So in short my methodology in working with photographs consists out of arranging and rearranging my ‘collected’ images. Continuing and elaborating on this practice, I have been researching the photographic medium itself, through for example texts written by the three pioneers of writing about photography, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, and John Berger. Practically I have been experimenting with printing on different papers, different printing techniques, bookbinding and also went for the first time into the darkroom.


Exploring the cinematic language and research into queer cinema
Secondly I am focused in making the cinematographic language my own. I do this through making short experimental films. Important research area's here are queer (or gay) cinema, magic and rituals. The interest in magic and rituals started after seeing work by Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger, (see previous essay).

Ernesto de Martino described the role of rituals and magic as a way for individuals to try to regain control again in times of uncertainty and confirm their presence in the world, so perhaps people need something magical in their lives right now.

Below you can find two video's of my first attempts exploring the cinematic language. Through the use of slowmotion, colorful lights, black and white, sounds of outerspace, and by not having any dialogues I try to conceive a mystical/uncanny atmosphere. You see a young man, partly undressed looking and laughing in front of the camera, also a glass of water is being poured in slowmotion and in reverse.

The second video also has no narrative but has a more performative (from my side) element to it. In the short film you see Jordi a friend of mine, dressed up in his usual attire. While I lie on his lap and stare into the camera, he shaves of my hair. This video was unlike, Untitled 2017, not filmed in a professional studio. For this film I transformed Jordi’s apartment with the help of redhead lights and colorgels. I see both films as starting points for a next film I want to work on. The next film should be longer and not confined to the studio only. I have some lose ideas which I still have to connect to each other.

There are several things I want to work on. One of them has to do with reacting to rising homophobic, xenophobic, and racist developments in the Netherlands. I am interested in incorporating self-defense for the LGBTQI community in a video project as in there has been an increase in violent hate crimes against the LGBTQI community in the Netherlands. First I will follow a class organized by ’t Tijgertje which already organizes self-defense classes for 35 years for LGBTQI people. They practice Krav Maga which is an Israeli self-defense method which is often used by the armed forces. The techniques are based on involuntary reflexes which have evolved naturally and which we all use for survival purposes. After experiencing this in person I can tell if this is gonna be something I want to appropriate in a video piece or not.

Research strands & and larger context:
At this point my work could be divided into three research areas. Firstly the photographic medium as such. Secondly, rituals and the occult. Thirdly queer cinema and LGBTQI issues.

OLD>>>>> Abstract/intro
This text functions as an insight into my artistic practice. I will look at a few strands of visual and conceptual ideas which occupy me at the moment. Below I will discuss how my research can be divided into three strands of thinking, and also how this will be translated practically. Then I will talk about a few works.



Currently I am working and researching in three distinct areas: firstly the photographic medium as such, secondly the occult and the mystical, and thirdly LGBTQI related themes and queer cinema. I see my work as one on going process, so it is not necessarily project based. The occult and the mystical overlaps with my research in queer cinema and my photography overlaps with LGBTQI topics. Actually one could say al three areas are not so distinct and overlap each other one way or another.

What am I working on now:
Photo:
My photographic work is on the one hand about looking and on the other hand about the photographic medium itself, the photo as an object, the materiality of it but also what they communicate and how they relate to the real world. Questions that arise are: why does the subject affect me? What do I leave in? What do I leave out? What kind of analogies are created by putting these images together?

In my photographic practice I collect images, these can be taken digitally or analogue, but can also be found footage, collage, scientific images or digital collages. Sometimes images are staged, sometimes it just happens to me. By ‘curating’ these collected images I want to create new analogies between them. I photograph to 'collect' but also to get closer to people and objects. Inherent to photography is the gaze, what I photograph gives away my way of looking and what I am interested in. Particularly I am interested in the gay gaze or the queer gaze. Yet photography is always personal and objective for me because of the giving away of the gaze. The objects that I depict are often men, rocks, outer space images, people, daily life snapshots, but also abstract images. The idea of an archive plays a role as I sometimes come back to images previously taken years before. It is not important for me when the photograph is taken, if I suddenly come across an image of 5 years ago and it seems to have a relationship with images I took yesterday then it makes total sense to me to put these images together.

Film:
Secondly I am focused in making the cinematographic language my own. I do this through making short experimental films. Important research area's here are queer (or gay) cinema, magic and rituals. I also would like to use some CGI elements in these films when I'm more acquainted with the medium. The interest in magic and rituals started after seeing work by Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger, (see previous essay). It is also interesting how magic and rituals seem to find their way back again in contemporary art. Perhaps this is due the uncertain times we experience right now, Ernesto de Martino described the role of rituals and magic as a way for individuals to try to regain control again in times of uncertainty and confirm their presence in the world.

Below you can find two video's of my first experiments with the cinematic language. Here I try to conceive a mystical/uncanny atmosphere through the use of colorful light and performance. The first film, untitled 2017, is a film with no narrative in color and in black and white. There is a young man, partly undressed looking and laughing in front of the camera, also a glass of water is being poured in slowmotion and in reverse.

The second video also has no narrative but has a more performative element to it. Here you see Jordi a friend of mine, dressed up as he sometimes does to go out at night. I again set up light with color gels to give it a more surreal or fantasy like aura. I asked him to shave my hair while I was lying on his couch. This action naturally has a lot of connotations.

(analysing films of: kenneth anger, derek jarman, ursala mayer, brucelabruce, Alejandro jodorovski, Sergei Parajanov)

What do you want to work on?

There are several things I want to work on. Besides continuing working on collecting more images, one of them has to do with reacting to rising homophobic, xenophobic, and racist developments in the Netherlands (or Europe, or the world even). I am interested in incorporating self-defense for the LGBTQI community in a video project as in there has been an increase in violent hate crimes against the LGBTQI community in the Netherlands. First I will follow a class organized by ’t Tijgertje which already organizes self-defense classes for 35 years for LGBTQI people. They practise Krav Maga which is an Israeli self-defense method which is often used by the armed forces. The techniques are based on involuntary reflexes which have evolved naturally and which we all use for survival purposes. After experiencing this personally I can tell if this is gonna be something I want to pursue and use in a next film that will explore a mixture of homoeroticism with ritualistic elements.

Who can help you and how?
I think it is interesting to work with friends and/or people that can add something to my work. The tutors at Piet Zwart can help me with feedback and tips and practical problems. And I think I also want to use the resources available at De Willem de Kooning Academy more.

Relation to a larger context

There are several artists who have influenced me in different ways:

My way of presenting photographic work and how to treat the photobook as an object relates to the way Wolfgang Tillmans presents his work in a nonhierarchical way. Tillmans pays attention to the space and reorganising the images according to that. He sees the exhibition space aswell as his books as larger compositions, so the installations for example are always site-specific. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has one of those site-specific installation in their collection. But it is not only in presentation that I feel connected to his work. Also the inclusion of his personal environment and mixing this with abstract and staged images are common in both our practices.

Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren have triggered my interest in rituals and the occult. Other related artist: Ursala Mayer, Eileen Quinlan, Jeremy Shaw

Outline practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. It is simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon in your project proposal and writing component in the second year (you may have covered some of this in your interview) (200) [what is annotation, in this case: what do you mean by this? S]

Research strands Queer cinema, photography, dark room experiments, Consider the possibilities open to you and where you would take your work in the near future. Don't just give a list of book titles or works but outline in your own words what issues are at stake (200)

Bibliography:

Wolfgang Tillmans 2017 exhibition catalogue, Tate publishing, 2017
Understanding a Photograph - John Berger
Atlas, How to carry the world on one's back?, Georges Didi-Huberman
The edge of vision, Lyle Rexer
etc.