Claudio's Thesis - INTRO/OUTRO

First draft of INTRO (first chapter of the thesis)

(as I wrote in the Thesis outline, INTRO will be the first chapter/part of my written thesis, and will be in correlation with OUTRO, which will be the fourth and last chapter/part.

INTRO will be a general outline of the starting point of the project. Its premises, principles, protocols. The thematic fields it will address, the questions driving it, the devices it will use. OUTRO will be written at the very end of the process, just before the final due date, and will be an attempt at recapping the work made and reflecting on its achievements and failures, discoveries and future trajectories. A possible outcome for INTRO/OUTRO could be a plain, dense text printed on one A4 sheet of paper, recto/verso (recto: INTRO, verso: OUTRO)

To write INTRO I will: rework parts of my project proposal and thesis outline while adding some new material. The mode of address will be a personal, diaristic, fragmented presentation of the current state of my practice NOW - before the christmas break and january assessment.

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OUTLINE of INTRO (+/- 1500 words)

1. A brief presentation of the project - title, topics, tools (from PP)

2. A reading of an epiphanic moment in my practice last year that I recognize as a significant starting point of this project (new text)

3. What i'm interested in exploring now. A manifesto (for myself) of interests and intentions. Written as a loose, expansive list of things I'm interested in dealing with. (already in PP + expand with new text)

4. Relation to previous practice (from PP mainly)

5. Where I'm at now / What I'm doing right now (from PP mainly but expand with new text)

6. How I want to work. A set of tools and attitudes (from PP mainly but expand with new text).

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6. How I want to work. A set of tools and attitudes (from PP mainly but expand with new text).

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previous practice, last year / pivotal moment / reading of it

if i have to find a pivotal moment THAT connects them together - eyes burning in FILMING WATCHING BURNING

https://youtu.be/l_7_ol6iXIo

If I think about it, I can pinpoint a specific moment in my practice last year that I recognize as an early, intuitive yet strikingly clear turning point for this project. A turning point that brought up and matched, suddenly, unexpectedly, topics and tools. An epiphanic encounter that marked my practice and whose resonance I can clearly see in this project I am about to engage with.

For the "Writing through editing" workshop - that was held in the second semester of the first year of the course, we were asked to make a short 5 minute video using footage from the Open Beelden online archive.

The piece I made was titled A cameraman filming aka FILMINGWATCHINGBURNING and was built around a rather intriguing clip I found in the archive that showing two cameramen filming each other on top of a skyscraper being built in New York in the 1920s. That short clip held a unique self-reflexive nature which attracted me: its subject was not New York's fast vertical growth - which remained, literally - in the background, yet the very act of filmmaking, of making images of the world, by means of cameras and film. The subjects were the two filmmakers, filming each other while filming the world in front of them. I built my piece around that clip, editing it together with other footage - this time intentionally looked for, not found - that could bring out and develop that self-reflective nature even further. A film projector, a film strip burning, as well as various images of eyes. I wanted to weave together the act of seeing/watching, the act of making images through film, and a more intuitive notion of burning - light burns the chemicals to impress the celluloid, eyes burn when they stay open for too long or, a burning desire and need to see things. Along the whole piece, with varying intensity, I used a flickering effect, as a device to make the moving image apparatus visible and sensible the viewer; as a metaphor to recall the blinking of the eye, as well as the projector's presence; also, to trigger the physical perception of moving images and further play with the provoking idea of burning eyes.

In the first half of the piece, an intense sequence features a fast edit of footage of the two cameramen, images of eyes and text-on-screen playing with variations of the phrases EYES WATCHING / WATCHING EYES, all layered with a flickering effect. All of a sudden, the screens goes black, abruptly. The viewer's eyes - until then hit and overstimulated by the mass of fast edited images - are caught imprepared. On that unexpected pitch black screen, afterimages appear, the flickering effect seems to continue. Yet, it's only the effect of images seen before, their backlash on the viewer's retinas.

After a few seconds, a new text-on-screen appears, in white letters slightly flickering on black: EYES BURNING.

A subtle yet precise description of some of the images seen before - eyes shedding tears - as well as of the actual, physical sensation built and triggered by the piece and felt by the viewer in that specific moment. A coincidence of images seen, physical perception and conceptual meaning.

Abstract, minimal imagery, self reflection on the medium, embodied, physical, haptic (?) experience of images.

A hard flickering sequence - white and black frames only - follows, emphasizing even more the sensation of burning eyes. The same text stays on screen, floating thrpugh the flickering frames. A countershot image of an unfocused projector beaming light towards the camera is edited just after - as if it was the source of that flickering sequence, and brings back the piece to figurative imagery. The piece goes on.

intentions / interests - a first intro to concepts and interests and fields of exploration - a list? a manifesto for myself?

where i am at right now, what images I akready have, i am already working on?

what tools will i use, what practice

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES 

explore and give form to fundamental questions about seeing and being: the way we see, what we see, why we see, and where we stand.

I’m interested in exploring the conditions of vision, their limits and the possibilities of blindness.

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 want to move along the fine lines 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 the paradoxical link between nihilism and the sublime.

I want to 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 the images and screens as supports for such paradoxical coexistence of showing and hiding.

The experience of seeing - something, everything, nothing - will be the main subject for the project. Light will be its raw material.

As of now, I'm particularly interested in approaching and working with 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.

Another key concept for this research is the notion 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.

A third starting point is the idea of failure of images. I'm interested in 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 what blind the viewer, both physically and conceptually.

Ultimately, with this project I want to establish 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 struggle 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. Also, a way to confront myself with the influences that make up my artistic background.

I will work with a sculptural approach to images as raw materials to mould and manipulate, as well as with a conceptual/minimalist attitude and language. I want to challenge the viewer’s way of seeing - and being - conceptually, physically and affectively.

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will then take the form of a cumulative, open-ended, expansive constellation/compilation of rather abstract visual material from different sources and with different qualities, such as appropriated imagery - both still and moving, original footage, DIY animation techniques. An annotation process will run parallel, unfolding meaning in written form, and producing text material that will end up in the thesis work and - maybe - in the final piece for the graduation show.

Its subjects will be piercing light leaks and dark black holes, over- and under- exposed shots, blinding flashes and fast flickers, windows, curtains, screens, eyes, pixels, digital noise, black and white blank frames [tbc...], collected and choreographed together as an open series of short, stand-alone sketches/fragments.

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will find its outcome at the graduation show as an experimental moving image work, between 8 and 15 minutes in length, in an expanded installation form. It will probably have a fragmented, open - yet structured - form as a result of the non-linear process of its making.

BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will be carried out as an on-going, recursive practice. It will unfold as a fragmented yet structured production of a short sketches that give form and explore the core topics of this research. I will work with a mix of imagery from different sources and qualities. My own figure could also be involved - as a way to physically situate myself in and embody that experience of images that the project is specifically concerned with. As I am interested in working with light as a raw material, I am also considering the possibility of experimenting with some of the techniques that I learnt during the analogue film workshop that was held last year.

Over the coming months, I will consistently commit to this practice of sketching as a way to give forms to thoughts and intuitions revolving around the topics that the project deals with. Ideally, each fragment will open the path to others, and so forth. A necessary process of selection and editing will take place along the way - something will be put aside, something kept untouched, most will be repeatedly reworked.

Specific formal choices will be made, in close relation with the field of research I am exploring. For example, I intend to use a rather gritty black-and-white and recurring flicker effects. Contemplative, slow paces and hectic, fast ones will coexist. Another device that I intend to employ is the repetition of and variation on the same images, its hypnotic, generative, epiphanic potential.

Text could be featured too, giving the work an essayistic and speculative undertone which however will not be a dominant mode of address. I want to rely more on the power of images alone to convey meaning.

Sound will not have a dominant role. At this stage of the process I am working with no sound at all, but I will consider if and how to use it to enhance - and not outweigh - the experience of images alone.

In terms of the final display of this project, I envision it as an expanded installation made of multiple elements. This will be better defined in a later stage of the process. As I understand the critical importance of display to make such a project accessible to an audience, I will thoroughly think of and test various presentation possibilities along the way. Display devices, proportions, scales, dimensions, relations between elements will be specifically devised as an integral part of the project. My architectural background might influence this phase of the work.

3. Why do you want to make it?

I applied to this course to devote my practice to moving images. During the first year I challenged this intention, questioned my position and understood that my attitude is that of a visual artist working with images as materials rather than a filmmaker who tells stories.This project reflects this stance, and aims at further defining my field of practice and sharpening my visual language. I feel this is necessary to prepare me for the world outside of this course.

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 - with particular regard to the digital realm - but not exclusively. In other words, my work has been concerned with the conditions of possibility of images by constantly lingering on their limits. This project belongs to the same research path. It's an attempt at reaching its core and making it more radical both in content and form.

5. Relation to previous practice

I feel this project belongs to the same thematic trajectory that I developed during the first year. I am now trying to bring it further to its extreme consequences.

In the past year, I worked mainly making short essayistic pieces as outputs of a rather structured, research- and text- based workflow, but I realized it is a way of working that I do not feel fully mine. In making this project I want to embrace an approach to images that is more sculptural and open-ended - a DIY, constant sketching, “non-finito” approach. Produce rapid, rough, short sketches, yet consistently, as a body of short fragments whose meaning is made by their whole. 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 artistic work. I want to work with images  in a more dirty, reckless, less polished way. Also, while I’m still interested in using found footage, I would like to work more substantially behind the lens, making and working with my own images too.

However, as a starting point, I will refer to two main fields of theory. On one side, media theory, visual studies, semiotics, aesthetics, theories of images, screens, of vision/visual perception/gaze. On the other side, I will reflect on influences from minimal and conceptual art tradition, structural filmmaking from the 60s/70s, as well as more contemporary moving image artists.

My way of working is relatively loose and non-linear, based on a daily practice of research, sketching, experimentation, selection, led by intention as much as by chances and encounters along the way. I can’t - and don’t want to - follow a scripted workflow. For these reasons, it would be hardly useful - and truthful - to plan a strict timetable for the project.

from STEVE

Send me an intro (which is already written in your thesis outline) and first chapter draft (which you can experiment and play with) on the 20th, and I will send written feedback on that text ahead of our meeting on the 23rd.

DEADLINE FOR THIS: 4TH OF DECEMBER????