Graduate Seminar 23-24 Aitana

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 timetable?

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? )