Claudio's Thesis - printing page
CHAPTER 1: (INTRO)
20-11-2023
This text is titled (INTRO).
(INTRO) is a general outline of the starting point of my graduation research project, BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES. It will present its premises, the topics that the project will try to cross and address, the questions driving it, the tools I plan to use, the attitudes I will rely on.
(INTRO) is a self-analyisis of where I am at right now. Now that I have written a first Project Proposal and I am starting to grasp what I am dealing with yet I know much will change and evolve. Also, it will serve me as an exercise to devise an effective and convincing way to present and frame my intentions at the assessment in January.
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. In other words, I have been concerned with exploring the conditions of possibility of images by lingering on their limits. This project belongs to the same research path.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will be an elemental exploration of fundamental questions about seeing and being: the way we see, what we see, why we see, and where we stand in relation to this. It will question the experience of the world by seeing it, through and as light, on images and screens, their materiality - as physical/analog and virtual/digital objects, and the related quest 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.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will take the form of a cumulative, open-ended, expansive work on visual material from different sources and with different qualities. Its subjects will be:
piercing light leaks and dark black holes, over- and under- exposed shots, webcam shots of empty beaches, blinding flashes and fast flickers, windows, curtains, screens, empty/lost eyes, pixels, digital noise, black and white blank frames [tbc...]
collected and choreographed together in short, stand-alone sketches/fragments. An annotation process will run parallel, unfolding meaning in written form, producing text material that will end up in this thesis work and in the final piece for the show.
BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES will find its outcome at the graduation show as an experimental moving image work, in an installation form. I envision it either as a single-screen compilation or a multi-channel installation comprising of different speculative parts, mutually interconnected yet self sufficient. They will be exercises-of/attempts-at/challenges-to the act of seeing. For me while making, for the viewer watching.
Hereafter, I compile an expansive list of keywords that will somehow be called into question by BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES:
seeing/not seeing
showing/hiding
seeing/watching/staring/gazing
vision/blindness
visibility/invisibility
materiality/abstraction
edges/borders/thresholds/margins/limits/interfaces
errors-glitches-artifacts-failures
flashes, flickers
immateriality-materiality in/of (digital) images
blind spots
gaze/image/screen
physicality of images and image-making devices
depth/surface
lenses, sensors, screens, human eye structures
software/hardware, digital/analog, virtual/physical
technology/the technical
nihilism/sublime
I want to have a sculptural and open-ended approach. A DIY, “non-finito” approach of constant sketching. Making rapid, rough, short sketches, yet consistently, as a way to explore possible forms and meanings. To keep eyes open, to open eyes.
I want to work with images in a more dirty, reckless, less polished way. Not carelessly. But carefree. I am more interested in establishing a process and a practice rather than in making polished projects. Develop a practice against - or devoid of - the fear and the fetish of the final result. 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 work. This does not mean I am not interested in reaching points in which I can show completed works to an audience. I see this ongoing practice as the source of a body of pieces whose meaning is made by their whole, and whose whole will be the foundation for the making of my final graduation piece. While I will still be using found footage, I want to be more behind the lens again, making and working with my own images too.