- Thesis Outline
[Under construction]
INDEX
Introduction
Part one: Practice
Chapter one: Photographic work, past and present
Chapter two: Video work, past and present
Part two: Relation to a larger context: This will be in more general terms about gay representation, gay artists and the gay sensibility in general
Chapter 3: The photographic medium and Wolfgang Tillmans
Chapter 4: Gay cinema and gay representation in film (from the American Underground to New Queer Cinema to present, I will mostly focus on the artists that I feel inspired by; Kenneth Anger, Gregg Araki etc.)
Chapter 5: Henrik Olessen (and his Warburgian research in gay representation in art)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
Three strands of thought could be considered in my practice. Researching the photographic medium, but also the idea of 'seeing' in itself, making the (gay) cinematic language my own, and LGBT issues/identity. In the thesis I would like to investigate further on the above mentioned lines of thought and by doing so reflecting on my own practice.
In the first part I will show my past work, how this has developed and lead the reader towards my present work. In the second part I will discuss my interest in photography, gay cinema, certain artist, and how their ideas/work overlap or differentiate with mine. This later part will be mainly focussed in how gays have been represented in the arts through a medium specific research in art photography and film. In the conclusion I will reflect and evaluate the process I made during the graduation year.
Part one, past and current work
Chapter 1: Photographic work, past and present:
Juxtapositions to trigger new ways of reading images
To understand my current methodology and work I have have to look back at my previous graduation project.
[what:]
In 2012 I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht where I studied Visual Communication with photography as main focus.
For my graduation project I made an installation and photo book dummy with digital and analogue photo’s, incorporating self-portrait collages together with found footage from strangers’ family albums, microscopical images created in collaboration with a cancer research institute in Utrecht, pictures of the sun, the moon as well as abstracted images of taken in the surroundings of my own family’s home. =
Images from graduation project
[why:]
The starting point for this project consisted out of the idea of de-baptization and photographing holy water under the microscope. I wanted to make a personal project about being raised religiously but being atheist and gay at the same time.
After Untitled 2012:
Before this I worked mostly in series but from this project onwards my photographic practice changed to mainly collecting different photographic images. From this point on, single images started to be less important to me than the overall combination of images. Through careful selection and combinations, I aim to create new analogies or connections between the different materials. When working with photographs, my methodology consists in arranging and rearranging my ‘collected’ images. Therefore my work 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. This gives me a lot of freedom in what I photograph, which also means I have to be more selective in my curation.
What I have photographed has undergone slight changes throughout the following years. To give a better understanding how this has developed, I will dissect my tables below and divide the images in different categories. But before I will do this I will shortly talk about two series that contradict my methodology.
Light and Sun Studies
My series Sun Studies (2012/2013) and Ligh Studies (2015/2016) are contradicting my previous statement about my methodology mentioned above. The studies were initially supposed to be presented as a grid. Nevertheless I have used single images from these series in exhibitions I have had past summer and the first images of Sunstudies were made for my graduation exhibition, untitled (2012).
I started making Lightstudies in my, at that time, studio. I was interested in creating something that not necessarily would represent something but still would be a photographic image. Besides this experimental approach both series deal with the notion of registering something that we cannot see directly with our own eye, like microscopic images. In both series I used the camera as a tool to create images that are in a way still a direct fingerprint of our reality yet through certain technical choices, as for example using a pinhole camera and/or a long shutter time, become so abstracted that they refer only to abstraction and light itself.
Dissecting the table
Here I will discuss some lines that have been apparent in my work the last few years and how this has developed during the Piet Zwart institute:
People
Even though still present, the self-portraits are mostly replaced by people from the LGBT community.
Textures and surfaces
Distorted images and the materiality of the photograph
How it comes together:
sketch for a group exhibition at x-bank
Chapter two: Video, past and present work
Below you can find two video's of one 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, while a glass of water is being poured in slowmotion and in reverse. The poring of the glass is partly based on a never finished film by Henri-George Clouzot, L’enfer. The story was about a man who is overly jealous. He imagines in terror that his wife Romy Schneider is a sort of nymphomaniac, cheating on him with men and women. The scene were she is poring the glass, is part of a hallucination the man experiences. Instead of a female leading role, there is a young man playing the part, the gender roles are swapped. Other influences came from Kenneth Anger’s films, the use of light, and the overlapping of images but also the homoerotic content.
The second video is a continuation and also has no narrative. In the short film you see a friend of mine, dressed up in his usual attire. While I lie on his lap, staring into the camera, he shaves of my hair. As I am performing in it myself, there is a more performative element to it. Unlike, Untitled 2017, this video not filmed in a professional studio. For this film I transformed my friend’s own apartment with the help of redhead lights and colorgels.
These two experiments will serve as a starting point for the project I mentioned in my project proposal. There I talk about the film The Love That Whirls made by Kenneth Anger which has never been seen by anyone. It contained nudity and therefore it was censored/destroyed by Kodak who at that time had a monopoly on developing film. [I will elaborate on this later.]
Part two, relation to a larger context
Chapter 3: The photographic medium and Wolfgang Tillmans
Chapter 4: Gay cinema and gay representation in film
Some abstracts:
In the text, Homosexuality in films: Trends of Portrayal in Hollywood and Asia, the authors aim “to offer a systematic presentation of the portrayal of homosexuality in Hollywood and across different countries in Asia –– Japan, China and Hong Kong, India and the Phillipines –– to observe the converging and diverging trends over the years.” (Gayosa, p. 38)
In his text From the Bedroom to the Bijou: A secret history of American Gay Sex Cinema, Jack Stevenson talks about the history of gay sex cinema and equates this to the history of gay liberation itself. He looks at the journey that moved gay erotic cinema from the private to the public space.
In the book New Queer Cinema, B. Ruby Rich her writings on New Queer Cinema are brought together in one bundle. She has been writing about New Queer Cinema since it’s beginning, and this book gives an insightful look in queer film history.
Chapter 5: Henrik Olessen (and his Warburgian research in gay representation in art)
Bibliography
Gregg Araki:
Chua, L.; Araki, G., (Fall, 1992), Profiles & positions: Gregg Araki (interview), BOMB, No. 41, pp. 26-28
Hart, K-P. R., (Spring 2003), Auteur/Bricoleur/Provocateur: Gregg Araki and Postpunk Style in The Doom Generation, Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 55, No.1, pp. 30-38
Moran, J.M., (1996), Gregg Araki: Guerilla Film-Maker for a Queer Generation, Film Quarterly , vol. 50, No. 1 (Autumn 1996), pp. 18–26, University of California Press
Kenneth Anger:
Doyle White, E. (2016), Lucifer Over Luxor: Archeology, Egyptology, and Occultism in Kenneth Anger's Magick Lantern Cycle, Presents pasts, 7(1), 2, p. 1-10
LGBTQI++:
Gayoso, M. G. T.;Tan, J.;Mazumdar, S.;Liu, Q. (2009), Homosexuality in Films: Trends of Portrayal in Hollywood and Asia, Media Asia;36, 1; Business Premium Collection
Ruby Rich, B. (2013), New Queer Cinema, Duke University Press
Stevenson, J. (1997) From the Bedroom to the Bijou, A secret History of American Gay Sex Cinema, Film Quarterly, Vol.51, University of California Press
Still have to read or order or find these books:
Bronski, M. (2012), Queer History of the United States, Beacon Press (still waiting for delivery)
Schoonover, K.; Galt, R. (2015) Queer Cinema in the World, Duke University Press Durham and London (waiting for delivery)
Eaklor, V.L., (2011), Queer America: A GLBT History of the 20th Century, The New Press (waiting for delivery)
Going here on nov. 18.:
Photography:
Silverman, K. (2015), The miracle of analogy, Stanford University press
Discussion @ MoMa about exhibition "Ocean of Images" about the major changes in image culture in the past 30 years:
Wolfgang Tillmans:
Dercon, C, Sainsbury, H, & Tillmans, H. (2017), Wolfgang Tillmans 2017, Tate publishing (catalogue of the tate exhibition)
Le Feuvre, L. (2007), Searching for Doubt, Foam magazine #13 searching, winter 2007
Shimizu, M. (2005), Wolfgang Tillmans: The Art of Equivalence (from the book, Wolfgang Tillmans truth study center), Taschen
Tillmans, W. (2012), Neue Welt, Taschen
Film references:
Other:
Olly Alexander, growing up gay: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p057nfy7
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-obsessive-photographer-behind-americas-first-gay-magazine
http://www.stedelijk.nl/tentoonstellingen/carlos-motta-the-crossing