Claudio's Draft Project Proposal

THIRD DRAFT - 06/11/2023

"Let me see! Make me blind!"

BLIND SPOTS AND LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES (working title)

1. What do you want to make?

BLIND SPOTS AND LIGHT TRICKS will be an experimental moving image piece, between 8 and 15 minutes in length, to be presented as an installation form. It will be a collage of appropriated imagery - both still and moving, original footage, and DIY animation techniques. It will have a fragmented, cumulative, possibly open-ended - yet structured - form as a result of a non-linear process of making.

Through BLIND SPOTS AND LIGHT TRICKS I intend to question the way we see, what we see, why we see, and where we stand.

I’m interested in exploring the connection between seeing and being, the limits of vision and the possibilities of blindness. I’m interested in the double potential of light to make things visible and to make blind. I’m interested in the fine lines between visibility and invisibility, between transparency and opacity.

I’m interested in images and screens as supports for the paradoxical coexistence of showing and hiding, of letting see and making blind.

I’m interested in navigating 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, between nihilism and the sublime.

Light will be the raw material for the piece. Its absence and presence, its double possibilities on images and vision. Letting something be seen, or hiding it; letting someone see, or making them blind. To drown in light, to emerge from it. To appear and conceal. To make the world exist, or vanish

The act of seeing will be its main subject.

Its mode of address will be double, as I intend to question and challenge the viewer’s way of seeing and being both conceptually and physically/affectively.

BLIND SPOTS AND LIGHT TRICKS will be therefore a rather abstract constellation/compilation of blinding images, 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 [...], collected and choreographed together in a series of short sketches/fragments.

I intend to work on BLIND SPOTS AND LIGHT TRICKS both with a sculptural approach - a hands-on work on and with images - as well as conceptual/minimalist attitude, merged with a more contemporary form. An annotation process will run parallel, unfolding meaning in written form, and producing text material that will end up in the thesis work as well as in the piece itself.

Through this piece I intend to give form both to a personal reflection on the world as well as a (self)reflection on the possibilities of the medium of moving images. It will also be a way to confront myself with the influences that make up my artistic background.

2. How do you plan to make it? What is your workflow?

I envision BLIND SPOTS AND LIGHT TRICKS to be a fragmented yet structured collection of a series of short sketches that give form and explore the core topics of my research. In accordance with my usual practice, 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 the topics I am dealing with - to embody that experience of images that the piece is specifically concerned with.

Some specific formal choices will be made, for which I will try to give account in my thesis, such as a rather gritty black-and-white and a recurring flicker effect. [<<You can formalise this open-ended-ness. Try: "I will catalogue the specific formal choices I make and show fresh outcomes at agreed dates during mentor sessions, beginning with the run-up to the January assessment" In this way you keep the door open for contingency and also construct a frame which will show progression.You allow access to a personal open-ended process and are not totally reliant on "momentum" to keep the ball rolling. General point: consider the protocol you want to adopt (which are useful to you)]

The piece will oscillate between contemplative, slow-paced sections and hectic, fast-paced ones. Another formal device that I intend to use is the repetition and variation of/on the same images, its hypnotic, immersive potential.

Text is likely to be featured, building an essayistic and speculative undertone which however will not be a dominant mode of address.

I am starting this project with some specific ideas and images in mind, but I intend to always keep my eyes open for unexpected encounters, unwanted yet surprising byproducts. I would like to retain this fragmented, open, cumulative process, and embrace it to give form to the final piece.

I want to rely more on the power of images alone to convey meaning and limit making things explicit through theory-infused text - in the form of subtitles or voiceover etc.[<<S: I translated this into a positive inflection]

In terms of the ideal display form, I envision it as an installation in an exhibition space, possibly with some extra, complementary elements - byproducts of the making process? This will be decided when the form of the piece is more defined. [Unpack possibilities: What components? How might these be displayed in relation to each other (for instance)?]

(filmwerkplaats? trying to work partially analog? as i’m interested in materiality) [<<yes unpack this: working in Worm, what would you do there?]

3. What is your timetable?

My way of working is relatively loose and non-linear, based on a daily practice of research, sketching, experimentation, 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 proper timetable for the project. [<<Consider protocols which make this daily practice available to others]

I intend to draft a 1-to-3 minute fragment for the assessment in January, to present and discuss, yet in a partial form, the formal/aesthetic and thematic characteristics of the project.

I will then rely on the momentum given by my own, personal drive as well as by the inputs from mentor groups and tutorials. I believe this to be enough to finalize the project in time. [What contingency do you have if momentum and personal drive fails? ]

4. Why do you want to make it?

I applied to this course to devote my practice to working with 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. It therefore makes sense for me to make a final project that reflects this stance.

The goal that I would like to achieve through this project is to define and sharpen the field of my research and practice, my own position in it as well as my own (visual) language. I feel this is necessary to be ready to step into the world after the end of the 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 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. I want my final piece to still be a consequent outcome of this research.

5. Who can help you and how?

My approach is rather solitary and do-it-yourself. I work on my own most of the time. However, I acknowledge the importance and benefits of presenting my work at intermediate stages and receiving external feedback on it. I strongly feel the need for this at specific stages of the process, and I intend to use mentor group sessions, tutorials and exchanges with my classmates in this way, to gather external views and to point out strengths and weaknesses of what I’m making. I will also certainly need and rely on the expertise of the tutors for the more specific technical issues that will come up along the process.

6. 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 to its extreme consequences, aiming at its deeper essence, make it more radical and personal.

Another goal that I would like to achieve through this project is to develop and establish a more personal visual language. 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 connected to. 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 - consistently; 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 feel it could turn out to 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, less polished, reckless way. Also, while I’m still interested in using found footage, I would like to work more (again) behind the lens, making and working with my own images too, which is something I didn’t do much during the first year.

7. Relation to a larger context (in progress)

This will be the aim of the thesis work - to clarify larger thematic interests that the final project works withand/or from which it stems

mainly, referencing two main fields/areas

certain philosophical topics lines of thoughts
minimalist-conceptual-structural filmmaking influences from the 60s/70s

SECOND DRAFT - with Steve's comments and suggestions - 26/10/2023

[Steve writes: Great start! Here I have made some suggested edits of the intro and have some comments on your thesis outline. Your version of the proposal (particularly the opening bit) is pretty strong on form and not so strong on content and material: what raw images and material will you use?; why that imagery and material in particular? What is your stake in this? Why do you want to do this? Why should I want to watch it?]

You are building on existing practice, in the proposal, talk about how you work, what are your routines and preferences? What do you like to do? Bring in previous work; bring in examples of other practitioners. It is difficult to prescribe an experimental process. Reading this draft, I think you want to give yourself permission to experiment. Actually, I don’t think you need to justify how you work to anyone. You are dealing with stuff which is very abstract and at the same time very material, which is an exciting place to be. I think sentences like: “I want to push images to the edge between seeing and not seeing, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium” are very powerful, and are enough to build a final project around. For the proposal, you can describe how have you tried to do that and, between now and the assessment, make pieces which do that.

1. What do you want to make?

[TITLE] (10 mins) will be an experimental collage-compilation film exhibited as an installation, between 8 and 15 minutes in length.

It will comprise a mix of edited appropriated imagery (still and moving), original footage, as well as simple animation techniques.

I want to take a sculptural approach to moving images, rather than a narrative one, that will showcase references to conceptual-minimalist aesthetic as well as structural filmmaking, yet revisited through more contemporary references.

[TITLE] will be the result of a recursive, non-linear process rather than of a scripted series of steps, which will determine a fragmented, cumulative, open-ended, yet structured form.

It might also have an essayistic undertone, which however I intend not to be not its main mode of address.

I want this work to explore the edge between seeing and not seeing, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium, dealing with such themes as:

visibility/invisibility, opacity/transparency, blind spots (in vision, images, perception), image/screen, materiality/abstraction, nihilism/sublime.

[<<I see a set of binaries here, the important thing is what they mean to you and why they matter to you. There is a moment when something which signifies something gives over to pure affect. These binaries seem to be at that point of division. Your final project may be an exploration of that moment (where something becomes nothing; where figure becomes ground; where signal becomes noise) or perhaps an exploration of that boarder. ]

In making this work, I would like to establish a more personal visual language. In the past year, I worked mainly making short essayistic pieces as outputs of a rather structured, research- and text-based workflow. I want to work in a more dirty, reckless way. It is the way of working that I find more attractive and I feel it could turn out to be most effective in addressing the core topics and interests of my research.

~~As I approach [TITLE] I want to navigate the tension, the fine lines between pure abstraction and mere materiality,[which requires a "looser" approach to material].~~

[<<I moved this para up]

I intend this piece to give form, through a hands-on work on/with images, to some of the topics and thoughts that my overall practice is currently concerned with and that I will try to articulate in my thesis, as well as a way to confront myself with the influences that make up my artistic background. Matching form and content is a key goal for me.

I’m interested in challenging the way we see, what we see, why we see, where we stand; pushing images on the edge between seeing and not seeing, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium, while having them to physically affect the viewer’s way of seeing.

I’m interested in navigating the tension, the fine lines between pure abstraction and mere materiality, between reflection on the world and self-reflection on the medium, between seeing everything and not seeing anything, between nihilism and the sublime.

The subjects / actors / raw materials of the film will be blind spots, blinding images, lights leaks and darks holes, overexposure and underexposure, flashes and …., windows, curtains, screens, eyes, retinal structures, flashes, piercing lights, pixels, fast flickers, black and white blank frames, grids,

[... add something more specific references to the actual images that you will use]

2. How do you plan to make it? What is your workflow?

I envision the piece to be a fragmented yet structured collage of a series of moving image sketches that give form and explore the core topics of my research.

In accordance with my usual practice, I will make it by editing together a mix of appropriated imagery - both still and moving, original footage, rough animations. Images in which my own figure is involved could also be featured - as a way to physically situate myself in the topics I am dealing with - to embody them.

Some specific formal choices will be made, for which I will try to give account in my thesis, such as a rather gritty black-and-white and a recurring flicker effect. It will oscillate between contemplative, slow-paced sections and hectic, fast-paced ones.

Another formal device that I intend to use is the repetition and variation of/on the same set of images, its hypnotic/hallucinatory potential.

Text will be featured only as an image/graphic element.

In terms of the display form, I envision it as a rather large-scale projection on a screen in an exhibition space, possibly with some extra, complementary elements - byproducts of the making process?

I would like several elements to converge together in making this piece: the found footage-based practice that I developed during the first year; a more raw, instinctual yet meaningful sketching practice; a sculptural, DIY approach to imagery as a material to work with; influences of structural/conceptual filmmaking tradition as well as more contemporary references.

I will begin with specific ideas and images in mind, but always keep my eyes open and be therefore ready to welcome and foster unexpected encounters, surprising shifts, unwanted byproducts of the process. I would like to retain this fragmented, open, cumulative process, embrace it as a form in the final piece.

I also want to limit my need/urgency to make things clear through theory-infused text - in the form of subtitles or voiceover - and rely more on the power of images alone to convey meaning.

3. What is your timetable?

My way of working is relatively loose and non-linear, based on a daily practice of research, sketching, experimentation, 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 proper timetable for the project.

I intend to draft a 1-to-3 minute fragment for the assessment in January, to present and discuss, yet in a partial form, the formal/aesthetic and thematic characteristics of the project.

I will then rely on the momentum given by my own, personal drive as well as by the inputs from mentor groups and tutorials. I believe this to be enough to finalize the project in time.

4. Why do you want to make it?

I applied to this course to devote my practice to working with 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. It therefore makes sense for me to make a final project that reflects this stance.

The goal that I would like to achieve through this project is to define and sharpen the field of my research and practice, my own position in it as well as my own (visual) language. I feel this is necessary to be ready to step into “the wild world out there” after the end of the course.

During the first year I focused on a rather broad yet quite specific field of research, which can be framed as the theory and practice of image-making, and, conversely, of the experience of images, considered in their complex, layered implications - technological/technical, material, semiotic, affective/existential - with particular regard to 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. I want my final piece to be a consequent outcome of this research.

Despite not being evident at first sight in its topics and outcomes, this practice is driven by a rather intimate involvement, which ultimately has to do with an existential struggle to find and take a personal stance in the world. A quest for meaning that clashes with a fundamentally nihilistic position, which is very philosophical but also very physically felt in first person. A struggle that I can’t (yet) fully define or describe but that drives me daily. It hardly shines through but it’s there, and in making this project I would like to bring it more into sight.

5. Who can help you and how?

My approach is rather solitary and do-it-yourself. I work on my own most of the time.

However, I acknowledge the importance and benefits of presenting my work at intermediate stages and receiving external feedback on it. I strongly feel the need for this at specific stages of the process, and I intend to use mentor group sessions, Monday tutorials and meetings with my classmates in this way, to gather external, fresh opinions and to point out strengths and weaknesses of what I’m making.

I will also certainly need and rely on the great expertise of the tutors for the specific technical issues that will come up along the process.

6. Relation to previous practice

This project belongs to the same trajectory that I developed during the first year. However, through making it, I would like to define more specifically the field of research that I am moving in, its key concepts and questions, so as to develop a more precise, clear, sharp and personal position.

Another goal that I would like to achieve through this project is to develop a more personal visual language. 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 connected to. In making this project I want to embrace an approach to images that is more sculptural - a DIY craftsmanship sketching approach. It is the way of working that I feel more at ease with and I feel it could turn out to be the most effective one in exploring and reaching the core topics and interests of my artistic work. I want to work in a more dirty, less polished, reckless way.

Also, while still using found footage, I would like to work more (again) behind the lens, making and working with my own images too, which is something I didn’t do much during the first year.

7. Relation to a larger context (in progress)

thesis work - to clarify larger thematic interests that the final project works with / from which it stems

mainly, referencing two main fields/areas

certain philosophical topics lines of thoughts

minimalist-conceptual-structural filmmaking influences

contemporary video artists

8. References (in progress)

THREE TEXTS

Jean François Lyotard - On Sublime and Nihilism - from

Louis Marin - On opacity and transparency in pictorial representation - self reference

A concrete experience of nothing Paul Sharits's flicker films WILLIAM S. SMITH -

or: Structural filmmaking, peter gildan

FIRST DRAFT - 23/10/2023

What do you want to make?

This project will consist of a moving image piece, between 8 and 15 minutes in length.

I envision it as an experimental collage-compilation film to be exhibited in an installation form. It will be made as a mix of appropriated - and edited - imagery - both still and moving, original footage, as well as DIY animation techniques.

It will likely be the result of a recursive, non-linear process, rather than of a scripted series of steps. This will determine a fragmented, cumulative, possibly open-ended - yet structured - form.

It will be made with a sculptural approach to moving images rather than a narrative one. It will showcase a conceptual/minimalist attitude, revisited through and merged with a more contemporary and digital approach. It might also have a slight essayistic undertone, which however I intend not to be not its main mode of address.

I intend this piece to give form, through a hands-on work on/with images, to some of the topics and thoughts that my overall practice is currently concerned with and that I will try to articulate in my thesis, as well as a way to confront myself with the influences that make up my artistic background. Matching form and content is a key goal for me.

I intend this piece to give form to a personal reflection on the world as well as a (self)reflection on the possibilities of the medium itself, dealing with such themes as:

nihilism/sublime, visibility/invisibility, opacity/transparency, blind spots (in vision, images, perception), image/screen, materiality/abstraction.

I’m interested in challenging the way we see, what we see, why we see, where we stand; pushing images on the edge between seeing and not seeing, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium, while having them to physically affect the viewer’s way of seeing.

I’m interested in navigating the tension, the fine lines between pure abstraction and mere materiality, between reflection on the world and self-reflection on the medium, between seeing everything and not seeing anything, between nihilism and the sublime.

2. How do you plan to make it? What is your workflow?

I envision the piece to be a fragmented yet structured collage of a series of moving image sketches that give form and explore the core topics of my research.

In accordance with my usual practice, I will make it by editing together a mix of appropriated imagery - both still and moving, original footage, rough animations. Images in which my own figure is involved could also be featured - as a way to physically situate myself in the topics I am dealing with - to embody them.

Some specific formal choices will be made, for which I will try to give account in my thesis, such as a rather gritty black-and-white and a recurring flicker effect. It will oscillate between contemplative, slow-paced sections and hectic, fast-paced ones.

Another formal device that I intend to use is the repetition and variation of/on the same images, its hypnotic potential.

Text will be featured mainly as an image/graphic element.

In terms of the display form, I envision it as a rather large-scale projection on a screen in an exhibition space, possibly with some extra, complementary elements - byproducts of the making process?

I would like several elements to converge together in making this piece: the found footage-based practice that I developed during the first year; a more raw, instinctual yet meaningful sketching practice; a sculptural, DIY approach to imagery as a material to work with; influences of structural/conceptual filmmaking tradition as well as more contemporary references.

I will begin with specific ideas and images in mind, but always keep my eyes open and be therefore ready to welcome and foster unexpected encounters, surprising shifts, unwanted byproducts of the process. I would like to retain this fragmented, open, cumulative process, embrace it as a form in the final piece.

I also want to limit my need/urgency to make things clear through theory-infused text - in the form of subtitles or voiceover - and rely more on the power of images alone to convey meaning.

3. What is your timetable?

My way of working is relatively loose and non-linear, based on a daily practice of research, sketching, experimentation, 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 proper timetable for the project.

I intend to draft a 1-to-3 minute fragment for the assessment in January, to present and discuss, yet in a partial form, the formal/aesthetic and thematic characteristics of the project.

I will then rely on the momentum given by my own, personal drive as well as by the inputs from mentor groups and tutorials. I believe this to be enough to finalize the project in time.

4. Why do you want to make it?

I applied to this course to devote my practice to working with 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. It therefore makes sense for me to make a final project that reflects this stance.

The goal that I would like to achieve through this project is to define and sharpen the field of my research and practice, my own position in it as well as my own (visual) language. I feel this is necessary to be ready to step into “the wild world out there” after the end of the course.

During the first year I focused on a rather broad yet quite specific field of research, which can be framed as the theory and practice of image-making, and, conversely, of the experience of images, considered in their complex, layered implications - technological/technical, material, semiotic, affective/existential - with particular regard to 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. I want my final piece to be a consequent outcome of this research.

Despite not being evident at first sight in its topics and outcomes, this practice is driven by a rather intimate involvement, which ultimately has to do with an existential struggle to find and take a personal stance in the world. A quest for meaning that clashes with a fundamentally nihilistic position, which is very philosophical but also very physically felt in first person. A struggle that I can’t (yet) fully define or describe but that drives me daily. It hardly shines through but it’s there, and in making this project I would like to bring it more into sight.

5. Who can help you and how?

My approach is rather solitary and do-it-yourself. I work on my own most of the time.

However, I acknowledge the importance and benefits of presenting my work at intermediate stages and receiving external feedback on it. I strongly feel the need for this at specific stages of the process, and I intend to use mentor group sessions, Monday tutorials and meetings with my classmates in this way, to gather external, fresh opinions and to point out strengths and weaknesses of what I’m making.

I will also certainly need and rely on the great expertise of the tutors for the specific technical issues that will come up along the process. 6. Relation to previous practice

6. Relation to previous practice

This project belongs to the same trajectory that I developed during the first year. However, through making it, I would like to define more specifically the field of research that I am moving in, its key concepts and questions, so as to develop a more precise, clear, sharp and personal position.

Another goal that I would like to achieve through this project is to develop a more personal visual language. 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 connected to. In making this project I want to embrace an approach to images that is more sculptural - a DIY craftsmanship sketching approach. It is the way of working that I feel more at ease with and I feel it could turn out to be the most effective one in exploring and reaching the core topics and interests of my artistic work. I want to work in a more dirty, less polished, reckless way.

Also, while still using found footage, I would like to work more (again) behind the lens, making and working with my own images too, which is something I didn’t do much during the first year.

7. Relation to a larger context (in progress)

thesis work - to clarify larger thematic interests that the final project works with / from which it stems

mainly, referencing two main fields/areas

certain philosophical topics lines of thoughts

minimalist-conceptual-structural filmmaking influences

contemporary video artists

8. References (in progress)

THREE TEXTS

Jean François Lyotard - On Sublime and Nihilism - from

Louis Marin - On opacity and transparency in pictorial representation - self reference

A concrete experience of nothing Paul Sharits's flicker films WILLIAM S. SMITH -

or: Structural filmmaking, peter gildan

THREE FILMS/ARTISTS

…

rachel rose

raphael maze

simon payne

tony conrad

paul sharits

michael snow