Janis thesis outline

THESIS OUTLINE

Summary

Currently I am interested to work with personal, family related memories and archives. My inspiration comes from the rare visits of my grandparents and the fact that I am distanced from my family and home. Thinking about my instinctive actions of image making in the last couple of years and looking into what is in my archive right now, I would claim that most interesting things for me are related to my personal observations of my relatives, documentations of them and their environment. I see these images as notes about subjects that I find interesting. There are situations that confuse me or make me wonder and appreciate. For example, objects that represent repetition and obsession with something, like my grandmother's passion about cactuses or my uncle's collection of horns and hunting trophies. These issues serve as part of my observations and registration material. This is my hidden obsession of collecting data. For example, when I was a kid, I did collect a lot of soft drink cans, stickers and plastic coins from cartoons. At the moment I am digitizing these different approaches of archival material, in a visual way.

Recently, I started to scan my grandfather's photo archive. I got really excited about the images that I found there. I made some selections. They serve as the source material for my ideas and reveal some of his passions and archival principles. To develop an idea and dig into relevant issues, I started to select images from my own documentations.

I am interested in writing down memories and building up narratives related to my theoretical insights. The most relevant issues that I can recognize in my practical investigations so far are kind of abstract metaphors to the theory about how archives are functioning regarding our personal memories. Memories can be raised up from our back of the head by images, stories, objects, feelings, etc., for example, I discovered different approaches of how me and my relatives are archiving things, interpret memories, construct self systematized methods and observations about relevant issues. For me it is interesting to investigate some of the obsessions about creating collections, organize and archive data, etc.

The field of interest is the incongruity of things. I am discovering mix-match of controversial situations and when I record those in images or video material, it becomes my interpretation of the reality, part of my obsession. Out there I am looking for innocence and purity of the daily life, the occupations, passions and obsessions are the major research directions, personal stuff which can keep us busy for a whole life time. By exploring memories and stories, ways of archiving things it will help me to continue to build up my own archive. It is the archival practice it self, the data is building up the context. Structuring and visualizing the memories and creating personalized "data banks". These are one of the main interests in my research, the observations of how things are interpreted in distinct ways, how our memories are constructed - based on stories and images, and how our life is affected by them. Finding the romanticism out there.

Last year in one of my essays I was asking to my self: In my practice I find references of things that are influencing my perception and way of thinking. For me, it is important to understand where the images and ideas are coming from? How do I filter them? What kind of ideas become relevant to execute and archive in my memory/database/hard drive? How do the influences appear in my work, are they recognizable, are they conscious or subconscious? What is my added value for my experiments and reproductions?

Photography is both: a catalyst for memory, as well as an object that you can try to either destroy, or highlight, thus affecting people's opinions.

Outline

In the thesis I will continue my investigations, describe my practical point of view and combine it with relevant theories from my reading list.

It will include:

+ research of archival methods;

+ how passions, obsessions and collections are constructing identity;

+ the human need to investigate and save information;

+ memory, interpretation of information, appropriation;

+ descriptions of my subjects and personal stories;

+ my personal insights;

Descriptions

My grandmothers biggest treasure is a big box of letters. These are love letters between her and my grandfather from their youth, when he was sent to the army to the border of China and she was waiting for him at home for more than one year. In these letters he promised to be trustful and when he would come back home, they will marry and he would take care of her. So it happened. She never showed them to anybody, in those letters I discovered how romantic and deep in love my grandfather was though he would never show it to anybody else. He was a pure romantic behind the hard nut shell that he creates around him. When my grandmother takes the box and starts to read the letters, she gets back the same old emotions. The letters work as a trigger mechanism and brings her mind back to the time.

These kind of records as letters, post cards and photographs justify our memories. What happens if the photographs are manipulated or selected in another way, telling a different story? Is our memory strong enough to redefine and separate the facts from the notions? If we are unsure about the memory - a story, but we have the visual material, what happens with our interpretation, do we reconstruct the story as we think it should be? Photography can be objective and display truth but the visual details can be strong enough to recombine reality..

Bibliography

Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational aesthetics;

Kant after Duchamp - Thierry de Duve;

David Joselit, What to do with Pictures, October 138 about Digital Arts;

De Mul, J. (2009). The work of art in the age of digital recombination. Digital Material. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 95-106.

Kessler, F. (2009). What you get is what you see: Digital images and the claim on the real. Digital Material. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 187-197.

Quiring, B. (2008). Reframing the Open Archive: A Live Show

Foucault, M. (1969). The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by Allan Sheridan Smith., 1972. New York: Pantheon Books.

Sekula, A. (1983). Reading an Archive. Photography between labour and capital. In: L. Wells, ed. 2002. The Photography Reader. London: Routledge, pp.443–452.

Quaranta, D. (2011) The Artists as Archivist in the Internet Age. In: D. Quaranta, ed. 2011. Collect the WWWorld.

Appadurai, A. (2003) 'Archive and Aspiration'.

Derrida, J. (1995) 'Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression'. Diacritics, 25 (2), 6-63.

David Campany. (2008) Photography and Cinema.