Jujube/methods-session-11

Calendars:Networked_Media_Calendar/Networked_Media_Calendar/10-04-2019_-Event_1

The specific outcome for the RW&RM seminar of 2018-19 will be a 1500 word text which reflects on your own method and situates your work in relation to a broader artistic and cultural context.

What have you been making?

General introduction

How did you do it? (method)

Making

Ambacht

In the making process I realised I could only be invested in editing for a certain period of time. Once the trepidation of the new interface (Adobe Premier, in this case) faded, I was able to identify the usefulness of the footage and construct the narrative with the tool. This part was fine. What was difficult was that once I found the structure and had done what I considered "finessing with it," I could not stay with the footage any longer. Or it would frustrate me. I realised later this was a sign that I did not have enough footage to "push" the story to the direction. When I staged the interview I asked questions I thought would elicit a personal response, but in the end it wasn't the answers that mattered. The most interesting material was what happened in between the shots (such as when the couple teased each other).

Seek

The impetus for the project was to use the camera as a device for meditation and synthesize the footage in a video. As I became more interested in the relationship between autobiographical materials and universal emotions through tales, I shifted from this originally generative approach to focus more on storytelling with pre-meditated imageries. I wrote a script before departing Rotterdam, in which I set the main scenes near a lake.

When I arrived in Veléz-Blanco, the local climates suggested something different from the lake scenes. The land was arid. There was no visible body of water. All of us at the residency were encouraged to conserve by keeping shower water in buckets and washing dishes in bins. Coming from an urban environment where water is taken for granted as part of the infrastructure, its sudden scarcity provoked new thoughts:

What is the essence that I want to convey through water? Can I evoke the same message in a drastically different landscape?

To find the answers, I developed a routine. Each morning I left the dwelling and walked down into the barranco, a type of ravine formed by erosion (both by rainfall and agro-pastoral modification common in this region). I observed the weather, geology, flora and fauna with my video equipments: a DSLR camera, two lenses, a field recorder, a pair of headphones and a tripod. The barranco inspired new development of the script and became the central imagery of the video.

Collaborations took place both within the project and across dinner tables. For the video, I collaborated with two volunteers I met at the residency, Lucy Wade and Francesco Ferrari. I recruited Lucy as the voice of the video and Francesco as the musician. For one of the communal dinners — which our hosts generously provided every night — I planned a Mexican menu and cooked with two London-based Korean artists who stayed at the residency concurrently. Our friendship continues beyond JOYA.

Reading and writing

My core research questions up to the point are: how do people feel, specifically, how do people feel empathic?

After reading Eric Schouse's essay, Feeling, Emotions, Affect, I realize that affects closely connect to core emotions. As a person fortunate to have experienced it in therapy, I believe the acknowledgement of and clarity about core emotions will enrich and enlighten one's self. My then therapist recommended three books to me. All of them seem relevant to my recent projects (not as foreshadowing frameworks, but as an emerging pattern as I make them). The books touch on neuroscience, development psychology, psychotherapy (A General Theory of Love); suffering, revisiting the past, healing (Reconciliation); and ways to access core emotions and arriving at clarity (It's Not Always Depression). I will start to externalize these connections and position my work in the framework of affect theories.

At the beginning of the program the word "autobiography" appeared frequently in my attempts. I noted the early, loose thoughts in the page named memoir. [1] For a couple of months, the driving force of my readings was personal memories, more specifically, how my own memory (and experience) can move others. I noticed my tendency of archiving without articulating the significance of that act, or only doing so in a half-baked way. A breakthrough came when I finished the essay investigating my relationship with autobiographic work. [2] I have since shifted more definitively from my own images (words, storylines, specific events) to those of an external origin.

I briefly investigated mythology as a potential framework. After reading some contextualizing texts about myths, I found mythology's cultural indications and specific mechanisms (for example, reproduction to perpetuate in public memory) did not quite speak to what I wanted to create. I shifted my attention to tales and stories.

Relying on my experience with narrative forms (playwriting, stage storytelling), I wanted to read about realms I knew little about. The Cinematic (Documents of Contemporary Art) has introduced me to photography and film theories. I like this volume because it makes an effort to distinguish between photography and cinema, not from a technological/historical point of view, but with more in-depth analysis of each medium. I have written synopsis of the essays from which I learned.

My interest in cinematography emerges with readings in The Cinematic and the creation of Seek. I have selected my readings directing towards the specificity of the techniques and studies of cinema. Through reading Mulvey, I will continue to expand my readings of haptic aesthetics (haptic visuality by Laura Marks) and the screen as a situation.

reading Laura Mulvey

I read The Cinematic, an anthology of film and photography theories, with the intention to familiarize myself with relevant film theory vocabularies. The benefit of reading the anthology is the quick access to a sizable amount of different perspectives in one single volume. The drawback, on the other hand, is the density of abstract ideas and abstraction. The anthology includes pieces of canonical texts as well as criticisms regarding these pieces. This anachronism was confusing.

Luckily, I was shooting for a video project while reading these and had a chance to contemplate the theories through doing. My script featured a voice in search of a lost past with imageries based in nature.

Discussions about certain photographic quality of cinema [cite text] and the contemplations on real versus cinema time [cite text] had an impact on me during the production.

I came to realize that I am more interested in the cinematic — movement, association, directed experience in a set time — than the photographic — the captive moment that allows pondering for as long as one wishes.

So far, theories play a few roles in my practice:

1. Theories give me a historical perspective of what has been done. I am not studying art history in any comprehensive fashion, but through theories I am gradually learning to place my works and their relevance in accordance to the form(s) I choose.

2. Theories provide soundbites for rumination. I avoid jargons in describing my work (or even writing the imaginary wall text for it). When I read jargon-sounding words, however, the terms become starting points for connecting systems of knowledge. In articulating these connections I can strive to be genuine, specific, and unpretentious.

3. The case studies from theories give me works to see/watch/research, which helps widen my perspective. The fact that some of them resonate with me more than others drive me to inquire about my own preference — visually, narratively, affectively. By reflecting on other people's work I can also be more certain about my own aesthetics and processes.

Laura Mulvey introduces me to the early feminist film theories, which is the first kind of film theory I have read. It presents me with discourses that encompass my own fields of interest and situates me more in the vast space that (film) theories occupy. Perhaps now I can see more relevance of other key texts. (She makes references to Bellour and Metz, for instance.) As I read, I am noticing more and more the way(s) people describe image and image-making.

She shows me the tenacity of feminism (how it adapts to the times, how it reflects upon itself) -- it is an illustration of that so-called frameworks for research are, and should be, malleable, depending where I am in my practice. I am not interested in using feminism in my daily language. As Susanna said, "the new feminism is humanism."

The vocabularies of gaze and spectator feel very much the product of the last era (1970's). I am not interested in framing things with vocabularies "coined" to describe a certain thought or phenomenon. I am more interested in the everyday language, especially spoken with ingenuity. There is an intelligence that comes with the everyday language, one that connects people through shared words and the feelings they evoke.

I will keep reading academic writing as long as it helps me build connections among different knowledge systems OR gives me new insight about something, however esoteric, relevant. I will set the tone of my research in an academic language. I am a conscientious about the roles of theories in my practice and do not take any theoretical text for granted without the historical and cultural context in mind.

Reading films

During IFFR I chose to see films that appeared to align with a few lines of inquiries, which are:

• How to translate autobiographical materials into empathic matters? Perhaps through myth and tales?
• What is image capable of in conveying that intention and — in the process or as a result — creating empathy?
• Also, not at an idea level but an aesthetic one, I'm drawn to the mountains, seas and remote places...Why? Out of the sublime, the metaphor, the unexpected forms?

I see different ways in which the image carries weight. In some cases, the image is the most charged moment of the narrative, such as the scene when the word messenger faces gun point in Pájaros de Verano. In others, the image visualises a metaphor, like the woman catching water from all directions with buckets in Pattaki. Sometimes, the image becomes part of a well-written essay, as in Above Us Only Sky.

I find sound as important, if not more, as what I see. Sounds represent a place. In Tutto l'oro Che C'è, the wild track is the main track. Sounds create silence. Examples are the forest in Tutto l'oro Che C'è and water in Pattaki. Music can often be a narrative by itself, as seen in The Last Seven Words.

Actor-directed films can lead to incredibly tender moments. In Vulnerable Histories (A Road Movie), two characters both with painful family (and/or present histories) share their own feelings towards discrimination and inequality. In this case the director's role is to create a framework to communicate that clearly and foster an environment/crew that lets things be and happen.

Relation to previous practice

In an earlier methods class, I was asked if filmmaking would be something I wanted to continue pursuing. My answer to that is: yes, and with increasing craft.

Immediately after the project I started the project for the EYE research lab, the result of which was a 3-minute-and-a-half short film. I did more preparations in terms of camera work for that movie and was able to produce images of better quality (in order to convey the message through aesthetics). This short film was based on a script and a filming process responsive to the residency site. I was able to do many takes of the same subject/scene and experiment with different combinations. There was more repetition in the process, unlike the documentary.

How can I produce with a sureness towards the camera and ease with subject, in documentary settings or not? Practice (holding the camera, tripod, talking with the subject) seems to be a constant.

What and why do you want to make next?

In my next projects I want to be better at creating moving images. I will invest more in understanding and practicing cinematography. (See Jujube/cinematography for concrete learnings.)

A good intention will never come across in distracting camera work (e.g. the excessive shake in The Day I Lost My Shadow). I want to avoid abstract aesthetics when something is just abstract for the sake of it (or some lofty intellectualism in the name of poetry... enough of those random and self-indulgent manipulation of the 16mm films in the shorts from History Deletes Itself).

Relation to a larger context

Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your work. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.