Toto's first draft ToP

First draft 1. What have you been making? Over the past two semesters at Lens Based Media, Piet Zwart Institute, I have been making several video works. Most of the produced video work’s could be identified as non-fiction, socially engaged, reflective, non-linear. An exemplary work, for my self-directed practice throughout the first two semesters, was my short film: ‘The Tallinn Cruise’, a work made for the Eye Research Lab. The 4.5 minutes Eye version, that I would describe as a playful reflective investigation on clashing narratives between uses and connotations of cruise ships in Rotterdam. I see the film as an attempt to untangle different realities using the Cruise ship as a vessel. Before I embarked on the cruise ship journey, I started my research on the concept of Utopia. Throughout my practice, what could be categorized in the poetic documentary, experimental non-fiction realm, I mostly start my artistic projects off with an actual image, main character or space or place, this time, at the beginning of the first semester I started with an idea, or a concept, I wanted to explore on the notion of a Utopia. My initial motivation to work with this concept started, I think, with an urge to look for something optimistic in a time of crisis. Besides optimism there is also a fantastical, unreachable aspect to it what could be grateful for artistic explorations. However, with such a broad topic you could go anywhere, so in order to make something, I started asking people on their idea of a utopia. By asking this questions to myself first: how would other people see a utopia? I asked myself a second question: could people actually imagine a Utopia, a perfect world, different from being rich in a capitalist world? To put my thought’s in practice and to make a try-out, I went to several public street market’s to interview strangers with my questions. My market utopia interview session resulted in interesting encounters, and a short video. I was quite pleased with this first draft because it showed me that people I randomly met were actually willing to engage and think about this difficult questions. However, being left with this interview driven video of 3 minutes, I understood that to give a wide scope I needed a lot of people to partake in an interview with me and the final product needed the time to allow for various answers and angles. This methodology did not seem to be fitting for our Eye Project with a limited time duration of 3 to 4 minutes. I needed a different angle, by the same time I went with my classmate Zhuang several times to the port of Rotterdam, because he shared the same curiosity to explore this visible/non-visible site of Rotterdam. By reading on the origins of the concept of Utopia, there is a strong connection to seafaring and early explorations of unidentified places, what gave room to fantasies of alternative societies. By going to the Port with Zhuang I tried to find links to the concept of Utopia. I imagined the life of a seaman being all the time away from home and spending their few hours on land between highly industrialized ports all over the world. I found out that there was a voluntarily-run, placethat offered a rest place outside the port area for seaman at a small village (Oostvoorne) nearby the port. Zhuang and I went there, to see if we could maybe get in contact with the seaman over there and ask if they were willing to partake in an interview. By our second visit a Chinese seaman was willing to speak about his life. This resulted in a 20-minute interview where he described his day-to-day life and reflections on his work, past and present, being away, dreams and if he could imagine his utopia. With the footage of the interview and his WeChat contact I wanted to see if I could make some kind of conversation film between him and me, however due to bad connections it was not realistic to make this piece before the Eye, so I parked it. Meanwhile, thinking of Utopia and the harbor, I biked over the Erasmus bridge and I saw this huge cruise ship docked at the Wilhelminakade , that moment gave me another aha moment for my project. I thought about how cruise ships are spaces with recreated perfect worlds and atmospheres in itself. And as I knew that cruise ships are also being used to give temporary shelter to asylum seekers. I was drawn to this strange paradox and wanted to learn more about cruise ships, cruising culture and the reality of temporal housing for refugees. A new research of reading and observing cruise ships in Rotterdam led to my EYE film. My method for making the final film consisted of different elements and methodologies. In the film I ‘play’ with different narratives and bring them together, so there is this apparent/non-apparent contrast. In the making of this film I used different methodologies and brought them together in the final piece. The making of this film was really a personal investigation and also an investigative film for the viewer. I started by taking the mode of the observer, making images of the different ships from a distance. Some initial thoughts were to go aboard of the different ships to create direct visual contrast between the tourist cruise and the cruise used to house refugees. However, it seemed impossible to access the ‘refugee cruise’ on short notice. Next to the practical impossibilities, there was a moral question, also infused by feedback of Cihad, to actually portray refugees just to make an art project. Anyhow, I struggled on how I could show different realities without being too explicit or non-explicit about it. Then I tried something new, I used myself as a presenter of different narratives between the Cruise ships. It was the first time to experiment with using both an observational mode and using myself as a physical narrator. Next to this I also found a Playmobil ship on a second hand internet site, and used it to create another simplification, characterization of a cruise ship. These different elements came together in the ‘final’ film and to me it was mostly a try out of putting together methodologies that I never used in that way. Reflecting on my self-directed research of the first two semesters I see that it is building on my personal practice a lot. I work as a video journalist and for my first try out I couldn’t avoid interviewing people. Also, the observational mode in the drafts I made or in the cruise ship film felt very much in line with previous works. Thematically I have noticed in the eye film and in other projects that I am looking for clashes, juxtapositions, paradoxes, unintended poetics in day to day life. However, the seminar of Cihad Caner really confronted me and challenged me to look at how to incorporate, adjust or add other or new angles in my working method. A personal urgency to work with socially engaged stories was challenged by Cihad’s seminar because I was left with a general question. How can I make a social impact by making art or to what extent is that possible?

Interview

Toto is slightly unclear, but has several trajectories that he is willing to explore. First looking at the eye research project, he realized it revealed he is engaging with social topics in his work. In his personal artistic practice, he is looking how to abstract these stories. He is wondering how the stories he tells will have an impact. A talk with Cihad allowed him to become more critical, and make works in relation with a subject. Looking ahead, he is also feeling he wants to work with something completely different than social things, but looking at city- scape and sound, and how to find rhythm in daily life. Showing this through sound and visuals. He wants to learn more about working with sound, and sound editing. He has an idea of making a fiction project to try and work with the concept of magic-realism - wanting to explore further on the idea where reality and fantasies start to intersect, with examples in the films of La Dolce, that are interesting to look at the verge of fiction and non-fiction. `perhaps making a short 5-minute film with actors. Toto usually works in non-fiction in his self-directed work, so he wants to experiment with the shaping abilities of fiction. Thinking about directing beforehand, as opposed to directing afterward. Toto is interested in looking at the overflow of documentaries, and is wondering if they have the power for change. He is wondering about the effect of images on people. Perhaps thinking it could be better to fictionalize his work, allowing him to hone in on particular aspects he notices in daily life, looking at the paradoxes which reveal within his work. He has an interest to explore in a more handcrafted way of telling a story, such as constructing sets. He thinks that by abstracting concepts and putting them in a new context, he can put certain topics under the microscope, allowing viewers to see things that usually go unnoticed. Working with audio, he is thinking about capturing sounds that seem out of context.