Reading, Writing and Research

Methods

What How Why

Exercise 29/09/21 note to self: Factual description for the imaginary sister ORIGINAL

Behold , 9 min 2017

Behold is a short experimental film that explores notions of voyeurism through a lens of a mysterious observer. The film is set in the 21st century, in a high building next to a park, where casual occurrences take place on an ordinary day. The zoomed-in and out view reveals what is happening in the neighbourhood and the park below, not so much from a surveillance perspective, but more from a personal point of view, it provides a quiet and curious environment. Hence the film explores a notion of scopophilia, S. Freud's theory about the (sexual) pleasure of looking at others. Firstly, the main inspiration to investigate the act of looking started by the accidental eye contacts with strangers encountered on the streets. To capture that moment I went on the streets with my cam corder, which ended up in reckless stalking sessions. By doing that I wanted to deconstruct voyeurism, explore the apparatus of the camera and my position as a maker. This empirical approach was later followed by literature research which included the male gaze theory by L. Mulvey and Freud. Through writing and practical experimentation I developed a particular film form which blends reality and fiction: a documentary based reproduction, a reenactment with a touch of fictive reality play. As individuals we are pre-programmed to be curious beings, and the explorations of these psychological human behaviours play an important role in this work. This particular investigation started from a fascination for strangers, the unknown people briefly met. As well as, often being a stranger myself, inhabiting different places. I believe that each individual is first and foremost a stranger to one another, and only later we can count bonds of togetherness and occurring alienations. These relations fascinate me as much as the act of looking, witnessing, beholding the image, ‘’stealing ‘the scene with your eyes’’. Try sitting by the window for half a day and you will notice a lot of absurd human behaviour too, as we take our behaviours for granted.

SMOKE MACHINE, video loop installation 1.31min

Smoke Machine is a collaborative video installation by Kotryna Buruckaite and Marika Vandekraats commissioned by Franc Gallery for a group exhibition In Over Our Heads. The exhibition was curated around the theme Tension, all brought together through the expressions of the pressures that both hold down and drive them. This concept became a central direction while making this work. The video installation explores our wants, our fears and the need to play as a maker. Once Kotryna and Marika were making smoke bombs with a little luck and an empty head they came up with this idea to vacuum clean the cigarettes in order to make a lot of smoke. This dull idea stayed with them for a while and they used it for the exhibition. The installation shows a vacuum cleaner with a bunch of cigarettes taped on the sucking tube. The sound reveals two beginning artists talking of what we want to, what’s precarious, and how to proceed. The video continuous with vacuuming the cigarettes for a brief moment and the everything turns to smoke. As we talk to our friends, our closest companions we tend to open up and give a permission to ask tricky questions.

1427, short film 5 min

1427 is a short film about a young man and his paranoid dream. The film takes place in a huge American-style student house, where odd things start to occur after the protagonist wakes up from a smoke alarm. Sleepy and confused he walks around the house trying to find the source of fire, but on his way around the house he keeps on meeting the same housemate. The housemate is wearing different clothes and partakes various activities, such as playing pc games and playing a guitar. The alarm in the kitchen is not there, thus the protagonist get even more confused and we follow him into this perplexing journey. First of all, while writing this film we decided to do a one take, just purely for the excitement of complexity of if and the realness. Later looking for a concept we’ve decided to use a common paranoia occurance. People tend to be paranoid about things at times, and in this situation, paranoid about your house burning down. Leaving a gas stove on, iron, your hair straightener. Driven by these experiences we wrote a script with a touch of absurd to it. Inspired by the one take films such as Victoria, Birdman etc we thought it was a great challenge to do it ourselves.

EDITED