If been wanting to try something else with my videos for a while now, and this is the first step. It’s a wobbley one, and I will make a revised version this week, and more in the same vein.
Each clip is taken from the Internet, each source a video I felt was exploitative. I want to strip that aspect out, leaving just a person. I find people difficult; their embellishments, haircuts, fashion, conversation… I need to cull all of this, and this is what the art I like does. It reminds me that they are okay.
My drawing and painting are close again. Seeing what I’m showing in this post is the opposite of satisfying. Their similarity to each other, and the noticing that these shapes I drew as asides are not that anymore, worries me. I feel like I’m relying on them; like they, and their silly ‘tense’ compositions are a style.
I started the school-year with the multi-page drawing up top (finished, it had another piece of white paper collaged on to the left of the one depicted). It felt fresh, and like something of a glossary, or chart of possibilities. Above it (out of the photo) are similar shapes in string, reaching round the top of my studio walls.
They’re up here, now. Filed away. Tomorrow there will be no straight lines.
The start of the second video (Batman (Magic)) makes me smile.
I’ve finished photographing a box of lost property I found in a skip. I’m very much looking forward to making a series of posts about the contents on that near-abandoned other blog of mine.
All from the period that may well come to be known as the pre-bún chả-era.
The colour in the ‘Stairwell’ video is not as amazing as the preview image suggests. It’s the first video I’ve made in something of a monotone, I believe, and I’m quite pleased by the balance of light and dark.
I have, also, been drawing a lot, and unsuccessfully trying to make some music. More on those things later.
Our piece is two videos, both of the last place I lived in, on my last day there. Both were filmed without the other there, or even with knowledge that the other had filmed. So both are natural responses to the leaving of a home, and its transition into someone else’s. They loop, but have different lengths, so there are moments that sit well, and moments that jar, and these change over time.
Andrew David Stapleton’s catalogue essay (archived) makes clear the themes far better than I can, and I will update this post when Blindside’s site has it up.
You can watch Erin’s half of the video on Youtube. One of us will upload the exhibition version once everything’s all up and running. And, now, you can see a 25 minute excerpt of the one we had exhibited, via Erin’s Vimeo account.
Opening night is Thursday, 28th.
In other fine news: I received a globe for my film projector today, and got it all working (after mangling a bit of the Popeye film I ended up with). I’m very, very, much looking forward to uploading all the amateur films I’ve been collecting to Youtube, and Lost Discarded Abandoned.
