skimming, the start, new work

she is an amazing old bird my granny and as it turns out she took quite a number of photographs. when she moved house last year she passed on a big bag of slides. i went through them and picked out some images to work with. there were alot of touristy ones, alot of religious ones; i chose the images which gave me a jump, or an echo of something else.

of course, being me, this was all done on an intuitive level but i think each image led me to a question. or several. it has got me thinking about the photograph as a cipher; that within each image there are numerous codes to be understood, or not understood. because i still don't feel comfortable with photographic prints any larger than 7 x 5 i am continuing to use photography in a multi-disciplinary way; as a tool for writing, for ways of getting into ideas for moving image, attempting to get away from the photograph as image only, and away from its association with painting (in terms of it's material value, not in terms of image making in general) 

at the same time that i was looking through my granny's slides i was cataloging all the video that i made during my master study, in particular re-visiting some experiments where i played with a moving object over the top of a still image, there is a strange tension which i noticed in these works, a combination of a kind of giddy looseness with a static view, which is a result i think of the combination, within the frame, of still and moving image. so it became my starting point to explore more this tension between still and moving image, which has lead me first of all to the images above, which are a combination of slides with layers of notes, texts and drawings lifted from my collection of sketchbooks. i want to work on some videos using the slides as a background, with me playing with objects moving over the top. these works are an interim phase i think, they give me a key to the sort of object forms i could use, and i like the idea of a drawn element appearing within the time-frame at certain points.

i have been thinking about the activities i am doing; lifting. transferring, skimming. and to what extent does a photograph skim by it's nature, both conceptually and materially.

don't look away.

wordslips part 1

 

real life

don't look away.

news from the north

after quite a bit of time without a studio space and wondering where the hell in the world to put myself for a while whilst i work out what to do next, and develop some studio work, i am writing from my new studio, in Edinburgh, Scotland. I grew up in Edinburgh from the age of 8 so it is familiar to me, but quite alot has changed (for the better) and quite alot has stayed the same (for the worse) - for instance - there are still so many homeless people on the city streets; it doesn't matter to me whether these people are genuinely homeless or not (which is an argument people always give), what matters is that in a capital city there are so many people sitting out in the cold needing money and shelter.

my new studio is with the nice folk at Rhubaba

http://www.rhubaba.org/

follow the link to see the group and the kinds of things happening here. it is great to have found a space where there are people doing interesting things. i haven't got settled here just yet, but im hoping it won't take long to turn the studio into a dinda zone once i've picked up some of my (many) things.

i went to an seminar / talk yesterday at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh called Work/Table: Thinking Through Making (in reference to the current exhibition by Massimo Bartolini.)

http://fruitmarket.co.uk/exhibitions/current/

there were a few of points of discussion which i found really interesting:
 - incidents/accidents/events - the idea of there being different modalities of participation and engagement (in a way, both for the artist and the audience).
- objects as/and language  - the idea of objects having an implicit or explicit voice; and the lexicology of an artists' objects.
- play as a transition activity.

more news soon and some pictures of the studio when it's all up and running. once i've got a job (if anyone hears of anything art related around Edinburgh keep me in mind!) and a flat, visits from afar are really welcome, Edinburgh is a little bit like Groningen - there is always something good going on.

don't look away.

this is how she could be

sit here while i comb your hair with my new small kent comb.
(it's so beautiful this comb but really it means nothing)
this is how she could be. she / i. you.
distance between the two.

scruffy essentially, despite attempts at the opposite.
a bag. a book. what intrudes on the everyday; (?) an event, a thought, passive occurences.
balance between active and passive
in relation to she / he / i / you

small piles of ash
traces of act(s)
a fucked up polaroid of a party
it's not dated.

action/in place/object.
hands open a blue purse, the zip is gold.
the hands close it again and open it again.
what is the smile like? what is the laugh like?

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don't look away.

island winter garden

 don't look away.

(british) island notes dec / jan

there is a bright stripe in the pale winter sky.
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this is you, this is your hand. this is the room. here, with this cold dry light, with the melancholic mix of the old accordion. me painted black, my body flaking, eyes shining half white, half black.

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no disruptions to your story, or maybe they are not visible, did you patch them up? mine's all broken up like a plate of spaghetti.

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'By the window of a small, darkened room Father lay on the floor, dressed in white, and looking terribly long. His feet were bare and his toes were strangely splayed out. His gentle fingers, now peacefully resting on his chest, were also distorted, and the black discs of copper coins firmly sealed his once shining eyes. His kind face had darkened and its nastily bared teeth frightened me.'
(first paragraph of My Childhood by Gorky)

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'To edit your life is to save it, for fiction, for yourself. Being identified with your life as others see it may mean that you come eventually to see it that way, too. This can only be a hindrance to memory (and, presumably, to invention).
There is more freedom to be elliptical and to abridge when the memories are not set down in chronological order. The memories - fragments of memories, transformed - emerge as chains of luxuriant notations that wind around, and conceal, the kernel of story.'
(from Where The Stress Falls by Susan Sontag)
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story - i want to work out my way of story building.
metaphors for story structures -  house of cards, jigsaw puzzle, mosiac.

don't look away.

white balloon / ride home / red flag...(glitchy videos)

on the same device (i love the word device) with which i have been taking photographs (discussed just recently on here) i also made the videos below. the quality is terrible but there is something about that which i like. the image is so pixelated in some cases that parts of it actually seem to disappear. i was thinking what it would be like to make a video which erases itself gradually.
don't look away.

p o n d l i f e

   

 

don't look away.

dailies

i want to start a daily image blog but for now here are some recent images which i have taken round my postal delivery route here in Groningen. recently i have been using my mobile phone (which is an old sony which incidentally has a nice lens on it) to take photographs, there is something satisfying about a device as small as a phone being able to handle images taken on the hop. i made some images about the same time last year and notice the autumn dampness which comes out on the photographs, somehow making the colours all the more vivid.

don't look away.

notes / oct

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watching the sky change from turquoise vibrant blue to indigo purple.
is it possible to capture these blues and the light leaking from them slowly?

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'improbable embroideries'
from Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

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forms and formulas...
thinking about film-making and certain actions (for example writing a letter) and how formal things can become, how simple actions contain so many codes, how clear you have to be in the making of the scene. and then thinking about formulas - strategies i suppose for setting up scenes or types of settings and situations. which then comes back in a circle to form (palette, choice of objects, type of action etc). everything becomes very minute, very particular. like painting, nothing should be superfluous (unless on purpose).

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'This is where I learned that sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.'
from Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje

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i like a city that, on a clear night, you can still see the stars

 

reflection - images + words about graduation

it has been some weeks now since i graduated with an MFA in Fine Art; summer weeks, spent first of all in a kind of exhausted daze and then recovery, helped along by warm sunshine and night and day swims in Paterswoldesmeer (a beautiful lake 20 minutes bike ride from the city centre here in Groningen). looking back now at the work i made for the final exam and the graduating exhibition, and starting to find ways to go forward with my work.

the combines project

for those of you who didn't make it to the graduation exhibition some images and instructional video below of the interactive photography project i made called 'the combines project'. i am working on an independent blog for this project and its continuation, but meanwhile here are some images taken of the exhibition, and also some examples of how i am starting to work with the combines generated by the visitors to the exhibition. a total of 141 people took part in the project so i have a good amount of raw material to work with. i had to go to the gallery every day to draw more spaces for the combines, and at the end of the week the wall was almost full. i was pleased to discover that the activity of looking through my images, combining, making choices, and finding a place on the wall was appealing to a exhibition-going audience. talking to some of the participants i realised that people were making up their own stories to go with their choice of imagery. i am interested in developing this aspect of the work. some recent small steps into writing based on looking at the combines makes me want to revisit these images many times with pen in hand to see how the imagery provokes different writing at different times.

link here to review of 'the combines project' and other work by my fellow graduates at the Lost Painters blog. (for english readers - sorry - in dutch)

http://www.lost-painters.nl/eindexamen-expositie-frank-mohr-instituut-groningen/

 

video work

for the exam work i re-edited 2 video works which i have posted on here before but here they are in their new and, i believe, improved format. i spent 7 days in the exhibition space with Sander a very friendly and helpful assistant to build 2 viewing cabins for these videos. i needed to build some human scale back into the exhibition space, (see images for the dimensions i was working with). i really enjoyed the physical challenge and activity of the building work after all the thinking and focus needed for the written thesis.

i couldn't have done any of this without the help of many people, both here in Groningen - teachers, fellow students and ex students - and friends and family from home who gave support. you know who you are. thank you.

don't look away.

when the dust settles......

when the dust settles, everything stays the same, or not entirely

what is the story I want to tell you?

what is the story you would like to hear?

where do we meet in the middle of these two desires?

imagine two people meeting each other on a road, each one travelling alone. the sudden appearance of the other unsettles and heartens at the same time.

what are the first words they say to each other?

why is speech so removed from written language, why do we speak words so carelessly?

worn out clichés and the gentle loss of words.

i never wrote about it before (art and what it means to me). it might become the biggest cliché ever.

like a huge balloon that fills an entire room, o please, will someone please pop it?

stupid inflated ideas about worth.

that this pause lasts a whole lifetime, in parallel, absolute parallel to the life that travels, ticks, grows in the wrinkle on my hand.

void. and blooming crescences

decrescences.

the chatter fades. the slight blips and crackles. ruffles of dust pass by

doors open

doors close

is this the story you wanted to hear?

no?

try again.

imagine two people meet at a busy bus stop, on a busy day, in a busy city, each one travelling alone, together. the bus doors hiss closed. your conversation took me into the following week.

so, I stand, eyes open, ears open. I don’t speak for a week. I don’t sit down for a week. my back grows strong (I’m walking).

my thoughts amass, form a multitude and then disperse politely.

in every situation the small things have power.

we now look to you, storyteller, to be our guide. the reversal of centuries.

the shoes are shod.

the stamps inked.

what about the letter sent but not received?

what thing was missed?

there was a picture in his wallet of a woman he met during the war but never saw again.

then fifty years later he saw her, he took no action.

completely stilled by the realisation of her presence,

but you want to hear some other topic don’t you?

how the horizon starts from the ground up

how meaning evades and permeates every possible surface and how all our ideas are corruptible.

to be more hopeful

I like mystery, I’ll confess.

dinda fass 3 June 2012

even in dim light

i know, i know, it took a while...but here you have a short film made back at the end of January / beginning of February this year. If you have looked at my other films (see previous post Films!) you will see that i have tried here to develop a film of longer duration. i wanted to try placing the central section of the film, which is a moment of concentration and pause, within a longer non-narrative structure. i used some old film footage which i made on a super 8 camera back when i was in my early 20's with some words written recently. on reflection, i think there are a few films (or perhaps ideas for films) within this short work. i'm happiest with the central section, it could be that the rest belongs to another story. the artist and film-maker Raul Ruiz in his book Poetics of Cinema writes:

'Every film is incomplete by nature, since it is made of fragments interrupted by the director's cry of "Cut!" When we attempt to complete these fragments, several different films will answer the call. If we consider each fragment of a film as an airport, then we can accept the idea that multiple films will land there.'

There is a nice story that goes with the filming day. My friend and fellow student, Ikue Konishi, on her way through the park the same evening or maybe the next day, saw the black ballon tied to the tree and took this photograph. She thought it might have been some alcohol inspired adventure and was surprised when she saw the film.

if anyone feels like posting a comment about this post, please do, i'm still reflecting on this work, in particular the relations between short concentrated clips and longer non-narrative duration.

don't look away.

1...2...3

'living coin'

'We have, then, to get beyond the non-event of information to detect that which is resistant or refractory to it within its very process. To find, as it were, the 'living coin' of the event - to play on the way it is 'cashed in' in the sphere of information, as we do with the way the phantasm is 'cashed in' in the economic sphere. To make a literal analysis of the event, as one does of dreams, against all the staging procedures and batteries of commentary which merely neutralize it. Only events set free from the information system (and us with them) generate an enormous power of attraction. They alone are 'real', both unforseeable and predestined, for though there may be nothing to explain them, everything in the imagination is ready to embrace them.'
Jean Baudrillard

fleeting

actions, observations, meetings, infatuations, time, minutes, days. moments in time, the senses alive. the moment you are capturing probably only lasted for a few minutes, or maybe less. seen from a distance they are disjointed, not connected to a life. isolated fragments of light. time rushes on but we hold, and remain framed by something fleeting.

combines (part 2)

rain soaked glows

did you see me? i bought a newspaper to distract myself and you were still there. maybe you were waiting for someone. i can't remember where i was going or coming from. this black night with shallow reach. water flows along the streets, floods thicken, we are all drenched. what will you see when you look everyday? rivers of people push from day to night. looks slick on rain soaked glows. splashes everywhere. back and forth. effervescent lights. activity. a few times i walked home from work, it took hours, but i didn't care. so much noise and dirt and as if the city was a mountain and my home the top.

the domestic / for stories

there has been a pause in posts here while i was busy making new work, writing essays and getting assessed for my course. i have made a new film which i will post very soon i promise, but meanwhile here are some photographs of domestic situations. i made a folder of domestic images a few weeks back and have been thinking about them for some time. i took them in various places in the last 18 months not just in my own immediate environment. i'm interested in how stories can develop while looking at photographs, some more than others of course. if there are any images which spark a story in your mind, or a fragment of a story, i would like to hear it. (please feel invited to use the comment section below)

don't look away.

 

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