April 3rd 2007 11.42 - 12.56
Today, Susie and I head in to see Iain about the video we've just finished, we just want some input from our tutor to see if we're "getting this art malarkey right" (?)
Susie and I have both come through a journey of sorts with this work. Collaborative working at its best. Susie had said today that she hadn't quite "got" the use of collaboration last semester, like it's something she does all the time, "work with people", but there is a subtle difference from working with people and working with someone...Collaboration is about two minds meeting, agreeing, disagreeing, conversing, discussing and taking the "best route forward". As I've said in this blog, Susie and I didn't always agree with decisions, so we'd reason why we should and shouldn't have parts included / excluded. I could easily have been a "technician" to Susie's vision, sure, I shot the shots and edited the work, but it was also with my vision of how the work should look, what feelings the work should convey that changed my mere "technical help" for this work.
I can see a concept in the work, it may be different to Susie's, and this is where I feel slightly removed from the work, as if I've "hijacked" Susie's beautiful vision...but still taken it in a new direction....
It was an interesting discussion based on the work today, I'd pointed out that "create to critique" is fantastic..here we are (Mary included) watching a video of leaves blowing down a beach, and we're talking about swimmers in the Amazon, global warming and bladerunner...It's important to create work, and show it, to have new perspectives arise, discussions from work, can lead you in new directions. This is one of my sticking points, with some of the more intellectual positions in creating "our art" (as a class / individual). I feel we are almost expected to consider EVERY aspect of the work, how can we? I am not everyone, I don't have EVERY perception of a situation...surely we can not think of everything? (not even Picasso would have!) It's almost a trap conceptual art can fall into, if you need to consider EVERYTHING, before creating work, it's impossible to consider EVERYTHING, therefore, you'd never get anything made. Create to Critique - Critique to create.
Some of the technical criticisms Iain "gently" brought up, were that he felt the work too slow, or long. "some" shots were un-necessary. He did think that the mix of moving shots Vs still shots didn't work. We had felt that they were essential transitions from the leaves moving TO The camera vs them moving away...
Some of the action points to come out of the critique were to create a body of "beach videos", to try and push how minimal we can go, perhaps only one shot will do (I do like the towards / away vibe of the video though). Susie is also going to work on a juxtaposition / mirror (in a different context) to the work, her digger in the pond theme would come into play...) All these possibilities...
I'd also linked the work to Spike Jonez's "the woods" short video (click here to see it).
listening to : martyn bates & mick harris - murder ballads
No comments:
Post a Comment