Jerry Uelsmann

I’ve discovered randomly American photographer Jerry Uelsmann. Active from the 1960s till today, he creates photomontages by overprinting several negatives in the darkroom using up to a dozen enlargers simultaneously, long before digital cameras and Photoshop made such montages much quicker and easier.

Below are my favourite pictures, the ones that look similar to Surrealists photomontages by Dora Maar or paintings by Paul Delvaux. I’ve researched interviews but he does not comment on a particular interest for houses.

An idea of home – The Photographer’s gallery

I’ve had 2 pictures selected for The Photographer’s Gallery “An idea of home” public call on flickr, responding to Jim Goldberg’s Open See exhibition about the experience of migrants.

One shows a ghost house with lots of booze, the other a glimpse of my grandma’s taste in interior design and an experience of time travel in the 50s …

http://photonet.org.uk/anideaofhome (pics at page 7 and 13)

Just before, I was listening to Alan Ball’s commentaries about the title sequence of his new TV series “True Blood”. The sequence, made by the agency Digital Kitchen who already made the beautiful credits for “6 feet under”, shows short clips taken from the daily life of the south of the USA, in particular scenes of “religious fervor” and going out to the bar to get drunk (and have sex). Alan Ball said that these 2 actions, usually considered opposed from a moral point of view, are in facts 2 manifestations of human desire to escape and transcend daily life. His opinion reminded me of how paraphernalia of catholicism and alcoholism happily coexist in the ghost houses I’ve explored in Ireland. And maybe it echoes too in the uncanny way in which my grandma placed some Church blessed palm (boxtree really) twigs alongside a orange plastic toy depicting a little boy that pisses …

A filmmaker’s guide to freaking out your audience – Part 2: camera placement and editing

Gilles Deleuze believes that our brain has two modes of functionning: action and reflexion, and that these 2 modes are mirrored in cinema. He calls them “movement image” and “time image”.

“Movement image” is the most traditional in cinema: the camera follows a character and the point of view changes in response the character’s actions. “Movement image” follows the principle of action-reaction and abides to rationality: the camera reacts to the character’s action in a way that is predictable, so that the audience knows what to expect. For example, somebody walks out of a room. When this person crosses the door threshold, the camera stops filming towards the inside of the room (now empty) and instead films the character now walking outside.

In “time image”, the length of the shots is not determined by the action taking place. Deleuze calls this “a purely optical and sonorous situation”. For example, a long shot on 2 characters fishing and not talking. Since nothing is said, the only information to be gathered by the viewer is that the characters are fishing, and this would require only a very short sequence to be communicated. The time after which the shot ends is arbitrary since no specific action by the characters cause the shot to end, and, if the shot had continued longer, nothing more would have happened (the characters would still be fishing in silent). In “image time”, the next shot is also unrelated to the previous one. For example, a shot of one of the characters going on an undescript errand in town. The new action the character is doing is not caused by the previous action (fishing) and therefore the viewer is unable to determine when it is taking place compared to the first one. The errand could take place just after, long after or even in the past compared to the fishing.

Deleuze place the apparition of the “time image” in cinema after the second world war. He thinks that the war was such a complex and unprecedented events that is escaped people’s understanding, and therefore shattered their ability to plan rational actions responding to events. The traumatic event, too big for human understanding, broke the chain of action-reaction. Unsettled, the characters of a time image find themselves unable or unwilling to act. Instead, they become witnesses of “a pure moment of time”.

Because the logical chronology of actions is broken by the “time image”, Deleuze believes that “the cinema image is not in the present”. Rather, cinema images show different layers of memories whose meanings sometimes converge towards the present.

Just as human beings constantly alternate between action and reflexion, it is possible to mix “movement images” and “time images”. Let’s take the same example of a man going out of a room. The camera shows him walking out but rather than cutting just after he crosses the threshold, it keeps showing the empty room for a bit before switching to the man outside. This confuses the viewer: why is the camera still showing the empty room ? The viewer starts wondering whether there is something in the room that he is not noticing or understanding. Is there a hidden threat in the room ? The camera follows follows the man going out and cut shortly after he is gone so there is action-reaction, but is perverted by the unexplained pause to look at the empty room: the timing of the reaction is not correct. Additionally, when the camera stops showing the empty room, it may not show the man now outside, but switch to something completely different. In that case, not only is the timing of the reaction wrong, but the reaction itself is not logical. The presence of action reaction but the absence of correct timing and/or logical sequences of events unsettle the viewer: it gives them the feeling that they are confronted with a sequence of events whose logic they cannot understand. Therefore, this sequence of events is perceived as threatening however ordinary each individual event might be. This process is often used by David Lynch: a noise or flash suggesting sudden action is shown, then an empty room is shown so that the viewer wonders “could the sudden event be happening right now behind my back ?” Often also, a phone is shown ringing and nobody picks it up. Later in the film, someone may be shown picking up the same phone up, so that the chronology of all events shown in between the 2 shots involving the phone become unclear. Or, if someone picks the phone up straight away, the camera stays on the phone and does not show the person apart from a glimpse of their hand.

A filmmaker’s guide to freaking out your audience – Part 1: sound design

During research, I randomly found out theories concerned with creating a sense of disquiet in the viewer of moving image.

At Cambridge Film Festival, I saw the film Cuckoo about a young woman, Polly, suffering from auditory hallucinations (or not ?) in her flat, a film which reminded me a lot of Polanski’s Repulsion. The director commented on how the sound design was made to cause the viewer to physically experience the same hallucinations as Polly, and share the ensuing distress. The key to that was to disconnect the sound from the visual, so as to cause sensory and space confusion in the viewer. In traditional film sound design, foley effects are made to match what is being shown on the images. The two sources of information (visual and auditory) are coherent and support each other, so that the viewer can feel confident about understanding the information. One could almost say that the information is “surdetermined” since the same concept is presented in several ways (i.e. the image of somebody putting a glass on a table and the sound the glass makes when it touches the surface). If you drop the surdetermination, the viewer starts to be confused, feels unable to trust their senses and starts experimenting anxiety. The Cuckoo team did that in different ways. Polly hears sounds that are coming from out of the image field and not easily identifiable, for example because they are muffled or intermittent. Although they come from outside her flat, these sounds are quite loud so as to suggest an invisible presence in her flat. Comparatively, the sounds from her flat seem low, which cause a feeling of space distortion: one does not know anymore what is far or near, foreign or familiar. These sounds have no obvious directionality, so Polly feels lost. Some of the sounds from her flat are also too loud, for example a dripping tap. The director explained that the idea came from a real life experience of his wife, who started hearing specific sounds much louder when she was pregnant. Some of these sounds were imperceptible to other people.

I thought of it and it reminded me of a family dinner scene in “Las Meninas” (Ihor Podolchak, 2008) where the sound of a fork on a plate gets more and more intrusive as the family atmosphere gets more and more oppressing. In Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky also extensively used the disconnection between sound and images in order to blur the line between reality and illusion. The sound could be either completely disconnected to the images (one hears things without ever seeing the visual equivalent, like in Polly’s hallucinations) or, more perversely, the sound could be related to the images but wrongly synchronised in time (a very slow visual transition accompanied by a harsh sound transition). This last technique gives the illusion of time-space distortion, which may or may not be due to the mysterious events that created the Zone.

Project Proposal (final version)

Working title

Outer space/inner worlds : borders, invasions, warfare tactics.

Aims and objectives

I am interested in exploring the various dynamics, of both creation and aggression, between the outer world and the individual’s inner world. I will use photography and video, media ironically considered documentary and objective, to capture and reproduce the way our mind reacts to and reinvents reality and our surroundings.

The following are different angles under which to explore this problematic:

1) visually document the way imagination reinvents physical space.

2) exploring the possibilities of moving image to make dreams/inner worlds “real” and share them with others. Especially, immersive video installations may create a more “real” feelings than images projected on a screen. I hope this may make it possible to engage in a deeper level of communication with the audience.

3) researching the importance of the house and more generally private space in the development of a person’s individuality, and how a house may become a physical projection of its occupier’s inner world.

4) researching the way individuals may project their anxieties onto the physical space.

5) researching tactics employed by authorities to control individuals’ thoughts and behaviours by manipulating the private space available to them. For example, madness as a “political illness” used to make undesirable people disappear.

6) researching coping tactics developed by individuals in response to this attempted control. This may take the form of retreating to one’s inner world, or reclaiming public space.

Context

Historical

My main inspiration is Surrealism and its aim to reconcile the accepted reality with the individual’s imagination, in order to reach a superior reality(“surreality”), encompassing more levels of perception. In particular: dreamscapes (Dorothea Tanning, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst), wandering and Aragon’s concept of “metaphysics of space”, simulation of madness.

Visionary artists (William Blake) and their aim to physically present a self contained imaginary world.

Dada and its critic of the absurdity of modern life.

German expressionist cinema, and its interest in madness.

Urban exploration and psychogeography within situationnism and beyond.

Cinema that blurs the line between a character’s imagined vision and “real events” (Ingmar Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf”, “Persona”, “Though a glass darkly” , Polanski’s “Repulsion”, Resnais’ “Last year in Marienbad” etc …)

Contemporary

Contemporary art aiming to reclaim/subvert public space, such as Simon Poulter’s projections on government buildings and art galleries (http://www.artcritic.co.uk/).

Modern psychogeographers such as Iain Sinclair.

Filmmakers: David Lynch, Ihor Podolchak.

Video Artist Markus Schinwald.

Urban exploration subculture.

“Outsider” Art, as it offers a representation of the maker’s mind “unfiltered” by the current conventions of established art.

Critical theory

I want to make Art that can be enjoyed on different levels and is open to interpretation. I hope the audience will be able to relate my work to their own concerns and experiences, rewrite their own version it, and make it part of their inner worlds. This attitude is shared, among others, by Paul Valéry who wrote “Once the work has been published, the author’s interpretation of it is no more valuable than any other by anyone else” and by David Lynch who consistently refuses to explain his movies and said “one thing can be different for different people […] depending on where [they] are”. This attitude may be related to Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relationnal Aesthetics, with the reserve that I do not involve the audience in the physical production of the actual piece, but rather in the collective elaboration of its meaning. As Lautréamont once said “Poetry will be made by all, not by one.”

The practical consequence is that I will not provide textual explanation of “what a piece is about”. When a commentary is required within the context of academia, I will explain how the original idea came to me and evolved: in fact, I will explain how the piece relates to my own inner world, leaving the audience free to relate it to their own inner world in any other way they judge appropriate.

This attitude relates to the Surrealists’ view that Art should refer to “Life”, as opposed to Art forming a self contained world/language where pieces refer to each others via a set of increasingly obscure references only understandable by the Initiated. In the postmodern era, contemporary art tends to become increasingly self referential, while in cinema, as pointed out by Michael Richardson, the French “Nouvelle Vague” “instituted a sensibility that exalted film above life”, a language where films relate “not [to] lived experience but [to] other films”, an attitude still strong in contemporary cinema via directors like Tarantino. I am not advocating a dumbing down of Art in the attempt to make it “artificially accessible” (such as Social realism, or art with an “educational purpose”), nor am I saying that it is not acceptable to reference others’ artworks within one’s own. Obviously, work made by others is a very important part of an artist’s world. Rather, I am saying that references to other work should stem from the desire to share the appreciation of it with the audience. They should be an invitation to discover it and make it part of their inner world, rather than prerequisite knowledge necessary to the understanding of one’s own work. To borrow André Breton’s words, references “as a form of love” rather than as a tool for exclusion.

Parallel theory

Freud (in particular research on dream images and the concept of the Uncanny).

Michel Foucault, especially his concept of “institution disciplinaire” (“disciplinary institution”) and “normalization”. Antipsychiatry movement.

Interdisplinary Psychology/Architecture research into perception of space by individuals, especially Anthony Vidler’s research about anxiety, phobias and the Uncanny in the built environment.

Generative Theory

Automatism: use of found unstaged compositions and dream visions without attempting to interpret them and without modifying them artificially in order to make them fit a predefined concept.

Dérive: exploration of a place guided by strategic reactions to the characteristics of this place.

Methodology

I continuously gather 2 types of raw material:

1) I collect photographs and video footage from derelict places, and more generally strange “uncanny” places. I try to enter these places without preconceptions, let them tell me their story and react to them rather then impose a model on them that would taint my perception of them (outer space).
2) I keep a record of my own dreams with a visionary content and/or containing interesting images (inner world).

I then look for intersections between “outer space” and “inner world” that can be materialised into an artwork. This is where the theoretical research come into play. By studying theoretical research (in psychology, philosophy, architecture), I gain better understanding of my own subconscious and am more able to identify the various ways I relate to the “outer world”. By studying both theoretical research and artworks by others, I gain better understanding of how other individuals relate to the “outer world”. I can use this knowledge to make artworks that will “resonate” with the audience and create connections between their own inner world and mine using images as an interface.

There are various ways in which “outer space” and “inner world” may interplay within an artwork:

1) for some pieces, the collected images (after processing and editing) are the artwork in itself. The final piece presents the self contained world of the images, that aims to infect the inner world of the viewer.

2) for other pieces, gathered images strike a chord and cause an idea association with a part of my inner world. I then need to create images from scratch to make a physical representation of my inner world and mix them in with the outside images. This type of piece shows the ambiguous, fluctuating border where the outer world invades the inner world as the same time as the inner world reinvents the outer world, so that the line between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred and possibly eventually dissolves.

3) for other pieces, I aim to make real an inner vision (i.e. dream). I either go out and find real things that fit the vision or, if they don’t exist, I create artificial images from scratch.
The final piece reflects how my inner world invades the outer world, claims to be more real than it, and possibly aims to invade the audience’s inner world as well.

In all cases, the physical presentation of the images (for example processing, editing, immersive installations, design of a soundtrack to go with the images) is designed so as to facilitate the viewer’s entering the world of the images.

Outcome

Photographs (as prints and online).
Standalone videos.
Video installations.
Site specific interventions showing videos outside of a gallery context.

Work plan

Continuously: gather material (photographs, video footage, record of visionary dreams). Read books and conduct the theoretical research.

1) sort and edit the gathered video footage. Make a rough edit of the “documentary” part of the videos.
2) Conceptualise and film the “inner world” part of the video. Edit it in with the documentary part to make standalone videos.
3) Investigate alternative ways of presenting videos (immersive installations and screenings outside of a gallery context). Especially consider technical feasibility, legal implications and cost issues. Produce video installations and organise screenings as feasible.
4) Make the photographs and videos available online, along with a presentation of the project, so as to reach a audience outside the gallery space. Investigate a good compromise between interesting presentation and ease of use for non technical expert users.

Possibly: investigate new ways to use the photographs. For the moment I am only planning on using them as standalone photographs, but I do not discount the possibility to use them differently should an idea arise.

Project proposal draft 2

Working title

Outer space/inner worlds : borders, invasions, warfare tactics.

Aims (1 or 2) + objectives (6)

Research the way our subconscious reinvents reality and our surroundings. the various dynamics between the outer world and the individual’s inner worlds.
– the subjective perception of things around us. using photography and video, media ironically considered documentary and objective
– the surrealists said cinema was like dream made physical. explore the possibilities of video to make dreams/inner worlds (mine or from imagined characters) “real” and share them with others. Especially immersive video installations can create more “real” feelings than just video on a screen. explore than as way to engage in a deeper level of communication with the audience.
– how private space is a physical projection of the occupier’s inner world (both liberating and oppressing projections)
– the house and more generally private space and its importance for the intellectual freedom of individuals
– as a consequence, tactics of controlling individuals’minds by manipulating the private space available to them. madness/sanity border questioned from an “external” viewpoint: i.e. undesirable but “sane” people locked up to get rid of them (political illness)
– coping tactics developed by individuals in response to that. madness/sanity border question from a more internal viewpoint: i.e. alienation slowly becoming madness, where exactly is the border ? “mental escape” (fugues) to avoid unpleasant things.

Context

Historical

My main inspiration is Surrealism and its aim to reconcile the accepted reality with the individual’s imagination, in order to reach a superior reality(“surreality”), encompassing more levels of perception. In particular: dreamscapes (Dorothea Tanning, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst), wandering and “metaphysics of space”, simulation of madness.
Visionary artist both recognised (William Blake) and “outsiders”.
Dada and its critic of the absurdity of modern life.
German expressionist cinema, and its interest in madness
Urban exploration and psychogeography within situationnism and beyond.
Cinema that blurs the line between a character’s imagined vision and “real events” (Ingmar Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf”, “Persona”, “Though a glass darkly” , Polanski’s “Repulsion”, Resnais’ “Last year in Marienbad” etc …)

Contemporary

Contemporary art aiming to reclaim public space, such as Simon Poulter’s projections on the Houses of Parliaments and the White Cube gallery.
Modern psychogeographers such as Iain Sinclair.
Filmmakers: David Lynch, Ihor Podolchak.
Video Artist Markus Schinwald.
Urban exploration subculture.

Critical theory

I want to make Art that is open to be enjoyed on different levels, and does not require knowledge of other Art or specificic cultural references to be appreciated. The key to that is the surrealist concern that Art refers to “Life” not just previously made art, so that a person without cultural reference can enjoy the piece relating to their life experience. Obviously, because previously made art is a very important part of an artist’s own life, the piece will be influenced by various art references. This is OK as long as it is just an innocent reflection of the artist’s love for previous art, not a way of “testing” the cultural knowledge of the audience.

Parallel theory

Freud (in particular research on dream images and the concept of the Uncanny).

Michel Foucault, especially his concept of “institution disciplinaire” (“disciplinary institution”). Antipsychiatry movement.

Interdisplinary Psychology/Architecture research into perception of space by individuals, especially Anthony Vidler’s research about anxiety, phobias and the Uncanny in the built environment.

Generative Theory

Automatism: use of found unstaged compositions and dream visions without attempting to interpret them and without modifying them artificially in order to make them fit a predefined concept.

Dérive: exploration of a place guided by strategic reactions to the characteristics of this place.

Methodology

? collect photographs and footage from derelict places, and more generally strange places (Freud’s the uncanny)
1) for some pieces, these collected images (after processing and editing) are the artwork in itself
2) for other pieces, they cause an idea association in me and I need to create “artificial images” (from scratch) to make a physical representation, and edit them in
3) for other pieces I have an inner vision (i.e. dream) and I’m aiming to make it real. so I either go out and find real things that fit it, ot if they don’t exist, I create images from scratch
maybe it is 1) the outside invading the inside 3) the inside invading the outside 2) the time/place where they clash, where the border is. I’m not sure about this yet

Outcome

Photographs
Videos
Immersive video installations.

Work plan

DadaDérive

Dérive in Blainville Crevon, birthplace of Marcel Duchamp, in search of oddities.

DadaDérive slideshow

Does anybody know why it does not work to copy the html to embed a flicker slideshow on wordpress ? wordpress just deletes the html (while in html edit mode …)

Also does anybody know which photo website geotags on google maps ? I have seen geotagged pictures while looking at maps on google but flickr only geotags via yahoo maps (obviously it’s the same company).

Thank you !

“Cellar Door”

Pictures taken from my grandmother’s cellar door. The title refers to the film “Donnie Darko” where Drew Barrymore’s character explains that “cellar door” is the most beautifully sounding phrase in the english language.

Cellar Door 1

Cellar Door 2

New Hall College “guided exploration”

There is a “Festival of ideas” celebrating the 800th birthday of Cambridge University. Tonight, I went to a performance art/guided tour of New Hall College organised by performance artist and architect collective Urban collaboratory. New Hall College, the last of the Cambridge Female-only Colleges, was built in 1964 in a modernist style.

The performance was some sort of guided tour led by the 2 artists. They had interviewed people living and/or working in the college (students, fellows, cleaners, caterers, gardeners) and stopped at various places to read out quotations from these interviews, mostly focusing on the daily routines of the College’s occupiers and the way they used the space. They also read out excerpts from the architectural review published in 1964 when the College was built.

The key concepts behind the 2 artists’ interpretation of the space were feminity and futurism. The building is built in a modernist 1960’s style, very epurated, completely white (or rather beige in practice, but the architect’s concept was about whiteness …) and famous for its dome. The virginal whiteness and the female shape of the Dome referred, for the 2 artists, to a male architect’s interpretation of what an all-female dwelling should look like. The white dome also reminded them of 1960’s science fiction movies and chosen excerpts from such films were shown in the college dining room. Indeed, 1960’s science ficition movies imagined future architecture to look very much like modernist 1960’s buildings, and several white domes were shown, one of them supposedly on a human-inhabited Moon ! These films also had a vision of the future where male and female roles were blurred or even reversed, possibly echoing the anxieties of the New Hall architect (or not …)

I was very impressed by the stairs leading up to the famous dome. I felt like a in lighthouse.

New Hall College Stairs (Cambridge)

Project Proposal draft 1

I am writing the first draft of the project proposal for tomorrow’s chat and will update the “latest draft” page, as well as in this post so a record of successive drafts is kept.

Two interesting research discoveries (need more research in books, as little about it online):

– the surrealist concept of “Métaphysique des lieux” (Metaphysics of places). Apparently originating from Louis Aragon’s novel “Le Paysan de Paris” (The Paris Peasant). It is the reinterpretation of space using imagination. From various critics, the novel highlights the Surrealists’ ambivalence towards the city, an attitude that distinguish them from other modernist movements such as Futurism or Constructivism who worshipped everything modern (cities and technology). It seems there are more complex things to be dug up than the “love for Paris” one usually reads about in introductions to Surrealism. It is definitely a concept I need to research as it relates to my interest in exploring backward and rural places. I only have second hand comments about the book, so cannot write much about it yet. “Paris Peasant” seems to be the key text about ambivalence towards cities, and possibly some bits from Breton’s “Nadja” in a lesser measure.

– In 1930, André Breton and Paul Eluard wrote a collaborative poem “L’immaculée Conception” (Immaculate Conception). They had studied various psychiatric textbooks and real writings from mentally ill people, and attempted to put themselves in a state of “simulated madness” before using automatic writing to produce texts similar to the ones written by real patients. They wrote a couple of texts simulating various mental conditions. The goal of the experiment was to prove the line was very thin between the “normal” and “insane” mind, and the possibility of madness was present in any mind. I feel this experiment relates to my two installation ideas: the “autistic box” simulating the experience of a self-sufficient inner world, and the installation simulating the feeling of being lost in order to create disquiet in the viewer.

************************************************************************

I was not yet able to write a proper proposal. I need to read more things in order to have a clearer idea. What I’ve done is reread everything I’ve written in this blog (and on random notes), isolate what I think are the most importance concepts, and sort them in order to fill the different sections of the project proposal. I did not try to write an organised text at this point. I was not able to find anything for paralell theory, and did not write anything for methodology. I think I am not sure what should be in methodology: it seemed like a mix of “generative theory” and outcome to me.

Working title

Outer space/inner worlds : borders, invasions, warfare tactics.

Aims (1 or 2) + objectives (6)

Research the way our subconscious reinvents reality and our surroundings. the various dynamics between the outer world and the individual’s inner worlds.
– the subjective perception of things around us. using photography and video, media ironically considered documentary and objective
– the surrealists said cinema was like dream made physical. explore the possibilities of video to make dreams/inner worlds (mine or from imagined characters) “real” and share them with others. Especially immersive video installations can create more “real” feelings than just video on a screen. explore than as way to engage in a deeper level of communication with the audience.
– how private space is a physical projection of the occupier’s inner world (both liberating and oppressing projections)
– the house and more generally private space and its importance for the intellectual freedom of individuals
– as a consequence, tactics of controlling individuals’minds by manipulating the private space available to them. madness/sanity border questioned from an “external” viewpoint: i.e. undesirable but “sane” people locked up to get rid of them (political illness)
– coping tactics developed by individuals in response to that. madness/sanity border question from a more internal viewpoint: i.e. alienation slowly becoming madness, where exactly is the border ? “mental escape” (fugues) to avoid unpleasant things.

Context

Historical

Above all Surrealism and its aim to reconcile the accepted reality with the individual’s imagination, in order to reach a superior reality, encompassing more levels of perception
especially: dreamscape paintings, wandering and metaphysics of space, simulation of madness.
19th century visionaries such as Blake
Dada and its critic of the absurdity of modern life
German expressionist cinema, and its interest in madness
“Antipsychiatry” philosophers
Urban exploration and psychogeography within situationnism and beyond
Cinema exploring consciousness (Lynch, Bergman, Polanski etc …)

Contemporary

Contemporary art aiming to reclaim public space, it is usually performance art. For example: it is forbidden to take photographs in malls, and some outdoor city centre streets are sold for private use because they mostly contain shops. Simon Pulter’s projections on the Houses of Parliaments and the white cube gallery.
Modern psychogeographers such as Iain Sinclair.
David Lynch

Critical theory

The surrealist concern of Art not being made exclusively for the cultural elite to discuss it between themselves, but open to everyone. This has nothing to do with paternalist attitude of making “simple” art (such as social realism) , but making Art that is open to be enjoyed on different levels. The key to that is that Art refers to “Life” (Ado Kyrou against the “Auteur” cinema) not just previously made art, so that a person without cultural reference can enjoy the piece relating to their life experience. Obviously, because previously made art is a very important part of an artist’s own life, the piece will be influenced by various art references. This is OK as long as it is just an innocent reflection of the artist’s love for previous art, not a way of “testing” the cultural knowledge of the audience.

The same way, politics are part of life, so most artworks will have some political connotations to them. If the artist is concerned with a political issue, they will naturally express it in their Art. But a piece should not be made solely to advertise a political idea. Art is not propaganda or advertising. Art should engage the audience into thinking for themselves, not tell them what to think.

Parallel theory
Maybe contemporary, much more moderate versions of antipsychiatry sush as the people who criticise the hegemony of cognitive behavioural therapy in contemporary mental health systems ?

Generative Theory

Automatism:
-unstaged compositions
-used of pictures seen in dreams/visions without attempting to find out what they “mean” and without modifying them artificially in order to make them fit a “model”.

Methodology

collect photographs and footage from derelict places, and more generally strange places (Freud’s the uncanny)
1) for some pieces, these collected images (after processing and editing) are the artwork in itself
2) for other pieces, they cause an idea association in me and I need to create “artificial images” (from scratch) to make a physical representation, and edit them in
3) for other pieces I have an inner vision (i.e. dream) and I’m aiming to make it real. so I either go out and find real things that fit it, ot if they don’t exist, I create images from scratch
maybe it is 1) the outside invading the inside 3) the inside invading the outside 2) the time/place where they clash, where the border is. I’m not sure about this yet

Outcome

Photographs
Videos
Immersive video installations.

Work plan

?