Bringing into focus some ideas for Project 4

As we near the end of Semester 2, the final project brief looms overhead, ever pressing and yet not quite delineated.

Today’s studio class was spent brainstorming and throwing around our individual fixations with the goal of uniting disparate ideas under some common theme – both conceptually or aesthetically.

As everyone went around the table explaining their concepts, a few common threads of thought emerged. These included: the human body, time passing, seasonal transitions, colours, lines, and trains. Hearing everyone’s varied responses to both Signal and its projection properties was quite insightful, as I noticed my own tendencies to be drawn towards organic subject matter (textures of hair, macros of the body) in comparison to more structured narratives.

Additionally, over the course of this semester I’ve found myself increasingly (if not, to borrow Robbie’s term ‘obsessively’) returning to the idea of the human body as an allegory for landscapes (vice versa), and the notion of evocative installations. In particular, the ability of an artwork (through audio and visual stimulation) to provoke incongruous feelings in audiences: disgust at the common, repulsion at intimacy, comfort in the grotesque, and so forth.

Hence, in considering these emotional tensions I am pulled towards creating short video works of hands engaging in destruction or decay.

Rotting fruits, dirt, insects, pomegranate pulp being caught under fingernails. These are vignettes which keep surfacing in my mind. I’m also drawn to the chiaroscuro aesthetics of contemporary video / photographic artists like Bill Viola, Chris Cunningham, and Bill Henson. While I feel my ideas are quite simplistic currently, I have a strong pull towards particular themes of publicising the grotesque, and projecting uncomfortable sequences involving the human body, and the usage and manipulation of body language to bring about disconnect and miscommunication.