WORD COUNT: 1116

From both a sensual and metaphysical vantage point, to engage with the world predominantly through the eyes is to paradoxically blind oneself from the fullness of it. As humans we are equipped with several unique sensitivities; traditionally these are thought to encompass sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, in addition to other forms of embodied understanding which further enable us to experience phenomena.

As contemporary documentary film makers and media practitioners, we necessarily fixate on two of the sense organs while negating others due to the medium specificity of cinema. Consequently, it is this very constraint which gives documentary its mnemonic quality, as it simultaneously shows and defines the very reality it attempts to capture (Knopf 2008, p.117). Yet to apply this theoretical understanding of cinema as a guiding principle dictating the production of documentary practice is to fall prey to a range of artistic and ethical constraints. Acknowledging this, the following analysis will highlight some of the limitations to an observational mode of documentary filmmaking, and in doing so suggest avenues for more socially and formally complex representations of reality.

Broadly speaking, documentary films have been termed as an art form occurring at the intersection between journalism and traditional art (Nash 2011, p.226). The resulting ethical tension between the former’s position in society as an informative resource and the latter’s arguably amoral aesthetic preoccupations have since led to specific filmmaking trends which attempt to amalgamate and thus, transcend these dichotomous enterprises. One such attempt notably arose in the 1960s in France and came to be known as cinema verite or direct cinema in the United States, a mode of filmmaking which heralded minimal and non-interventionist approaches to representing, or more concisely, observing its subjects (McLane 2013, p. 324). As practitioners, it is perhaps necessary to draw from this historical context in order to note the ethical and aesthetic limitations to unmitigated observation within contemporary filmmaking practice.

Perhaps the first fallacy of direct cinema is the promise of untainted representation. Beginning on a technological level, the philosophical justification for a direct cinema approach to documentary is necessarily undermined by the very tools it relies upon. Born from the technological advancements of synchronous sound and lighter more portable cameras, direct cinema was an attempt to harness the camera’s increased accessibility as a technique enabling the director to become an ‘objective observer’ rather than an affective participant (McLane 2013, p. 326). Yet the practical limitations of this ideal are evident as it relies upon the distraction of its subjects from the camera/man in order to film an event in its unmediated form; a factor which enforces the unsustainable belief that a ‘compelling, truthful re-presentation’ of events is achieved most effectively through neatly intersecting circumstances rather than active filmmaking practices (Zuber, 2009). Consequently, if practitioners were to undertake this approach, arguably film making processes would be unnecessarily burdened by circumstances in which the camera’s intrusive presence spoils any footage of the reality it attempts to lucidly truncate.

Compounding this further, the practice of observing rather than orchestrating or participating in events is an artistic slippery slope as it impinges on our abilities to create, rendering documentarians as passive witnesses. For instance, the adoption of an objective observational mode of filmmaking has been criticised by Stephen Mamber as lacking the necessary cinematic qualities driving audience engagement, resulting in a ‘crisis structure’ of causality (McLane 2013, p.329). Augmenting Mamber’s view, in waiting for interesting events to unfurl, we implicitly promote documentary practice as an increasingly voyeuristic enterprise in which the camera becomes a weapon of viewership, the threat of an audience, an ethically problematic publicization of the private.

Additionally, while there may indeed be room for ethically aligned representations of documentary subjects through cinema technology, the embodied act of filming and recording events as they unfurl creates specific political dynamics between the director and their subjects which verge on exploitative. Arguably there are substantial economic and artistic drives behind the director, two factors which amalgamated form the basis of a complex relationship in which the director depends upon and thrives off of the subject and their lived experiences in order to realise their artistic vision. Therefore, guided by a principle of non-interventionalism, directors objectify the circumstances of their subject and hence disempower their subjects from actively participating in the depictions of their narratives. As suggested by Bill Nichols, making a film about a social problem is not equivalent to solving it (Jones 1989, p.75-79). We might go further yet and claim that making a film about social problems from an observational mode not only artistically irresponsible, but socially exploitative too.

But perhaps the most fallible principle of direct cinema is its assertion that unmitigated production values necessarily results in a less explicitly ideological or scripted film form. Such a point unravels when we acknowledge the social and cultural contexts an audience brings with them to a viewing. Illustrating this point is D.A Pennebaker’s Daybreak Express (1953, USA) a film which explores the chaotic orchestration of dense urban space, specifically, New York.

Structurally Pennebaker’s film is deeply engaging, defined loosely as a marriage between a frenetically paced series of short and abstracted shots and Duke Ellington’s buoyantly indolent soundscapes, Daybreak Express largely suggests an uncontrived, un-staged study of New York. Certainly, it is not attempting to edify us of New York’s various geographic or social landscapes, at least not in any conventionally informative way. Hence, in many ways Pennebaker’s argument is a quiet one; there are no intertitles, voiceovers, or coherent expository or narrative devices to advance a traceable perspective. New York speaks for itself, presented through various deracinated intercuts and observational vignettes. And yet, Daybreak Express in fact, speaks of Pennebaker’s New York, comprised of the various moments and fixations on ephemera which might have caught Pennebaker’s eye during all stages of production, but most importantly, during filming.

Consequently, directed by Pennebaker’s lens and artistic preoccupations and habits our eyes and ears are seduced by fast flowing imagery, rhythmic editing, lively soundscapes, factors which cumulatively spur our engagement. Bringing to the screen our cultural associations of jazz music, Pennebaker’s filmic choices arguably encourage a visceral entanglement leaning more towards the celebratory over a sombre, sustained reflection on the manifold implications of post-industrial revolution urbanity. Recognising this, we might posit that Ellington’s presence in cultural memory as a celebrated musician and our recognition of those thunderous big bang twangs, our reading of Daybreak Express is from the outset, triumphant. Perhaps then, as documentary filmmakers standing on the shoulders of our predecessors, it is perhaps fitting that we engage with more critically the eyes and ears of our audiences and ourselves, in order to foster a more inclusive and ethically aligned filmmaking practice.

Citations:

Jones, DB 1989, ‘Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television/New Challenges for Documentary’, Journal of Film and Video, vol. 41, no. 4, pp.75-79, viewed 30 March 2016, <http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/docview/2167738?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo>.

Knopf, K 2008, Decolonizing the Lens of Power: Indigenous Films in North America, e-book, Editions Rodopi BV, pp. 115-119, viewed 31 March 2016,
<https://books.google.com.au/books?id=dNwFL-5b_9YC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=mnemonic+documentary+film&source=bl&ots=1D45y2TFVk&sig=gWh0Td6GPt75c_4Di60EwUg0InM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTiPnw-fHLAhWCFqYKHcUcCIUQ6AEIQDAH#v=onepage&q=mnemonic%20documentary%20film&f=false>.

McLane BA 2013, New History of Documentary Film, e-book, Bloomsbury Publishing, viewed 31 March 2016,
<http://RMIT.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1190703>.

Nash, K 2011, Documentary-for-the-Other: Relationships, Ethics, and (Observational) Documentary, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, vol. 26, no. 3, pp.224-239, viewed 30 March 2016,
<http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/08900523.2011.581971>.

Zuber, SL 2009, ‘”David Holzman’s Diary”: A Critique of Direct Cinema’, Post Script- Essays in Film and the Humanities, vol. 28, no. 3, pp.31-40, viewed 31 March 2016,
<http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/docview/2141746?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo>.

Bibliography:

Daly, A 2005, ‘Daybreak Express’, Senses of Cinema, no.36, viewed 26 March,
<http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/daybreak_express>.

Enwezor, O 2004, ‘Documentary/Vérité: Bio-Politics, Human Rights and the Figure of “Truth” in Contemporary Art’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 5, no. 1, pp.11-42, viewed 30 March 2016,
<http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/14434318.2004.11432730>.
Zryd, MJP 1999, Irony in documentary film: Ethics, forms and functions, e-book, New York University, New York, viewed 31 March 2016, <http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/docview/304515322>.

In this seminar, we largely focused on the central concern of Project Brief 2: the ethical or aesthetic limitations in direct cinema approaches to documentary film making.

While this qualm is not per se a novel one in the scope of my academic experience (having studied True Lies as part of my contextual major last year), reviewing the limitations in relation to industry applications provided new argumentative angles both for and against that I’d previously not noticed.

For example, a central critique of direct cinema is the paradoxical and self contradictory argument that if a film lacks explicit or discernible manipulation of the reality its indexicalising, it therefore captures some transcendental notion of truth more readily than the counterparts which engage with their subject in both stages of filming and post production. The idea here is that in foregoing a selective gaze for a more fly-on-the-wall approach, documentaries might come to negate ideology for the more noble pursuit of authentic and untainted data gathering.

   

On a personal level, I see this idealisation of documentary practice as both fallacious and unhelpful. Largely, having a Post Modern understanding which negates transcendental idealising and further yet, a dialectical materialist perspective which highlights the necessary conflict and friction between opposing binaries as the central crux driving the art-making and art-work(ing) experience, direct cinema is somewhat simplistic in its conceptual framework of truth. Further yet, it limits its aesthetic embodiment to a series of laissez faire filmmaking practices which scaffold their artistic merits on the shaky grounds of spontaneity and loosely defined (or worse yet- deliberately ambiguous) goals.

Consequently, in aligning with a direct cinema approach to film making we limit the scope of artistic innovation from say, a deliberate usage of select moments in an interview with a black and white mindset and the unforgiving philosophy that if it’s selectively included, it is necessarily tarnishing of a more aloof cinema experience. The idea is of course, (and not recently critiqued as such) absurd, as we know by default of its temporal structure, cinema involves an editing process which curates specific narratives and gazes over others- whether it be for artistic reasons or political agendas.

I suppose largely what I am grappling with here, is the idea that perhaps in recognising the subjective and often underlying ideologies which inform our artistic motivations and inclinations, we can in fact move beyond the ostensible barriers which bar us from a ‘truth’ to more readily and savagely embrace a truth that is, in fact discernibly, ours.

Today’s tutorial was largely spent brainstorming in our groups various approaches to Project 3 Brief: No Mic, No Camera.

Ironically sparked by the failing internet, conversation turned to the more technical constraints of our brief such as the employment of sound/track(s) by documentary film makers and the purposes, constraints, and implications that inform these soundscapes.

The discussion while focussed on the logistical and pragmatic issues around non-diegetic sound and its distracting effects on the audience, raised further some of the possibilities we could explore through thinking about sound more creatively rather than pragmatically. This is perhaps the criteria which most excites me: subverting established paradigms to communicate new narratives.

For example, similar to many indexical representations of phenomena, sound derives much of its resonance from the cultural, historical, and social contexts it breeds itself from, in accompaniment to the contexts audiences bring with them. Here, a national anthem becomes an auditory metonymy for patriotism. But, juxtaposed against images of violence and bigotry,  more complex responses and ideas may form: the hypocrisy of armchair democracy, the corruption of politics, the abuse of rhetoric, and so forth. Evidently, it is not necessarily ontological or original sound

Working within these associations and skilfully manipulating them to breed conflict excites me both creatively and conceptually. Stereotypes are tedious to watch and listen to. Even parodies of stereotypes become burdensome in a world largely fixated on repackaged narratives and recycled archetypes.

The central tension underpinning the question ‘can something be both political and poetic’ stems from the adherence to a conceptual binary which qualifies the political sphere as distinct from deontological forms of art. Stated another way, it presumes that to be political is to have a goal oriented or conventionally adherent formal structure.

However, Ron Fricke’s non-narrative documentary Samsara (2011, USA) contests the validity of this presumption through its interweaving of political ideas and experimental filmic aesthetics. Indeed, Fricke challenges, negates, or entirely subverts several formal principles popularised by documentary filmmakers; a breaching employed to emphasise specific political and philosophical standpoints.

For example, in lacking a linear narrative structure the film instead focuses its screen time on cataloguing environments, its various inhabitants, and other forms of sentient life, from the microbial to the human. Augmenting this, Fricke further negates any usage of expository, disembodied narration, talking heads, title cards, or explicit linguistic communication. In place of these conventional formal strategies, Fricke favours the ephemeral and the primal qualities of visual beauty and a complimentary non-diegetic musical soundtrack to orchestrate his politics.

However, it is important to pause here to recognise that Fricke’s film is not simply a truncated feed of unmitigated observations, but rather, through considered collation and juxtaposition, a visual essay intimately tethered to the Buddhist understanding of interconnectedness and suffering. Here, our experience of a cloud is not merely informative or narratively contributing, but rather more sensitive, more aesthetically visceral: the billowing form, projected across a screen, grand and overbearing in its towering stature. It’s a visual meditation on ephemerality, beauty, natural rhythms, and further yet, with its cessation and the birthing of the next visual vignette, the bones of an argument emerges.

It seems as if it is through this careful curation of images that Fricke’s meditation on the glory and gore of earth and its happenings is made more powerful. Emotionally, we are provoked, politically, we are challenged. With images of the natural landscape in all its spatial splendour contrasted with the claustrophobic mechanics of a densely populated metropolis, Fricke positions audiences into a mode of active viewing, inviting us to look more deeply into our emotional responses as the symptoms of a political view we might (and certainly Fricke) possibly hold.

The result is arguably as experientially poetic as it is explicitly political. While not overtly or worse yet, facetiously advertising for the morality of his political views, Fricke consciously presents his many images without the arrogance of assuming a cohesive context, story to tell, or facts to state. As such, though momentarily confounding in structure, Fricke’s formal experimentation acknowledges his audiences’ dignity, textually departing from the traditional linguistics of political ‘art’ to a heightened platform of artist expression which debates rather than dictates.

Pitching ideas is never an entirely linear process. Ideas are thrown around, dismantled, augmented, and readjusted before settling into ambiguity again.

While not an entirely new process, this week’s Thursday seminar presented several new ideas on pitching, as both an academic and industry based activity, and as a time in which to critically engage and re-evaluate ideas. Mainly though, I want to discuss the ideas presented by my group and the resulting feedback we received from our class mates.

Firstly, for our found footage film, Daniel, Haylee and I outlined our concept for a short documentary about the pervasiveness of portable personal technology, namely,  mobile phones. In this film, we’d collate a range of archived video clips of people’s milestones (births, celebrations, marriage, proposal, etc) and interweave this with Steve Job’s voice over on the merits of the iPhone. The main idea underpinning the contrasting use of these specific visuals / soundscapes would be to highlight the tension between the supposed / promised / hypothesised societal merits of technology, and the resulting reality: a life in which moments are repeatedly fragmented by intrusive notifications, dependency and fixations on screens. Finally, we wanted to afford the audience a sense of comedy and flippancy throughout the documentary; an emotional tone perhaps deriving from a visually punchy formal structure of sharp cuts and juxtaposing glib advertising imagery of ‘life’.

The feedback we received on this idea was quite helpful, and enabled our group to refine our conceptual structure. For example, Liam’s suggestion to employ archetypes of pivotal life moments from films led to the idea of actually employing popular cultural moments in film (famous scenes from classical Hollywood, blockbusters, well loved franchises, etc) and auditorially disrupt the ‘punch lines’

In today’s seminar, we grappled with the notion of documentary as an instrument of political or poetic expression.

We were introduced to the idea of agency in documentary theory, and the ethical justification for and importance of involving subjects with/in the film as a strategy encourage documentary film makers to recognise their political stance and engage with it, rather than facetiously ‘capturing’ images from a disembodied stance.

In relation to this, Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing was mentioned as an interesting case study on the employing of subjects within the making of the film. To briefly summarise, Oppenheimer invites authoritative figures to re-enact their actions during the Communist massacres in Indonesia. However, it is not merely a film garishly recreating the horrific for the sake of sensationalism. Instead, it’s a moral exercise which though acknowledging its political leanings through its primary existence (to draw awareness to the massacres), allows audiences the autonomy to emotionally respond to a historical event through sustained and deliberate manipulation and deracination. This is perhaps most notably achieved through the involvement of the authorities. As they retell and motion to gouging eyes, grinning between generous offerings of gory descriptors, we are arguably led to a visceral response of distrust and disgust. The result is a sort of moral grappling: regardless of ones’ political affinities, the glorification and evocation of violence embodied, is disturbing.

Further discussing the implications of involving subjects was the question ‘why’. Through discussion, I posited the importance of recognising Oppenheimer’s explicit political agenda and as such, not only the uniqueness of his approach, but its formal necessity. While on many fronts it can be considered formally experimental, on others, its structural approach to having the perpertrators adapt their own lives (with embellishment and panache captured through the process) can be viewed as a directorially savvy technique utilised by Oppenheimer to avoid immediate backlash or red tape, and further yet, a strategy to remove himself from the burden of political impartiality or worse yet- heavy handed manipulation of ‘the facts’.

Thrusting forth notions of truth(s), objectivity, and ethical practice, the questions thrown around the semester’s first studio (Documentary: The Art of Persuasion) were an exercise in grey.

Having studied True Lies through my contextual major, many of the qualms addressed in class were familiar grapplings. Specifically, problems surrounding the employment of voice over narration and the epistemological biases governing our tendencies to believe the indexical representations on screen as “true” were mentioned.

But I suppose this blog post is not so much concerned with reiterating the dialogue spun during the tutorial (it may be a Sisyphean task) than it is focused on reflective writing.

One particular point I find myself returning to is the problem of Ocularcentrism, and the role it plays in both the way we speak and understand ‘documentary’ (critically and aesthetically), and subsequently, the dominant modes of formal structuring which continue to perpetuate this epistemological bias.

For example, Ross McElwee’s Time Indefinite has moments of blackness. With a continued audio narration to explain the spatial discontinuity, the moment (which occurs early in the film), is nonetheless an integral part of the film, both narratively and structurally- for it is in this moment that we are brought into both Brechtian alienation and McElwee’s subjectivity, as we simultaneously watch (as an audience separate from the film) the blackness of a camera battery having run out, yet listen to the continuation of McElwee’s stream of consciousness narration. The result is a fraught viewing, an experience denied of the assured and often voyeuristic gaze of the infallible documentary camera and its accompanying voice of god omniscient expository. McElwee does not know where he’s going. He doesn’t even know where the battery is (or he’d have us believe).

Analysis aside, the philosophical rub remains somewhere between Post-Structuralism and essentialist (though sometimes necessary) conceptions of what a documentary film is comprised of.

While the indexical representations are significant, it would be problematic to naturalise images as the singularly most important aspect of documentary film practice. Not only does this bias continue the narrative of blind or vision impaired individuals as inherently disadvantaged and unable to experience documentary film, but it also suggests a model of reading documentaries in which visuals lie at the helm of the truth-identifying model.

Images lie. Often. Especially when context is inadequate or negated. While my philosophical tendencies lean further from Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and more towards Post Modern thought, I do think that re-evaluating our definitions of ‘documentary film’ to prioritise other sensory capacities is a fundamental step towards more ethical and inclusive film making and engagement.

WORD COUNT:  1193

Working as a part of a small group in organising both SIGNAL and RMIT exhibitions, my overall technical proficiency and professional art practice were enriched in three key ways.

Firstly, through my close collaboration with Rose during SIGNAL’s graphic design and copywriting development, I was able to gain a deeper understanding and application of the principle of effective branding and public communication practices. Despite an arguably industry wide aversion to recognising the necessity of branding and advertising, the efficacy of marketing exhibitions and individual artworks is significantly dependent on the aesthetic abilities of practitioners to communicate these ideas to the wider public in a way which is equally accessible as it is respectful of artists’ philosophies.

Consequently, in liaising back and forth with Rose to reedit my copywriting to be more succinct, evocative, and suitable for various publishing mediums, I was challenged refine my writing beyond the familiar scope of individual expression. For example, as my writing would be the overarching descriptor for our project brief, it had to retain a degree of generalised thematic applicability whilst simultaneously being visceral enough to encapsulate some of the conceptual approaches adopted by eighteen different individuals. While contributing copy to group work is not a new concept to me, publishing it to the online and public spheres as a written representation of eighteen peers is.

Hence, recognising the broadened scope of this task, I was able to more acutely practice and refine my writing with a meta critical gaze that I’ve not always held previously- due to either negligence or lack of a moderating public gaze. As such, this exercise in communication was thoroughly informative in bringing to the forefront my academic ability to mitigate individual concerns with unifying and curating others’ work, a recognition that is fundamental to my future professional practice as an artist and interdisciplinary collaborator.

In addition to this, by working with a small group of 4 other individuals for a sustained period of roughly a month, I was able to develop and nuance my collaborative practice. Group work, delegation of tasks, online communication, and time management skills are all cornerstones of university curriculum. However, the fostering and maintenance of these relationships beyond academic pragmatism is not necessarily encouraged due to the brief and often individualised concerns of these assessments in the context of the course.

Contradicting this, the lengthy and necessarily intimate tetherings incentivised by the structure if this studio, or more specifically- the exhibition process, led to substantially more considered and personal communication between myself and peers. In particular, the ongoing Facebook conversations and last minute changes in plans, thwarting of goals, or spontaneous university regulation catastrophes (outlined in THIS blog post), were all catalysts for the blooming of kinship among what would otherwise be students with arguably no academic nor personal impetus for friendship.

While this may sound cynical, recognising the disparate academic and artists trajectories Marissa, Gianna, Rose, Linda, and myself are all on, it is arguable if we would ever had crossed paths, let alone developed relationships beyond goal oriented focuses. However, the communication structures necessitated by this exhibition’s realisation have ultimately resulted in the development of authentic relationships- a consequence which is both central to and now a part of my development as an artist in conversation with a network of potential future collaborators. This is exemplified most keenly in Rose and my continued conversations and recommendations of art galleries to submit work to, a friendship that I can linearly trace back to our first interactions during Testing Grounds’ catering process, and more recently, SIGNAL’s PR team.

Finally, despite my absence at the Final RMIT Exhibition due to an unfortunate personal circumstance, my presence at nearly all SIGNAL meetings and tutorials from weeks 8-12 (which can be evidenced in these blog posts: I, II, III, IV), enabled me to ground my practice in a site specific philosophy. For example, my initial brainstorming sheets at SIGNAL were primarily focused on my own desires to have a dark, Bill Henson esque aesthetic. However, as I began to recognise the public platform and nightly exhibition times, it became more aesthetically sensible to consider filming something brighter in order to draw more attention and make use of the contrast between the velvety black skies and the jarring projections. While not strictly speaking a group collaboration, it was through brainstorming in tutorials with my peers that I was able to hone these ideas from their initial groundings in personal taste to a more holistically considered approach which suited the Project brief more.

Taking all these new learnings into consideration, there are a few areas in which I think I could have been more mindful of and brought to the forefront of both my peers’ and my own contributions to the exhibition process. One thing which stands out is the lack of organising a PR group meeting outside of class. Acknowledging that between us we all had fairly disparate timetables, I do think it would have been beneficial to have held short brainstorming ideas between or after our studio classes, as a means to unify both the aesthetic and conceptual approaches of our PR campaign.

While most members did come to tutorials, the twice weekly meeting wasn’t a stable platform on which to communicate our ideas in a temporally focused manner. Resultingly, much communication took place online, which was helpful but can often take away from the personal nature of face to face collaboration. Furthermore, as communication became increasingly harder to organise, much of the aesthetic and conceptual approach of SIGNAL’s PR effort were primarily spearheaded by Rose, myself, and Marissa (with the overarching help of Nicolette); with Rose doing all of the graphic design independently, myself writing and reviewing all copy on these platforms, Marissa who helped organise and print flyers, in addition to drafting a press release and keeping us on track. All group members did volunteer to contribute, but as with many collaborative projects, the longer time goes by and the more inaction or communication occurs, the most integral it becomes for few members to undertake the majority of the work, sheerly out of pragmatism.

Highlighting this is not to point fingers and shift the burden of blame from shoulder to shoulder, as it was obvious at the realisation of the exhibition how much work everyone had invested into their approaches. It is however, a process which was possibly perpetuated by the lack of communication and in person meetups which may have given way to a larger platform onto which all group members would have been able to and been held responsible for specific roles and deadlines.

Concluding this, I do still feel that the work at and with SIGNAL and RMIT exhibition was enriching. Through close collaborations with my colleagues, I was able to develop both my technical and conceptual understandings of the project brief, tailor my concept to the site, reform and inform my approaches to writing for publication, and in the process foster personal friendships with a network of vastly creative individuals. These are all fundamental tenants to developing a grounded and interdisciplinary professional practice, and I hope to further my personal and professional developments through utilising these learnings in my future studio courses.

WORD COUNT: 1100

https://vimeo.com/142122627

E V E N

In the global canon of written and visual artwork, the apple has come to be both an allegory for and symbol of the fragility of human nature and curiosity.

Appearing in a range of narratives from biblical temptation to Newtonian enlightenment, throughout history the apple has arguably become an embodiment, a metonym, a visual shorthand for a variety of metaphysical properties which have simultaneously enabled the fall and the rise of Man throughout the ages.

Placed in the palms of – more often than not – women, the overarching narrative unifying the two together has increasingly supported trajectories in which women and womanhood are positioned as volatile processes, inviting of danger and reckless abandon, if not detrimental to, or by default of comparison, supportive of an archaic narrative: man’s inherent virtuosity.

We see this indolent relationship between the apple and women unfurl in Eve’s lust for knowledge, in Snow White’s enviable beauty and her step mother’s cunning. We see it again, heralded as an icon of technological and scientific achievement in Newton’s conception of gravity, a theoretical breakthrough said to be prompted by the simple witness of an apple falling. Evidently, the apples in the stories we tell are not only informing to the eyes that see and read them, but the I’s that take part in its resplendence.

Further abstracting the insidious wink of apple flesh across art history is the rapid reproduction of artworks. Often denoting the imitation of an original image; this process of visually copying an antecedent has come to signify a ‘dynamic mediation’ in which society’s preoccupations and biases to validate certain narratives are exposed (Codell 2010, pp.217). In other words, imitation is not only the greatest form of flattery, but also a means to identifying the icons and ethics upheld by particular publics.

For example, the pervasive nature of apples across the Western canon of literature as an item of philosophical and literal poison arguably points to humankind’s underlying fear of our own sensual desires, and the consequences befalling those who dare to gratify these unyielding cravings. This dichotomous relationship is illustrative of the chaos resulting from associating virtues too closely with material counterparts. As the idioms go: the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but it only takes one bad one to ruin the lot. So, how do you like them apples, now?

In response to this ubiquitous narrative, EVEN attempts a simultaneous extrapolation and demolishing of these pre-established means to reading and understanding apples. Disrupting the narrative of apples as catalysts for conflict between genders, families, humankind and deities, the disembodied hand becomes an instrument for destruction of form and rebirth of meaning. Uprooted from any attempts at gendering the hand, EVEN thus reforms the very rules which have governed tales about women and apples. Instead of an embodied experience, the destruction is neither completed, nor its rebirth initiated, instead its fracturing form depends on the human hand, a sentiment reflected in the title: EVEN which denotes the verb-form (or activation of) the name Eve to mean the action of levelling an unstable ground, the adjective meaning equality or aesthetic consistency, and the adverb denoting a continuation or exaggeration, even still…

Reconfiguring the apple across four screens, EVEN’s structure hijacks and exaggerates the imitative properties of reproduced artworks to birth its own autonomous story, one which fragments and resolves its own causality. Here, apples are reproduced ad nauseam, divided in half, glitching rhythmically to form and reform, structures disintegrating on one screen only to reunite on another.

The exercise thus becomes one of destruction and re-structuring. Projected into the public sphere, to view EVEN is to review apples and the ways we relate to their aesthetic presence in art. A fluttering, a reanimation, the reformation, a re-embodiment.

Is it even there?
Are we still even?

But even yet–
M A N T R A 

Post-structural theories of language have been riddled with an undercurrent of pessimism in which the gentrified soundscape of comprehensible language is essentialised by its ability or reluctance to signal meaning.

In recognition of these nihilistic underpinnings, some have suggested we analyse the intentionality of language and its utilisation in order to more holistically grasp the organic and volatile nature of words (Ellis 1991, pp.221). Only though examining the contextually dependent properties of words can we begin to recognise the pitfalls, opportunities, and merits of the mouth as an instrument truncating meaning.

Sound is employed often, by choice, by accident, by inappropriate openings of mouths. In these moments; communication is an incidental byproduct resulting from our grasping attempt to designate and clarify the ambiguous. A cough becomes an interruption. A decontextualised word becomes a Freudian slip. ‘Um’, ‘Like’, ‘Eh’, insidiously pervade our syntax, sloshing forth from the tripping-ups of an elucidated tongue. These are the non-sense limbos of the mouth organ.

And yet, these sounds, birthed by mistake and thrust into sentences as fillers, are rich in meaning-making as they reveal our neurotic impulses to impregnate the unmeaning with meaning. Suddenly the saying of ‘um’ is public speakers’ no man’s land. Go there, and risk being shot by friendly fire and enemy troops alike. But like a moth to a flame, this desire to speak only the listenable, the discernible, the socially and culturally legible, can equally ensnare us into treacherous places.

As such, recognising the un-gentrifiable soundscape of spoken words, MANTRA challenges listeners to respond to the verbal non-place of ‘um’ through a structured curation. Transforming the mouth from an outlet of incidental utterances to a deliberate producer of reconstructed, melodic soundscapes, MANTRA’s overlapping structure blurs the distinction between the pragmatic employment of language and nonsense words, and in its place creates a audio ebb and flow of chanted sound which, as the Bard noted in a Saussurian conception of sound and fury, ultimately signifies nothing.

But further yet, nothing remains the cornerstone of MANTRA’s communicative properties. Lacking a conventional linguistic meaning, by default of its repetition and the resulting auditory structure, MANTRA draws attention to our deliberate, impulsive construction of meaning through sounds; deracinating and broadening the process recognised as intelligible language from an ontological exercise to the often broached though rarely chartered soundscape of ‘um’.

Bolstered by the public exhibitive properties at SIGNAL, MANTRA thus fills the hollowings of the once incommunicative ‘um’, planting within it a sustained meditation and examination of not only language, but our impulse to understand. For if incidental sounds are the eloquent individual’s no man’s land, MANTRA focuses on those dwelling in between worlds and words; the ones lost in translation. There is a sound which calls- the universal syntax of nonsense broadcast on the public sphere, a resounding subvocal plea:

listen closely.

References:

Codell, J.F 2010, ‘’Second Hand Images’: On Art’s Surrogate Means and Media— Introduction, Visual Resources, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 214-225, viewed 30 October 2015, <http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/01973762.2010.499644>

Ellis, D.G 1991, ‘Post-Structuralism and Language: Non-Sense’, Communication Monographs, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 213-224, viewed 31 October 2015, <http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=9107290450&site=ehost-live&scope=site>

  
The final night was quite incredible. Small edits to the footage, courtesy of the Installation and Editing crews made an almost unfathomable difference to my footage (alongside others), which had previously been washed out and overexposed from the projectors.

It was gratifying to see the cumulation of roughly a month and a half’s worth of behind the scenes / in front of the computer work come to fruition, and with the support of our family, friends, strangers, passerbys, SIGNAL crews, and Robbie. Also, the people watching that ensued from our exhibition opening was quite interesting and ties quite keenly back into the entire impetus of this studio:

Specific to Site.

Though one could play puns on the term and round it off to be “Specific to Sight”, it was indeed an eye opening experience to watch the public respond to the works and respond to us responding to the works. For instance, several strangers came up to and simply watched the projections of their own accord. Others, witnessing a group of students gazing upwardly mirrored the same, half from conformity (contemporary psychology does have its merits here), half from autonomous curiosity. The result was as dichotomous as it was specific to the site; as we amalgamated with the landscape, by default of our numerous bodies we became an event-making entity, a thing on itself to be viewed, and finally, a platform on which to point to the site itself.

I suppose what interests me now further, is how people respond to the work without the presence of bodies. But this seems to be a paradoxical question which cannot be answered with my presence to gather the evidence. It’s a bit like Shrodinger’s Cat, or perhaps the lesser used but more philosophically convoluted logic of Nagarjuna’s Tetralemma:

neither true nor neither false.