Apr
2014
Collage
This week’s reading from David Shields is written in a partial style, numbering different phrases. It is written in this way as the Shields demonstrates his opinion that narrative and plot is boring and should be obsolete, while media makers should be focusing on the interesting, exciting and more ‘true’ form of collage making rather than traiditional film editing.
His observation of the law of mosaics as being “how to deal with parts in the absence of wholes” is relevant to how Korsakow films are made. It is similar to collecting various clippings and then deiciding how they will be arranged together to create something. It reflects the way in which clips in a Korsakow film are linked through the keywords the makers choose, giving them meaning.
Shields discusses a lot of things that I believe to be true, including that our minds aren’t unified and systematic, rather they are chaotic and there is no real boss controlling your thoughts. This idea relates to how narrative, and cause and effect, as has been taught so prevelantly at film and media schools are not in fact ‘truth’. Combining various clips by way of meaningful keywords reflects the chaotic nature of the world we live in. As Adrian has consistently said, there is no narrator of your life, things happen at random and your life is not a narrative whether you want to believe it or not. By filming and making media products (and more specifically Korsakow films), in a more organic way such as a mosaic or collage, we can create a more interesting and personal product.
As Shields points out the main question that a collage artist faces is how do you go about arranging the interesting material you have found? This is very similar to the main question that Korsakow films pose for makers. Filming your clips is probably the easiest part of the process, it is when you must sit down and analyse what you have filmed, and try to find meaningful keywords that link them together that it becomes quite a challenge. Approaching this question can be quite difficult, and I would argue that no matter how much planning you do before you shoot, you will most likely change your keywords once making your SNUs as you would discover different and new patterns you didn’t expect.