Working Title
Private fantasies / personalised myths / micro-utopias
Aims
In the absence of an effective general mythology each of us has his private secret dreams.
- Emphasise the need to reconstruct a more spacious fully human life in touch with the mythological realm we carry within.
- Reveal hidden private spaces.
Objectives
- Understand the symbols used in myths and the unconscious fears hidden beneath. What does mythology teach?reconciliation with the universal will, the cosmogenic cycle. All people have the same fears but express them in different ways
-Reform of myths / symbols, which shape our appreciation of the world. What could a new approach of mythology be in modern times?
-Understand how the insights of inner lives are shown in different artworks, how they mix documentary and fantasy footage.
Context
My interest lies on ideas, which challenge the notion of a single identity, ideas which focus on ethnographic, psychological studies. I could say that my research relates to ideas, which try to incorporate ‘otherness’ and polyphony. The general aim would be to urge us not to settle for ready-made notions of ourselves but to discover alternative conceptions of ‘self’.
As I cannot name one single history I will name several artworks varying from film and video to networking constructions.
In all of them we gain insight in the inner lives of other people. Sharing their impossible dreams, we are shown a different way to inhabit the world. Even if some of them describe rare situations of heavy mental disturbances, I believe all of us can be considered to be mentally disturbed at times, which does not necessary mean that we are mentally ill. When such situations occur in our everyday lives we should not fight them, but rather embrace them as that is where our dreams lie.
Werner Hergog’s films often feature heroes with impossible dreams or people with unique talents in obscure fields.
In the film ‘Billy tha Kid’ by Jennifer Verdith the young leading actor (who is not a fictional character) states: ‘…I’m not black, not white, not foreign, just different in the mind. Different brains, that’s all.’
This difference, because of different appreciation of the world, is also the theme of the film ‘Wicker man’ by Robin Hardy. As the patrol officer investigates the disappearance of a young girl on a remote Pacific Northwest island, he finds that nothing is what it seems. Each step he takes closer to the lost child, brings him closer to the unspeakable.
In the video ‘The Black Tower’ of John Smith we enter the world of a man haunted by a tower, which he believes is following him around London.
In the video ‘As the Hammer strikes’ of artist John Massey, two men from different backgrounds are shown travelling together in a Volkswagen bus talking about their respective jobs. The viewers can to an extent move randomly back and forth between their differing mental worlds.
The video ‘Akki, Ani and God’ (of Eija Liisa Ahtila) is based on real events about a man who in a state of psychosis, created a woman for himself while the video ‘The House’ was again based on true recordings of mentally ill women who heard voices.
‘The House’ is a story about a woman who starts to hear voices that interfere with her perception of the world and gradually disrupt the time and space around her.
The work of Gillian Wearing has been associated with the term ‘ethnographic surrealism’ as she uncannily transforms documentary material and makes the familiar strange.
Something quite different, as it is a networking construction, is ‘The_living’. I believe though, that it shares something in common with the works described previously. It enables us to step outside the known and enlarges the world.
The www.the-living.org is the home of a digital character (cannot find it on the present). ‘The_living’ embodies the dream of total connectivity; she is a veritable connectivity hero. She has been seen with her laptop at the bottom of a swimming pool, boating on the Amsterdam canals and pedalling in a swan boat on the river Fulda in Kassel. ‘The_living’ recycles real and fictional personas. ‘The_living’ is hyper living, living more than once while sharing all its experience with the participants.
Methodology
-Continue my library research more focused into the force of fantasy to transform our lives.
-Search information about antique projection devices (magic lantern or Kinetoscope as something that relates to early animation).
-Search information about shadow puppet.
Outcomes
Probably in the form of a video. I have in mind mixing documentary footage of a conversation between my mother and a friend, with fantasy.
The themes that are going to be discussed will be of specific nature, already inbetween the two worlds. These two people share one common thing: they regard themselves as someone who has a revelation from God. The difference is that they name their God with a different name.
What I would like as an outcome would be more of an electronic painting, than a passage of time through sequential events.
My biggest challenge as well as what intrigues me the most is that I rely on the interaction of two people that have never met before, therefore I cannot predict the outcome.
Work Plan
I will continue my library research for 2-3 months until March, clarify the concept more as well as the form of the final presentation (I should also find an alternative) and write the dissertation.
In April I should shoot the documentary and imagine how I will transform it.
Bibliography
· Gillian Wearing: mass observation/ exhibition curator Dominic Molon: essays by Domonic Molon, Barry Schwabsky.
· Gillian Wearing/ Russel Ferguson, Donna De Salvo, John Slyce. /Ferguson, Russell./London: Phaidon, 1999.
· Portrait now/ Sandy Nairne, Sarah Howgate. /Nairne, Sandy./ London: National Portrait Gallery, 2006.
· Gillian Wearing: family history: view from my bedroom window/ edited by Steven Bode.
· Tony Oursler/ edited by Elizabeth janus and Gloria Moure/ Ousler, Tony./Barcelona : Poligrafa, c.2001.
· Hero with a thousand faces/ joseph Campbell. /Campbell, Joseph, 1904- 1987./ London Fontana, 1993
· Fantasized persons and taped conversations/ Eija-Liisa Ahtila./Helsinki: Crystal Eye: Kiasma, c.2002
· Discovery of the art of the insane/ John M.MacGregor, John M./Princeton,N.J.;Guildford: Princeton Universitu press, 1989
· Art of the accident./ Dutch Electronic Art Festival.(1998 : Rotterdam)
· Cultural encounters : representing otherness/ edited By Elizabeth Hallam and Brian V.Street.// London : Routledge, 2000
· Beyond the cinema: the art of projection : films, videos and installations from 1965 to 2005: works from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof, from the Kramlich Collection and others / edited by Joachim Jager, Gabriele Knapste// c2006
· Directory of British film & video artists/edited by David Curtis.// London: Arts Council og England Luton
· Windows and mirrors : interaction design, digital art, and the myth of transparency/Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala/ Bolter, J. Davis, 1951-/Cambridge, Mass.; London : MIT, 2003
· Billy the Kid(videorecording DVD) a film by Jennifer Venditt.// (Brighton):artefact Films
· Imagine(videorecording DVD)Werner Herzog : beyond reason.// London:BBC1, 2008
· Wickerman (videorecording)/ directed by Robin Hardy.// (London): Warner Home Video, 2002
· Cinematic Works (videorecording DVD ): Eija – Liisa Ahtila.//(London) : BFI;( Helsinki: Crystal Eye), c2005.
