group presentation01

The more I try to represent my ideas in a specific form , the more I realise that this is almost impossible as  they are  in constant transformation by the process of research . My intention may seem totally altered from the slightest shift in focus.

My initial interest lied in how the myths feed our personal fantasy and how this could serve as a starting point to personal transformation, and as a result ,to cultural evolution.

I believe that through the myths and fairytales found in our culture, we all encountered  the  storytelling of a hero or heroine who journeys  through fantastical adventures only to discover his or her inner self.

Apuleius ‘ the Metamorphoses of Lucius, or the Golden Ass ':

“ I wondered whether the stones I kicked against were really, perhaps petrified
men and whether the birds I heard singing were people in fathered disguises and I began to entertain doubts about the trees around the house, and even about the faucets through which the fountains played..”

There is something in the nature of fantasy that really intrigues me;there seems to be a flow of information between the internal and external worlds we inhabit.

We are at first inspired from mythology and folklores that surround us, and then transform them in a

personal setting. Even if our fantasies seem to be “borrowed” from our culture, they still have the power to reveal our inner selves.


The senses of the outer body are linked to 'souls ' inside the brain, which include ' the imaginative soul, or fantasy' according to the Neoplatonist scheme of Robert Fludd ( 'Vision of the Triple Soul in the Body' from Utriusque Cosmi, 1617)

















 At the heart of every fantasy, lies the desire for a personal evolution, as well as all the possible scenarios for our life to come. Fantasies provide substitute of what life lacks and give us strength to endure.

I am interested in people influenced by what they read, by the movies and other cultural materials they watch, people who live their most treasured stories.

I consider this to be a kind of achievement without which one’s life would be passionless, lacking hope and forward momentum.

I am also interested in the dark side of fantasising when people being trapped into the novels and movies they watch, consequently are so immersed into their own fantasised world ,that they miss out on real life or cannot communicate with others.

At this point, I’m thinking of videorecording conversations of people, revealing their private mythologies. I consider it being an imaginary journey between differing mental worlds, a labyrinth-like psychological structure.

Inside the conversation, two different belief systems are confronting each other. I believe that the reoccurring reversal of the two belief systems, will suddenly lead to a parallel synchronised way of thinking that is going to reveal  their similar identities.

I’m thinking of using the “space” of conversations as a tool for discovery, and a tool for poetic constructions. I consider them to be a structure , a three dimensional space whose inhabitants utilise and through which they reconstruct meaning.

In ancient years, medieval monastic practices, known as the art of memory,  used a text as a foundation for composition and invention. Such practices where based on a fully individual new composition  from one’s own reading of the biblical text. It was supposed to bring together in this new structure, distinct “places” , images,  texts or signs, as recalled from associational memory. Another important value in monastic life was to bring an individual's discoveries into the public domain,  while all this was understood to be acts of “invention”.

The words uttered inside a conversation and the meaning residing, can act for me as the foundation text used in these medieval monastic practices.

I imagine it as an experiment, which will hopefully lead to a   “ cross cultural space” and political influence of heterogeneous people’s histories and languages.

In all that I also see a performative quality, which really interests me, as it is like trying to create a plot-line from ordinary people and interact with them.

I hope that something like that might offer possibilities for thinking differently.

My aim would be to prove the degree of familiarity between  the inner worlds of people…Familiarity that exists between things perceived as dissimilar, sameness in otherness. Many fantasies are drawn from the fiction , art and myths surrounding our culture… what thought to be a unique fantasy is probably shared by others. In our everyday life we talk so little about our fantasies that it seems quite possible that we will never find out the commonalities. We can use that commonality to foster intimate ties between us. If we do so, it seems to me quite possible for us to live our utopian scenario in real life.

Another aim would also be to accept the differences in others. While enjoying excursions into the believe world of others; we expand the boundaries of our “known” world  for seeing immeasurable dimensions open around us…

If we do so, it seems to me quite possible not only to script our personal scenarios in our fantasies, but to live a collective utopian one, in real life.

The revellers in the Garden eat, carry, flourish, and play with all kinds of fruits: they also emerge from berries and gourds, and even appear to be turning and plums (detail, Bosch Garden of earthly Delights)

project proposal

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.

Doug Aitken

 "i am constantly piecing things together, finding fragments of information,
  splicing them,  collaging them, montaging them to create a network of perceptions"

just to start

I should admit that i have never been committed to blogs so far...
I m starting though to perceive them as a negotiation platform, a new starting point where objects, thoughts and forms coexist and where new meanings can be created as all these overlap.
It seems that is all about focusing on systems and flow rather on finished objects, about focusing on a research subject and on the process of making art.



...I have studied architecture...
I m used to using the town as a canvas.
I enjoy imagining the city as a circus, full of transient encounters

Im interested into models of actions within the existing real, into the limits of the Self and the Other,
the impossibility some times of communication, the subjective narratives,  all the personal fantasies..
Into differing mental worlds......What does the word reality stand for after all?..

.. I should also get rid of my academic architectural education,..be more able to express myself freely, 
away from all academic restrains...




 So, is there a meeting point with the "other"?..Or u can only speak about yourself?..

"private fantasies" present new ways of seeing the world,.. for me new ways of inhabiting...