Pipilotti rist

DANCE OF REALITY

Nathaniel Mellors

Cinzia Cremona

Incident No. 253

Cinzia Cremona - The other person

Cinzia Cremona - Before you now

THE OTHER PERSON

'Yes its for you'

'Come and lie down'

'Make yourself comfortable'

'Just relax'

'Were you dreaming'

Expression of a possible world in a perceptual field - components for field for itself in a new way.

No longer the subject of the field or the object of the field - the other person will become the condition under which not only subject and object are redistributed but also figure and ground

The other person shapes the gravitational field. Creating concentric zones of intimacy and inviting shared vulnerability. This contrasts my video 'CRISIS FULL LENGTH MOVIE' - because this is addressed to myself but really to the wider audience, Cremona addresses the viewer completely and obviously, my address to the viewer is masked in apparent address to myself. But which is actually more intimate, because I am 'addressing myself' mine is very intimate, feels like you've been let in on something private. Cremona's address is very personal but its almost too much, perhaps actually creating distance between herself and the viewer, but i think this is the point, to highlight the camera. 

Relational processes mediated by the screen these video performances address the public directly and ask personal and self reflective questions, whereas with my work these questions are asked to myself explicitly on camera. 

Cremona says you have to accept invitation within yourself otherwise they are simply monologues, the viewer has to allow themselves in to it. However my whole installation is aimed at excluding people, whilst at the same time being slightly open enough to welcome them in, physical conflict to reflect the mental conflict within oneself. 

 Cremona attempts an impossible diaglogue with the viwer? is it impossible though, do you need to reply for a dialogue?? i attempt impossible dialogue with myself, obviously they cannot reply to each other but again, does it need a reply...#

 Cremona on the screen - screens very familar to us - most of our own communication on screen based snapchat, text, messenger maybe even more than our face to face communication. The screen shapes our identity, always seen through edited version, its our edited personality. video allows the same. What is a real moment in virtual culture?

ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?

Frustration of miscommunication ? different angles and lighting suggest two people

'subjectivity is approached from a psychoanalytical perspective as fragmented and unstable continuously produced in rationality.

BEFORE YOU NOW

- 'Before i start the performance'

'before you start thinking'

'i want to share this moment before you become a viewer and i a performer'

'we are here now, just you and me'

'i know you can feel the difference'

'im a bit scared, of what you might think'

'what do you expect'

'can you see yourself in the screen or in my eyes'

SAID SMIRKING - 'I'm scared you might reject me. But I also trust you. I can feel your presence im not really scared'

'But before I start the performance i can tell you what i think'

The smirk - we are being played by her, we all knows its not true its a ploy. In my piece am i unknowingly playing the audience by 'excluding' them, luring them into the solipsist circle even though its not for them. But really it is for them because its in a gallery setting the whole thing is false.

Cremona lures you in but then snaps out of it with comments like  'this seems so real and natural' is she mocking us or mocking herself? I am quite obviously mocking myself  but in a very different way to her, mine much more distressing.   

Psycho Social exhibition

OFF SITE SHOW

Personal piece –

Too rushed- I could’ve experimented with layout for the show – instead what about TV’s in corner of room? Creating solipsistic circle enclosing the audience?? But then of course this would no longer exclude them and the audience would not be myself and the objects it would also include them.

Objects in centre of circle – what if I separated the objects dotted them around or had the TV’s in the corners of the room with some objects in front of each one that was the audience would still be the objects. And it would all be less literal – there would be more for the audience to work out – rather than there being a literal object audience- however there is already quite a lot to digest.

Perhaps the TV’s should’ve been more enclosed a very tight circle barely giving the objects any room, that way no one could walk through it and the audience would barely be able to even see it. (But I enjoyed spectating to see when people would stand in the middle, what made them feel they were invited too? Perhaps the allure of the objects?

Or perform within the circle to myself as added facet rather than the inclusion of objects. Or be one of the points of the circle still performing to objects to add live actual presence as of course ‘present day’ me in the video is technically now past me. I could’ve been reflecting live on the exhibition on people’s reactions etc, OR on my reaction to being there performing watching the video of myself reflecting and reflecting on it (what a mouthful)

Instead of the video being about past presence and future it could just be a circle of videos of myself reflecting to myself a circle that never ends, this would also be quite overwhelming but in a good way, overload of the absurdity of it.

ALONGSIDE the installation, I could’ve sat in a corner just reflecting out loud to myself but away from the circle to separate the live element of myself from this weird stuck version of myself.

The grandma video was problematic …. Was too funny, humour perhaps undermined it, but also I do like to use humour it is key to mock myself and undermine. The music was too obvious and clichéd (however I did choose not to use the music in the end)

It was perhaps not obvious enough I was mocking myself or using cliché on purpose as a way to critique, some people may have thought I was being serious with this.

Also on the surface it seemed like I was mocking the old women, when really I was just using them to mock myself, (the route of a lonely solipsist).

The nature of surveillance is often seen as cruel but obviously self-surveillance is not seen the same way.

I massively regret not doing my performance, I excused myself on the night because I was exhausted and much stressed but really I was using those because I was just scared. I was scared because it was so subtle that people might not realise and think I was just being rude, but really who cares about that. If I could change anything it would be doing the performance, especially because the private view was the perfect time to do it.

TEXT AND VOICE IN THE PIECE:

Subtitles – think carefully about how to use them and how text is represented. I didn’t experiment at all with text I just went for my default form, which I do think worked however to progress I need to explore other ways.

How can I challenge the voice? Or add to the voice? Separate it from the body? Separate text and voice, person and voice?

SELECTIVE SUBTITILING – I did this before with the soap opera video (from when I was 13) – however I did not do it thoughtfully enough – how can I use it to emphasise the key points.

Use a voice that isn’t my own? Or a voice that is me but a different image, or different text from someone else but in my voice made to seem like it is mine too.

VOICE – TEXT- SOUND (separate and remix)

Experiment with direct address in exhibition piece it is all aimed at ‘myself’ (even though really its clear it is not as I am making it for an audience) – I NEED TO ADDRESS THE AUDIENCE –perhaps? Like Cinzia Cremona

YOU – or also to a specific person eg my mum – address it to my mum or address it to Andrew – or someone I don’t know someone famous?

How would this then make the other audience feel, excluded? Or more intrigued? How would that re-act to exclusion?

ADVICE FROM CRIT:

Essays – Kawara On kawara

-          Narcissism

Practical advice – presentation issues, space, music choice

I often find that people don’t know how to crit it because it is about myself so they cant get into it enough- I did not really find the crit very helpful, because of time I had a significant amount less time and it was more rushed. However the essays suggested were extremely helpful and relevant to my work.

We held our own crit on Saturday night (Mel, Bob, Rosie, Laila and myself)- this was very helpful hearing from the people we worked with – feeling comfortable enough to speak to each other- it was very important to me to know what my collaborators had to say and how they would suggest to improve my work. The general thing was that it had too much going on which I agree with, it was a lot to digest and without understanding the concept properly perhaps a lot of it did not make sense to people. It maybe wasn’t clear enough that is was me with the trolley walking down the street or me in the ‘soap opera’ video and so without that knowledge they did not seem to link. The soap opera video was also perhaps offensive (homophobic) if you did not realise it was made by 13 year olds. Also the level of criticality not obvious enough?

Also not clear that my press release was just another level of mocking, making it over complex and pretentious sounding on purpose to try and alienate the viewer- setting them up to be alienated from the video. Perhaps there was too much mocking going on.

OVERALL EXHIBTION

Overall we worked well collectively and communicated clearly we had plenty of meetings in preparation and made lots of visits to the space. I think our work all tied in together well and there were clear dialogues between them.

We used the space well too, not at first though, it took a lot of moving around and compromise.

Although I think my work was quite bitty in the centre. I also think that the darkened space could’ve been used more successfully with people in that area spreading out more.  Laila’s piece worked really well in the space, weaving through others pieces of work, however there were some problems with health and safety so sadly some of her work was compromised because of this.

Joel’s performance was a major disruption due to the lack of communication from Joel and also lack of organisation. It was frustrating especially as he missed the crit so we didn’t have a opportunity to hear from him properly but I understand that he had to finish the work. But it was stressful for all of us involved having the exhibition all set up but still Joel not being finished right past the start time. Then there were issues when the performance began as it felt like it took over because it was so long which we had not anticipated and because we had no idea what his plans were we didn’t know how to re-act to it, which was frustrating as his collaborators in the show.  But we have all spoken as a group now about it and we have all learned from this experience that we all need to communicate better.

Perhaps for next time too we should have all worked more with the space in mind, I certainly did not consider it enough when making the piece and this was a mistake because I could’ve used the space a lot better, rather than just plonking the stuff in the middle.

I think our promotion of the show was very successful we had a huge crowd come, a resident of the Hive estimated about 130 at one point which was very exciting.

Chinese Philosophers

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/09/forget-mindfulness-stop-trying-to-find-yourself-start-faking-it-confucius?CMP=fb_gu

Being John Malcovich

'Being John Malkovich utilizes a surreal persona transferral technique to address, among other things, problems of displaced desire.'
I often think about wanting to be inside someone else's mind, so i can then compare it to me own. However in the film this only leaves people realising what they are missing, for example Lotte becomes hooked on the experience because she finally feels comfortable in her skin but only in her skin in Malkovich's skin. But is the more a self -realisation that really what she was missing her whole life was a mans body, or is ignorance actually bliss? Then Maxine having experienced the desire of two people from one body, or the womans gaze coming from a mans body, does not desire them separately. Once you have experienced something greater you cannot go back to the way things were before. Or when Maxine is pregnant, whose baby is it, it is said to be Lotte's but it is Malkovich's DNA, does Lotte being in his head at point of conception mean that it is her child. Or most spooky at the end, Craig in the mind of the daughter of Lotte and Maxine, yearning for Maxine still.

A really fascinating point was when Malkovich entered his own portal, what would happen?, i actually paused the film at the point trying to think of possibilities, would he just get trapped in a loop of endless Malkovich going in circles or would the two Malkovich's cancel each other out and so he would just become a vegetable in a body, or would he become double Malkovich, with two minds, would he get trapped there? Would he explode? No instead his unique experience was a world full of Malkovich where the only word was Malkovich, although this to me didnt add up to me, but perhaps its better they treated it that way, as if they treated it more seriously then it would move the story somewhere else.

After that something really stuck with me when Malkovich wanted the portal to be closed, was it his right just because it was his head, did Craig have any right? Even more worrying when he said he would take him to court and Craig questioned who would be thinking in court. How to you deal with the possibility of someone invading your thoughts.

Craig likes puppetry because he can get inside someone else's skin, he also says to the chimp that conciousness is a terrible thing, being able to think and feel. He feels through the puppets giving them emotions, he is putting his terrible curse of conciousness into them. The same could be said for Lotte and her obsession with animals, having trapped all these animals with her in her concious human life and reflecting human emotions onto them, for example the chimps supressed childhood trauma which she wants to treat through psychoanalysis. She is isolated from them as she is human. The film has so much concerning human isolation, isolation that everyone has trapped in their own thoughts, never really able to communicate what they want to. Even through experiencing life as another, they are still in their own thoughts and head within the head of another, so are still isolated. Craigs puppet show at the start forshadows this isolation as the two sexually frustrated puppet characters are isolated by a wall. The body of John Malcovich is a wall for many of the characters who enter it, for example Lotte and Craig can only have sex and be intimate with Maxine from behind the wall of Malkovich and vice versa for Maxine. Even the physical portal itself is within the walls of a wall. In a way the irony of it is that to be really in someone elses head you could no longer be aware of the self the were before, otherwise you would just be a spectator, to really be somone else you have to be them fully so therefore you would not be aware of the fact you were in someone elses head as it would be you.

'Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event.

The other thing that happens is adjustment. You find out which part of the story works, which part to embellish, which to jettison. You fashion it. Your goal is to be entertaining. This is true for a story told at a dinner party, and it's true for stories told through movies. Don't let anyone tell you what a story is, what it needs to include. As an experiment, write a non-story. It will have a chance of being different.

I'll tell you this little story. There's something inherently cinematic about it. I run in my neighbourhood, and one day I ran past this guy running in the other direction: an older guy, a big hulky guy. He was struggling, huffing and puffing. I was going down a slight hill and he was coming up. So he passes me and he says: "Well, sure, it's all downhill that way." I loved that joke. We made a connection. So I had it in my head that this is a cool guy, and he's my friend now.

A few weeks later, I'm passing him again, and I'm thinking: "There's the guy that's cool." As we pass each other, he says: "Well, sure, it's all downhill that way." So I think: "Oh, OK. He's got a repertoire. I'm not that special. He's probably said it to other people, maybe he doesn't remember me ... but OK." I laughed, but this time my laugh was a little forced.

Then I pass him another time, and he says it again. And this time he's going downhill and I'm going uphill, so it doesn't even make sense. And I started to feel pain about this, because I'm embarrassed for him and I think maybe there's something wrong with him. And then it just keeps happening. I probably heard it seven or eight more times. I started to avoid him.

I like the idea that the story changes over time even though nothing has changed on the outside. What's changed is all in my head and has to do with a realisation on my character's part. And the story can only be told in a particular form. It can't be told in a painting. The point is: it's very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you're doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can't think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn't need to be done.' KAUFMAN

changes all in the end to change the way it is going and realisation, this rings true to what i am doing, especially in the piece of myself talking into the camera and reflecting on my thoughts from seconds ago, everything changes through the thoughts, when nothing really changes at all.