Initial Briefing and Presentation

For this brief we were given the task of coming up with a response to the metaphor of 'Journey'. This could be a photograph, installation, film, sound piece etc. However it was made clear that it has to be inventive and expand my potential.

Rosie showed us some films first of all to get us thinking about the project, some which were installations and represented certain themes.

London Orbital (2002) by Iain Sinclair. This film was an exploration of the M25 in many mediums. The artist here filmed many parts of the M25 and collaborated with other artists to produce photographs, drawings, and paintings of parts of the M25. It is essentially a piece of psycho-geography work which explores not only the geographical elements of the M25 and the surrounding areas of it, but also the controversy under which it was built using radio excerpts and news clips.

In my opinion the film was very long, and very boring. I admire the dedication of the artist in creating this piece, and the more that I think of it, the more I consider the idea that the artist wanted this film to be very slow paced and very long a likely one. Throughout the film, he consistently uses poetic language in voice over and supporting imagery to reinforce the idea that the London Orbital is a very long and boring road to drive on.

Measures of Distance (1988) by Mona Hatoum. This was, interestingly, made to be in a gallery space and uses voice-over, photography, and overlays to tell its story. It is simply a woman writing to another woman to talk about her life with her husband. The conversations mostly concern sex and moments of an intimate nature between her and her husband.

For me, the idea that this work so openly talking about sex in the way two women would talk to each other privately is a bold move from the artist, and conveys its message in a very effective way. The stills of the artist naked are illustrative of the relationship her and her husband share, and the arabic script overlay could be an indication of the heritage of the artist.

We also looked at the work of the artist Chris Welsby, who appears to work a lot with nature and film. In a documentary we watched which exhibited some of these works, such as the one below:

In this piece, and many other pieces, the artist takes a lot of time to record in different ways, many natural processes that we could otherwise not see happening around us all the time. The piece above records a shadow as it moves with the sun and the clouds, and it appears as if the artists moved the camera to follow the sun and keep the shadow looking the same across the whole piece. This type of dedication to his work, and the creative way in which he decided to present it interests me, and opens my eyes to new ways of filmmaking. 

We also watched other installation pieces by artists such as Pipilotti Rist.