SEMESTER 2

Week 1

Looking at my work from last semester I’m inspired and amazed how it turned up, I feel like I left my comfort zone with my art, I tried new things, experimented. I never saw art in that way, that’s not how I was being leaned about art. When I look at my notebook right now, at all this process of my thoughts, all process of evaluating my final project, I didn’t think that it will come out this way. The most interesting thing is that I didn’t want my final project to look like that, I had a different idea in my head but at this moment I can see that all the experiments let me to this final piece that I’m proud of, and I wouldn’t change it.

In this semester I don’t have any idea what I’m gonna do and that’s okay because inspiration often comes in the least expected moment. In last semester I really enjoyed working with video and taking photos and I might go this way again in this semester.

I really feel that I’m much more open-minded and ready for this semester, to experiment and get new ideas for my art, new ideas to express myself in an unconventional way. It’s just a beginning of my art adventure, I’m just starting and I’m ready to explore more and take the things that I had learned in last semester with me.

Week 2

On this week lecture about Animal, I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind, the whole lecture left me a bit speechless. When I first heard that the topic is animal I had blank space in my mind, I wasn’t sure what to do with this topic. After the lecture, I felt a lot of ideas going through my head because the animal is such a big topic, that it might be hard to find one aspect to focus on.

Here are some of my thoughts that I had while watching the lecture

The leading though that I want to explore more and focus on in aspect of animal is how actually we are disconnected from them. For so many centuries animals were a part of our world just like nature, but the civilization grew and we started to go our separate ways, the technology, the big cities it all takes us away from an aspect of nature, of animals. Our perspective is so closed up by our modern world that we tend to forget that it isn’t only our world.
We are scared of some animals but who should actually be scared? Who is a bigger thread human or animal?
We are taking so much of their natural world to build ours, but without animals, without nature, how are we going to survive?
Are we really that different from them? Or are we just scared to admit how many similarities we have? We all in our life go with an instinct just like animals, we are doing whatever we can to survive.
So in which point we became so distant from their world, when this wall has been built that separates us.
And we are wondering how to become an animal, but aren’t all of us an animal in a way?

“When animals behave like humans or when humans behave like animals, don’t be surprised because in every animal there is a human and in every human there is an animal!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

Week 3

In this week workshop I really started to think about the human community in this world and how selfish we are taking this planet however we want, we don’t care that other species live here and that they are all part of the earth. We brought them so many destructions, took their homes, eat them, use them for our purposes. So many animals and plants extended because of humankind and one million of them are threatened to extinct. In all of this thoughts during this workshop, I found it really calming to apologize for all the things that we have done to them and to promise them a better future, a promise to acknowledge their existence and a hope for a better tomorrow.
The workshop finished with opening a mysterious package that was sent to everyone, inside the package was a paper, glass container and a cork. The purpose of these things is to come up with your own imaginary species of animal. This exercise might seem a bit childish at first but its actually a perfect exercise for creative people, people with imagination. I’m excited to start designing my own species that will survive.

As for this week I started to think more about the final project, the main idea for it is to show this disconnection between us humans and animals, how technology and big cities separated us from nature, our natural habitat. The plan is for me to put different projections on me, a wolf projection, forest projection and also city projections, to see a difference, to see this disconnection. I already tried doing it and I have the recording ready but they do need some editing.
My main focus while doing it is a wolf, I can’t really explain that but I do feel some kind of connection with this animal, it might be my spirit animal. The symbolism of the Wolf:
-Sharp intelligence, deep connection with instincts
-Appetite for freedom
-Expression of strong instincts
-Feeling threatened, lack of trust in someone or in yourself

Here are some of the pictures that I was working with

I was also doing some research about human and animals and I started to think more about an artist from last week lectures -MIGUEL VALLINAS PRIETO. He is a Madrid based photographer, his series “Second Skin” was made with the intention of “investigating the animal in us all”. These photo series show animals heads put on a body of modern dress humans, The way that they are dressed somehow matches the animal that it’s with, it somehow show their personality. I feel like that’s a really interesting idea that he had because every one of us is some animal, we might not realize it but aren’t all of us are animals in some way and he managed to show that in this series.

Week 4

In this weeks workshop, everyone presented their imaginary animal, it amazing how creative everyone is and how many different ideas came up. My species name is Dracong, its a combination of snake and lizard but with wings, it reminds me of a mini dragon. While making him I thought about such characteristics that will help it survive in a future world. It is a small animal, it can fly, walk and fly. It is a cold-blooded animal so its body can adapt to various weather conditions which means that climate change isn’t a thread to it. Here are slides from my presentation about Dracong.

From experimenting on the idea of my final project, I cut some shots from videos that I made before, here are some of them. I feel like this idea is going somewhere but I need to think more about how to edit these videoes so that the message of my project would be seen.

The thing that I want to say through this project is how far we are from nature, from animals, we’re so blinded by our “modern world”, the technology is all around us, technology is our form of connection, but what happened to connection to nature. At what point in our civilization we lost it?

Week 5

At week 5 workshops everybody presented theirs ideas for the group project, all ideas were amazing, I wish we could work on all of them but only one could be chosen and it was Tim, I’m excited about his project and how it will work out, it’s about communication and language of animal, it might be a really interesting workshop.

My idea for group workshop.

Concerning the chosen project we had some brainstorm about words that give the same idea, some research ideas in relation to this group project.
Research words:
-communication
-language
-behaviour
-emotions
-patterns
-vocabulary
-story
-threat
-characteristic
-hierarchy
-found sounds
-the ecosystem
-survival
-connection

The word that I chose is communication, I’m looking forward to researching this word in some many aspects, communication is such a large topic and it can go in so many ways.

Week 6

Communication
Thinking about the theme of communication in relation to art opens doors for so many opportunities that it’s even hard to get it all together. Every painting, performance, drawing, sound, sculpture is a way of communication, the artist is making it wanted to say something to us, without being literal, without using words, and the communicat might be different for so many people because that’s what art is supposed to do, make us question, it’s supposed to help us release our imagination and think about it in so many different aspects.
I could write so many things about artist communicating through art, I feel like this is a never-ending story, something that you can go on and on about, but looking at Tim project the most important thing is sound communication and by that, I don’t mean words that are giving us a clear message, it’s about what different sounds can communicate, what music without words can communicate.
The first thing that comes to my mind is a wolf safari that we saw in Miranda lecture a couple of weeks earlier. The wolf safari project is about people that make a pack of wolves and just go around the city, being them, being free and just enjoying this wildness that is inside them. They are running through the city communicating with each other through howling when you watch that you can see that they somehow understand each other, that they are united, they know what is going on without using any worlds. They are making a pack although they didn’t know each other before, they are united by this experience.

Wolf Safari

Research

While researching the animal in art I started to think about animals that are actually being used in art, where is the line that artist shouldn’t cross while using animals in a display. By researching these topics I found some controversial pieces of art that might make a big statement but are they okay for animals rights?

Wim Delvoye’s pigs at Art Farm Cina, Beijing

Wim Delvoye is an artist from Belgium who has had several controversial pieces of art. One of them, without a doubt, is tattooing pigs with extensive patterns. After death, the animals were stuffed and displayed as art. Wim Delvoye used these animals as a living canvas.
In his opinion, you do not have to be cruel in such activities and tattooing is done after calming and holding the pig so that you can cover its skin with ink without pain but the pain of getting a tattoo is not only during its creation but also later. The pigs were tattooed in various patterns, most of which the Artist presented in several places as live specimens of art.

Banksy’s elephant at Barely Legal

In 2006 Banksy, a world-famous street artist made an exhibition in Los Angeles, the most controversial these days is Elephant in the room, literally elephant in the room, the artist had an elephant painted to match his installation’s wallpaper to symbolize world poverty, a vastly ignored global issue. The elephant was surrounded by flashing cameras, crowds, and an atmosphere of celebrity hype. The meaning of this exhibition is really strong but what about the animal that suffered because of it, where is the line that no artist should cross while working with animals?

Week 7

I finally finished editing videoes that I made, I cut them into really short clips as for the future I was thinking about making one longer film that mix these short clips all together so that it can show the whole spectrum of the problem. These are only tryout shots but I feel like I’m going somewhere I already have a general idea about what to do with my final project.

These short clips are portraying the most things that I want to say, they are more personal with connection to wolf, the lost connection that is only virtual, that isn’t real because that’s how far we are from nature and animals. They are portraying these broken bond, the disconnection.

While making these I was thinking about our first natural habitat that we also lost connection with and on the other hand, there is a city of lights, of technology that we are lost in.

The last two were also about connection but I feel that somehow they feel a little fake or too much posed, more like a photo section but there is still something about them.

Week 8

In week 8 we had a group workshop prepared by Tim, everybody had some sounds already prepared before the workshop that could have sounded like the animal that we imagined. My animal was one of the more hissing ones so I was going around my house to find sounds. I think it was exciting, I feel like I discovered more of the sound world.
At the online workshop, we tried to make conversations using the sounds that we made. It was an interesting way of communicating and finding a connection between each other without using worlds.
My favourite part of the workshop was graphical scoring which included making our sounds into a graphic, I did it by using pastel and markers. I’m even more now interested in the relation between sound and illustration, to show the music by art, I really like that concept and I might get more engaged in it.

Week 9 and 10

The last two weeks were all really about finishing the project to the perfect form so that it can be exhibited. I spend a lot of time working on it mostly during easter break. In week 9 I sent out a proposal form and then in week 10, I did some more work on editing the sounds on the video.
I’m happy with what came out of it, it is strange, unfamiliar in some kind of way but that’s the effect that I wanted to achieve. The disconnection from animals and nature and at the same time being blinded by the technology around us.

Week 11

Week 11 was all about the spring show, which for me turned out amazing and I’m so honoured that I could take part in such a unique exhibition. The variety of artistic responses for word animal is amazing. Each person who participated in this exhibition responded in a completely different way, each work was original and interesting.
At the beginning of this semester, I did not feel confident with the subject of animal, I did not know what to do with it and how to use it, right now the topic of animal is so huge and comprehensive for me that all the time I receive new ideas related to this theme. This semester I am feeling much more open and I am beginning to understand more and more how universal the word art is. Whatever the artist does becomes art automatically because everything has a bigger message behind it, which not everyone will understand, but if I feel sure about it and see it, the rest is not important.

SEMESTER 1

Week 1

As soon as I found out that the topic for this semester is nature I automatically started thinking about how much our nature is giving to us, how much impact it has on our live, how beautiful it is, how big inspiration it has on the artists.

From the beginning of our civilization all kinds of artists were inspired by her outstanding beauty, even nowadays nature have a big impact on the artists, we take advantage of her goodness, but we don’t appreciate it.

The theme of nature has always been a main topic of art since centuries. Nature in art works isn’t only a landscape painting, it can show a deeper meaning that stands in for a greater thought. We could even say that artist is giving a missing voice that nature lacks to say.