WEEK 3

This week we had our second workshop on exposure to artworks in order to get inspired. Just as with the last one I was very inspired visually in terms of ideas that I wanted to add to my film. These were my responses:

At the end of the class we were given the list of artists and had decide to which two we wanted to research further. In my case this week I’ve decided to research the work of Marina Abramovic and Martha Rosler. Both this two artist have been very inspiring to my work this week, so I’m very greatful to have gotten a deeper look into their art.

Portait with glass of water (2012)

Marina Abramovic

(1946, Serbia)

Marina Abramovic is an artist that I have researched many times and one that I very admire. Even though I’ve seen many of her works before I had never encountered “Portrait with a glass of water” and was fascinated with it. At the beginning of the class, Miranda made us look at her video of how to drink water and gave each of us glasses filled with water in order to be able to follow her instructions of how to drink water on the video whilst at the same time having the first person experience ourselves. It seems like such a mundane activity but at the moment that we did it in class, I had the feeling that instead of drinking water I was having a cathartic experience just by the fact of paying attention to it. After this experience, I’ve been doing this exercise every morning of the week and having the same reaction every morning. A thing that I have realized tho is that it only works with fresh water, as that is when you get the feeling of freshness touching your lips and cleaness of the body.

Having researched her previous work “the artist is present” in the past I was familiar with her performance-based career and incredible presence on camera, as well as the importance of her present human experience in her art. But this new artwork gave me a new insight into her work, the way that she adds richness to reality and makes the ordinary extraordinary, bringing gravity and weight to everything she does. This kind of caring look your reality is just what i want to explore and transmit in my film, the way in which the character starts to pay more attention to everything around him and therefore realizes the richness of life reality, and nature. By doing these exercises I myself was reminded of it and of the importance as an artist to remind others.

Semiotics of the kitchen (1998)

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler works in video, photography, text, installation, and performance. Her work focuses on the public sphere, exploring issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment, especially as they affect women.

I had encountered some of her photomontages works before, but I had never come into contact with her video or performative artworks and i was very struck when showed her piece “Semiotics of the kitchen” in class. This artwork is a video piece, recording 6 minutes of a parodical performance from the artist. In this performance-based work, a static camera is focused on a woman in a kitchen. On a counter before her are a variety of utensils, each of which she picks up, names and proceeds to demonstrate, but with gestures that depart from the normal uses of the tool. It is considered a critique of the commodified versions of traditional women’s roles in modern society. The symbolic terminology of the kitchen, she hypothesized, transforms the woman into a sign of the system of food production and harnessed subjectivity. A phrase that really struck me from the artist commenting her work was:

 When the woman speaks, she names her own oppression.

Martha Rosler

Apart from the powerful message of the film I found very inspiring the interpretation of every different gesture in such an expressive and violent manner. It has really made me consider the way that I want to approach the acting in my film and how I can convey meaning with it. This video has really made me question the boundaries between acting and performing and consider which style I prefer in my film, starting a discussion within me that I hadn’t even thought about.

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DEVELOPMENT OF MY FILM

During this week I’ve continued finishing up the last things that I needed to take care of before starting up with the recording of the film. Therefore I’ve started to brainstorm every tiny aspect of the production that I want to take care of before it starts. Last semester I was advised that there were some images and shots that I had taken that I hadn’t taken much care of and it was true, there were many shots that I didn’t think about even twice.

Therefore I decided to create a document to start noting down and brainstorming the things I should take into account in order to carry out a successful film overall. Things like for example the sound, transitions, color sets, scenography, the character building,….

After this, I realized how important it was to go into the filming process with everything under control so I started creating the storyboard of the film to have every shot and angle of the movie thought through specifically:

Apart from my project, this week I’ve also been able to apply the sense of attention to the life around us and nature that I hope to transmit in the documentary on my real life, so I’ve started to take photographs of my surroundings, it’s shadows, lighting, and details. I think that this project it’s very enriching for me as well.