Breakthroughs and understanding happen quite unexpectedly. How to understand both the Time project and my other work this semester is to understand where I am as an artist and where the world is as per climate change. All the information is there but it’s both recognising and accepting it that is difficult.
I know I keep saying that I came to the School of Art to paint and what has really happened is I’ve learnt to think, but this week has been all about that.
I had a breakthrough on my STUFF film as I realised I wasn’t Lee John Philips, order is not my style, chaos and revolution are, but it also meant re-photographing my materials and this as always gave me time to think. The Takeover Film Now is the Time to Save the Earth needed putting on that pin, what is it for? what does it do? It’s initial inspiration was a cheesy film trailer but just as Philips Shed Project isn’t mine, my film needed to answer its own questions in its own way. My film needs to introduce the new characters of Global Warming, E.L.E. and Captain Climate Chaos, it doesn’t need a story or a plot it needs to wet people’s appetite to find out more and link into the social media communication practice. It will live very briefly for a few hours at the Art Centre and then will go onto TikTok and IG.
How did I reach this understanding? By visiting Miranda Whall’s work for a second time and asking the artist questions on intention, what worked, what didn’t, how they felt about that public space. One visit didn’t achieve that and Art is a complex language.
I was feeling ground rush and pure panic that filming days were slipping away, then all of a sudden we got that small window and my fellow students Nidhi and Abid rushed out to the beach in Borth with my son and husband. A collaborative art piece is the most marvellous experience as creatives bring so much to your own practice. Abid was the character Art, Art is distracting and in this case Art had to walk. Inspired by Pina Bausch Seasons March, the ice clouds defused the sunlight on to Art’s performance. Nidhi’s E.L.E extinction Level Event eyes had to cope with sand and sea winds and I’m not sure the fetish boots were comfortable either, but we got it done and all I have left to shoot is a warm sunset with the Capt. and Glo. and of course a complex edit! Here is a clip from ‘Art’s Walk’.
The artist presentations were fascinating and I used my notes of Matthew, Richard, Abid and Sophia’s presentation to write this Dada poem.
Humanity is the ‘Death Star,’ we are the planet’s killers
An Empire of socially crafted and acceptable slavery
A western industrial revolution of consequence
The Great War of the Earth
The ghosts of our future dispatch a message for us now
A Ritual, a social warp and weft, of what could have been
Now a silent protest,
PLEASE
Less is more, a protest of absence.
Research was quite in-depth this week and took on a nasty twist with the latest IPCC report suffice it to say, there really is no more time.