Sometimes the loneliness feels comforting.
Loneliness
To start off I didn’t get editing my film this week; Mike took sick so I’m going to try editing it myself. I’ve already edited the individual video clips, I now need to organise and arrange them together.
I have included a few clips below as another sneak peak of what will be in the video. Again like last week, the quality of the videos doesn’t seem to be uploading great so you will have to manually change that.
I’m looking forward to showing all of you the completed video next week. I should have it uploaded to my Youtube channel and will include a link to it in my week 9 notebook.
Friday 25th November
Today we had our presentations on words relating to the chosen project, ‘The Worry Doll’ by Jennifer.
My chosen word was ‘Body‘.
I chose this word with my initial thoughts being, ‘it will be easy to find artworks that would be suitable and relate’.
However I was wrong.
I struggled to find works that I truly liked and that I could see would related to ‘The Worry Doll’ project.
I initially thought of discussing artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his meaningful sculptures showing love to his partner who sadly died of AIDS.
I decided against talking about this artist as he has come up various times within our other workshops but I did do my own research on him as a potential candidate within my proposal form.
I looked at many other artists and artworks but again none were finding their place in my heart.
There came along another two artists that I was tempted to talk about in my presentation, Antony Gormley and Malin Bülow. Instead I decided to use an image of each of their artworks as slide backgrounds. This was a decision which I shouldn’t have made as some of the presentation feedback I got suggested that it was a bit confusing. I now realise that this was an issue as I made the mistake of forgetting to mention to the group that these were just artists who I had a look at and whose work I enjoyed.
The art piece that I did end up discussing in my presentation is called ‘Your happening, has happened, will happen‘.
I couldn’t find the name of the exact artist who created this piece which is a pity but it is by some of the 90 people who go by the name ‘Studio Olafur Eliasson’.
‘Studio Olafur Eliasson’ consists of a group of artists, architects, craftsmen, art historians and more who are based in Berlin.
Above is a small video taken of people interacting with the piece.
When visitors enter the space they discover a display that amplifies their movements, inviting their engagement and interaction.
In this space you only see things as you move. The more you move your body, the more your projected bodies move.
I find that this relates to the worry doll as in traditional and modern times, worry dolls are given to brooding, anxious or sorrowful children. The children tell the doll their worries and fears then hide it under their pillow before going to bed. In this art piece, to interact with the piece you have to move about almost like a child, letting go of you worries and fears to create beautifully illuminated silhouettes of your body.
When I was looking at this particular piece I found that it was an installation of an exhibit. The exhibit was located in Tokyo and all of the artwork included in it was from the group of artists ‘Studio Olafur Eliasson’.
The Exhibit as a whole is called ‘Sometimes the river is the bridge‘.
The concept behind the exhibit is sustainability and trying to reduce our carbon footprint.
I was really intrigued by the challenge that was faced to get all the pieces of artwork from Berlin to Japan while keeping the carbon footprint down.
In my presentation I showed a map from the exhibit webpage, the link to see it is here:
https://olafureliasson.net/sometimesthebridge/
If you scroll through it you will find the map.
The artworks travelled first by truck from Berlin to Hamburg. Then via Poland and Russia. From there they took a train to Taicang, China. Once they arrived in the port of Taicang they were loaded onto a ship to Japan. Each crate had a drawing machine attached to it that recorded the movements of the train and ship along the way. These drawings then also became a part of the exhibit.
I thought that this idea of the journey related to our soon to be workshop as we will be making a journey with the Worry Doll from the school of art to wherever we end up displaying it. And another journey with the doll whenever we burn it.
Our journey isn’t as vast as what all of these artworks went through but it is a journey none-the-less and that is the beauty of it.
Unlike my presentation last week, I decided to keep my powerpoint quite simple and have most of my notes on a script and within my head. Since I used two links I found that I didn’t need to put much within the PP.
The feedback I received from my peers was dominantly positive which surprised me and is actually really good for me to hear. The negatives I did receive were much appreciated and I will try to use them as guidelines for my next presentation.
yes I also am looking forward to seeing the complete film, I do hope you have managed to edit is as you want it, s steep learning curve for sure, I wonder if you reached out to Chris once you learned Mike was unwell, I hope so? Yes including the images by other artists in your PP was what lead to my confusion, great you got feedback on that because I wasn’t able to articulate that at the time. Olafur Eliasson is a very well known and important artist so I guess this is his collaboration hub/studio, interesting, maybe the learning in this is not to rush through apologetically the fact that you couldn’t find out exactly what and who the Olafur Eliasson Studio is but rather explain what you found out while searching, rather what you do know, as a culture we have an unnecessary negativity around ‘not knowing’ and so feel ashamed about what we don’t know, how silly and curious that is, it is vital that artists do not know, they need to not know in order to ask the important questions, artists are the question makers.