Category: Project Proposal

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Project Proposal (final version)

Working title

Outer space/inner worlds : borders, invasions, warfare tactics.

Aims and objectives

I am interested in exploring the various dynamics, of both creation and aggression, between the outer world and the individual’s inner world. I will use photography and video, media ironically considered documentary and objective, to capture and reproduce the way our mind reacts to and reinvents reality and our surroundings.

The following are different angles under which to explore this problematic:

1) visually document the way imagination reinvents physical space.

2) exploring the possibilities of moving image to make dreams/inner worlds “real” and share them with others. Especially, immersive video installations may create a more “real” feelings than images projected on a screen. I hope this may make it possible to engage in a deeper level of communication with the audience.

3) researching the importance of the house and more generally private space in the development of a person’s individuality, and how a house may become a physical projection of its occupier’s inner world.

4) researching the way individuals may project their anxieties onto the physical space.

5) researching tactics employed by authorities to control individuals’ thoughts and behaviours by manipulating the private space available to them. For example, madness as a “political illness” used to make undesirable people disappear.

6) researching coping tactics developed by individuals in response to this attempted control. This may take the form of retreating to one’s inner world, or reclaiming public space.

Context

Historical

My main inspiration is Surrealism and its aim to reconcile the accepted reality with the individual’s imagination, in order to reach a superior reality(“surreality”), encompassing more levels of perception. In particular: dreamscapes (Dorothea Tanning, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst), wandering and Aragon’s concept of “metaphysics of space”, simulation of madness.

Visionary artists (William Blake) and their aim to physically present a self contained imaginary world.

Dada and its critic of the absurdity of modern life.

German expressionist cinema, and its interest in madness.

Urban exploration and psychogeography within situationnism and beyond.

Cinema that blurs the line between a character’s imagined vision and “real events” (Ingmar Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf”, “Persona”, “Though a glass darkly” , Polanski’s “Repulsion”, Resnais’ “Last year in Marienbad” etc …)

Contemporary

Contemporary art aiming to reclaim/subvert public space, such as Simon Poulter’s projections on government buildings and art galleries (http://www.artcritic.co.uk/).

Modern psychogeographers such as Iain Sinclair.

Filmmakers: David Lynch, Ihor Podolchak.

Video Artist Markus Schinwald.

Urban exploration subculture.

“Outsider” Art, as it offers a representation of the maker’s mind “unfiltered” by the current conventions of established art.

Critical theory

I want to make Art that can be enjoyed on different levels and is open to interpretation. I hope the audience will be able to relate my work to their own concerns and experiences, rewrite their own version it, and make it part of their inner worlds. This attitude is shared, among others, by Paul Valéry who wrote “Once the work has been published, the author’s interpretation of it is no more valuable than any other by anyone else” and by David Lynch who consistently refuses to explain his movies and said “one thing can be different for different people […] depending on where [they] are”. This attitude may be related to Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relationnal Aesthetics, with the reserve that I do not involve the audience in the physical production of the actual piece, but rather in the collective elaboration of its meaning. As Lautréamont once said “Poetry will be made by all, not by one.”

The practical consequence is that I will not provide textual explanation of “what a piece is about”. When a commentary is required within the context of academia, I will explain how the original idea came to me and evolved: in fact, I will explain how the piece relates to my own inner world, leaving the audience free to relate it to their own inner world in any other way they judge appropriate.

This attitude relates to the Surrealists’ view that Art should refer to “Life”, as opposed to Art forming a self contained world/language where pieces refer to each others via a set of increasingly obscure references only understandable by the Initiated. In the postmodern era, contemporary art tends to become increasingly self referential, while in cinema, as pointed out by Michael Richardson, the French “Nouvelle Vague” “instituted a sensibility that exalted film above life”, a language where films relate “not [to] lived experience but [to] other films”, an attitude still strong in contemporary cinema via directors like Tarantino. I am not advocating a dumbing down of Art in the attempt to make it “artificially accessible” (such as Social realism, or art with an “educational purpose”), nor am I saying that it is not acceptable to reference others’ artworks within one’s own. Obviously, work made by others is a very important part of an artist’s world. Rather, I am saying that references to other work should stem from the desire to share the appreciation of it with the audience. They should be an invitation to discover it and make it part of their inner world, rather than prerequisite knowledge necessary to the understanding of one’s own work. To borrow André Breton’s words, references “as a form of love” rather than as a tool for exclusion.

Parallel theory

Freud (in particular research on dream images and the concept of the Uncanny).

Michel Foucault, especially his concept of “institution disciplinaire” (“disciplinary institution”) and “normalization”. Antipsychiatry movement.

Interdisplinary Psychology/Architecture research into perception of space by individuals, especially Anthony Vidler’s research about anxiety, phobias and the Uncanny in the built environment.

Generative Theory

Automatism: use of found unstaged compositions and dream visions without attempting to interpret them and without modifying them artificially in order to make them fit a predefined concept.

Dérive: exploration of a place guided by strategic reactions to the characteristics of this place.

Methodology

I continuously gather 2 types of raw material:

1) I collect photographs and video footage from derelict places, and more generally strange “uncanny” places. I try to enter these places without preconceptions, let them tell me their story and react to them rather then impose a model on them that would taint my perception of them (outer space).
2) I keep a record of my own dreams with a visionary content and/or containing interesting images (inner world).

I then look for intersections between “outer space” and “inner world” that can be materialised into an artwork. This is where the theoretical research come into play. By studying theoretical research (in psychology, philosophy, architecture), I gain better understanding of my own subconscious and am more able to identify the various ways I relate to the “outer world”. By studying both theoretical research and artworks by others, I gain better understanding of how other individuals relate to the “outer world”. I can use this knowledge to make artworks that will “resonate” with the audience and create connections between their own inner world and mine using images as an interface.

There are various ways in which “outer space” and “inner world” may interplay within an artwork:

1) for some pieces, the collected images (after processing and editing) are the artwork in itself. The final piece presents the self contained world of the images, that aims to infect the inner world of the viewer.

2) for other pieces, gathered images strike a chord and cause an idea association with a part of my inner world. I then need to create images from scratch to make a physical representation of my inner world and mix them in with the outside images. This type of piece shows the ambiguous, fluctuating border where the outer world invades the inner world as the same time as the inner world reinvents the outer world, so that the line between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred and possibly eventually dissolves.

3) for other pieces, I aim to make real an inner vision (i.e. dream). I either go out and find real things that fit the vision or, if they don’t exist, I create artificial images from scratch.
The final piece reflects how my inner world invades the outer world, claims to be more real than it, and possibly aims to invade the audience’s inner world as well.

In all cases, the physical presentation of the images (for example processing, editing, immersive installations, design of a soundtrack to go with the images) is designed so as to facilitate the viewer’s entering the world of the images.

Outcome

Photographs (as prints and online).
Standalone videos.
Video installations.
Site specific interventions showing videos outside of a gallery context.

Work plan

Continuously: gather material (photographs, video footage, record of visionary dreams). Read books and conduct the theoretical research.

1) sort and edit the gathered video footage. Make a rough edit of the “documentary” part of the videos.
2) Conceptualise and film the “inner world” part of the video. Edit it in with the documentary part to make standalone videos.
3) Investigate alternative ways of presenting videos (immersive installations and screenings outside of a gallery context). Especially consider technical feasibility, legal implications and cost issues. Produce video installations and organise screenings as feasible.
4) Make the photographs and videos available online, along with a presentation of the project, so as to reach a audience outside the gallery space. Investigate a good compromise between interesting presentation and ease of use for non technical expert users.

Possibly: investigate new ways to use the photographs. For the moment I am only planning on using them as standalone photographs, but I do not discount the possibility to use them differently should an idea arise.

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Project proposal draft 2

Working title

Outer space/inner worlds : borders, invasions, warfare tactics.

Aims (1 or 2) + objectives (6)

Research the way our subconscious reinvents reality and our surroundings. the various dynamics between the outer world and the individual’s inner worlds.
– the subjective perception of things around us. using photography and video, media ironically considered documentary and objective
– the surrealists said cinema was like dream made physical. explore the possibilities of video to make dreams/inner worlds (mine or from imagined characters) “real” and share them with others. Especially immersive video installations can create more “real” feelings than just video on a screen. explore than as way to engage in a deeper level of communication with the audience.
– how private space is a physical projection of the occupier’s inner world (both liberating and oppressing projections)
– the house and more generally private space and its importance for the intellectual freedom of individuals
– as a consequence, tactics of controlling individuals’minds by manipulating the private space available to them. madness/sanity border questioned from an “external” viewpoint: i.e. undesirable but “sane” people locked up to get rid of them (political illness)
– coping tactics developed by individuals in response to that. madness/sanity border question from a more internal viewpoint: i.e. alienation slowly becoming madness, where exactly is the border ? “mental escape” (fugues) to avoid unpleasant things.

Context

Historical

My main inspiration is Surrealism and its aim to reconcile the accepted reality with the individual’s imagination, in order to reach a superior reality(“surreality”), encompassing more levels of perception. In particular: dreamscapes (Dorothea Tanning, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst), wandering and “metaphysics of space”, simulation of madness.
Visionary artist both recognised (William Blake) and “outsiders”.
Dada and its critic of the absurdity of modern life.
German expressionist cinema, and its interest in madness
Urban exploration and psychogeography within situationnism and beyond.
Cinema that blurs the line between a character’s imagined vision and “real events” (Ingmar Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf”, “Persona”, “Though a glass darkly” , Polanski’s “Repulsion”, Resnais’ “Last year in Marienbad” etc …)

Contemporary

Contemporary art aiming to reclaim public space, such as Simon Poulter’s projections on the Houses of Parliaments and the White Cube gallery.
Modern psychogeographers such as Iain Sinclair.
Filmmakers: David Lynch, Ihor Podolchak.
Video Artist Markus Schinwald.
Urban exploration subculture.

Critical theory

I want to make Art that is open to be enjoyed on different levels, and does not require knowledge of other Art or specificic cultural references to be appreciated. The key to that is the surrealist concern that Art refers to “Life” not just previously made art, so that a person without cultural reference can enjoy the piece relating to their life experience. Obviously, because previously made art is a very important part of an artist’s own life, the piece will be influenced by various art references. This is OK as long as it is just an innocent reflection of the artist’s love for previous art, not a way of “testing” the cultural knowledge of the audience.

Parallel theory

Freud (in particular research on dream images and the concept of the Uncanny).

Michel Foucault, especially his concept of “institution disciplinaire” (“disciplinary institution”). Antipsychiatry movement.

Interdisplinary Psychology/Architecture research into perception of space by individuals, especially Anthony Vidler’s research about anxiety, phobias and the Uncanny in the built environment.

Generative Theory

Automatism: use of found unstaged compositions and dream visions without attempting to interpret them and without modifying them artificially in order to make them fit a predefined concept.

Dérive: exploration of a place guided by strategic reactions to the characteristics of this place.

Methodology

? collect photographs and footage from derelict places, and more generally strange places (Freud’s the uncanny)
1) for some pieces, these collected images (after processing and editing) are the artwork in itself
2) for other pieces, they cause an idea association in me and I need to create “artificial images” (from scratch) to make a physical representation, and edit them in
3) for other pieces I have an inner vision (i.e. dream) and I’m aiming to make it real. so I either go out and find real things that fit it, ot if they don’t exist, I create images from scratch
maybe it is 1) the outside invading the inside 3) the inside invading the outside 2) the time/place where they clash, where the border is. I’m not sure about this yet

Outcome

Photographs
Videos
Immersive video installations.

Work plan

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Project Proposal draft 1

I am writing the first draft of the project proposal for tomorrow’s chat and will update the “latest draft” page, as well as in this post so a record of successive drafts is kept.

Two interesting research discoveries (need more research in books, as little about it online):

– the surrealist concept of “Métaphysique des lieux” (Metaphysics of places). Apparently originating from Louis Aragon’s novel “Le Paysan de Paris” (The Paris Peasant). It is the reinterpretation of space using imagination. From various critics, the novel highlights the Surrealists’ ambivalence towards the city, an attitude that distinguish them from other modernist movements such as Futurism or Constructivism who worshipped everything modern (cities and technology). It seems there are more complex things to be dug up than the “love for Paris” one usually reads about in introductions to Surrealism. It is definitely a concept I need to research as it relates to my interest in exploring backward and rural places. I only have second hand comments about the book, so cannot write much about it yet. “Paris Peasant” seems to be the key text about ambivalence towards cities, and possibly some bits from Breton’s “Nadja” in a lesser measure.

– In 1930, André Breton and Paul Eluard wrote a collaborative poem “L’immaculée Conception” (Immaculate Conception). They had studied various psychiatric textbooks and real writings from mentally ill people, and attempted to put themselves in a state of “simulated madness” before using automatic writing to produce texts similar to the ones written by real patients. They wrote a couple of texts simulating various mental conditions. The goal of the experiment was to prove the line was very thin between the “normal” and “insane” mind, and the possibility of madness was present in any mind. I feel this experiment relates to my two installation ideas: the “autistic box” simulating the experience of a self-sufficient inner world, and the installation simulating the feeling of being lost in order to create disquiet in the viewer.

************************************************************************

I was not yet able to write a proper proposal. I need to read more things in order to have a clearer idea. What I’ve done is reread everything I’ve written in this blog (and on random notes), isolate what I think are the most importance concepts, and sort them in order to fill the different sections of the project proposal. I did not try to write an organised text at this point. I was not able to find anything for paralell theory, and did not write anything for methodology. I think I am not sure what should be in methodology: it seemed like a mix of “generative theory” and outcome to me.

Working title

Outer space/inner worlds : borders, invasions, warfare tactics.

Aims (1 or 2) + objectives (6)

Research the way our subconscious reinvents reality and our surroundings. the various dynamics between the outer world and the individual’s inner worlds.
– the subjective perception of things around us. using photography and video, media ironically considered documentary and objective
– the surrealists said cinema was like dream made physical. explore the possibilities of video to make dreams/inner worlds (mine or from imagined characters) “real” and share them with others. Especially immersive video installations can create more “real” feelings than just video on a screen. explore than as way to engage in a deeper level of communication with the audience.
– how private space is a physical projection of the occupier’s inner world (both liberating and oppressing projections)
– the house and more generally private space and its importance for the intellectual freedom of individuals
– as a consequence, tactics of controlling individuals’minds by manipulating the private space available to them. madness/sanity border questioned from an “external” viewpoint: i.e. undesirable but “sane” people locked up to get rid of them (political illness)
– coping tactics developed by individuals in response to that. madness/sanity border question from a more internal viewpoint: i.e. alienation slowly becoming madness, where exactly is the border ? “mental escape” (fugues) to avoid unpleasant things.

Context

Historical

Above all Surrealism and its aim to reconcile the accepted reality with the individual’s imagination, in order to reach a superior reality, encompassing more levels of perception
especially: dreamscape paintings, wandering and metaphysics of space, simulation of madness.
19th century visionaries such as Blake
Dada and its critic of the absurdity of modern life
German expressionist cinema, and its interest in madness
“Antipsychiatry” philosophers
Urban exploration and psychogeography within situationnism and beyond
Cinema exploring consciousness (Lynch, Bergman, Polanski etc …)

Contemporary

Contemporary art aiming to reclaim public space, it is usually performance art. For example: it is forbidden to take photographs in malls, and some outdoor city centre streets are sold for private use because they mostly contain shops. Simon Pulter’s projections on the Houses of Parliaments and the white cube gallery.
Modern psychogeographers such as Iain Sinclair.
David Lynch

Critical theory

The surrealist concern of Art not being made exclusively for the cultural elite to discuss it between themselves, but open to everyone. This has nothing to do with paternalist attitude of making “simple” art (such as social realism) , but making Art that is open to be enjoyed on different levels. The key to that is that Art refers to “Life” (Ado Kyrou against the “Auteur” cinema) not just previously made art, so that a person without cultural reference can enjoy the piece relating to their life experience. Obviously, because previously made art is a very important part of an artist’s own life, the piece will be influenced by various art references. This is OK as long as it is just an innocent reflection of the artist’s love for previous art, not a way of “testing” the cultural knowledge of the audience.

The same way, politics are part of life, so most artworks will have some political connotations to them. If the artist is concerned with a political issue, they will naturally express it in their Art. But a piece should not be made solely to advertise a political idea. Art is not propaganda or advertising. Art should engage the audience into thinking for themselves, not tell them what to think.

Parallel theory
Maybe contemporary, much more moderate versions of antipsychiatry sush as the people who criticise the hegemony of cognitive behavioural therapy in contemporary mental health systems ?

Generative Theory

Automatism:
-unstaged compositions
-used of pictures seen in dreams/visions without attempting to find out what they “mean” and without modifying them artificially in order to make them fit a “model”.

Methodology

collect photographs and footage from derelict places, and more generally strange places (Freud’s the uncanny)
1) for some pieces, these collected images (after processing and editing) are the artwork in itself
2) for other pieces, they cause an idea association in me and I need to create “artificial images” (from scratch) to make a physical representation, and edit them in
3) for other pieces I have an inner vision (i.e. dream) and I’m aiming to make it real. so I either go out and find real things that fit it, ot if they don’t exist, I create images from scratch
maybe it is 1) the outside invading the inside 3) the inside invading the outside 2) the time/place where they clash, where the border is. I’m not sure about this yet

Outcome

Photographs
Videos
Immersive video installations.

Work plan

?

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How to pitch my project ? – Space and consciousness – the unpremeditated – Surrealim is dead anyway

This post won’t be a well thought-out well organised dissertation on some subject but rather a list of issues/uncertainties I have about how to pitch my research project according to the structure given to us last week. In particular, how to phrase the research question and how to pitch it within the contextual categories: history, contemporary, critical theory, parallel theory, projective or generative theory.

The main problem I have is I know what types of artwork I want to make but am unsure about how to pitch it within a coherent research project. It’s like there are a couple of different threads I want to explore, and they are all somehow related to the big soup of things I may call “interests, obsessions and inspiration” which share lots of similar themes but I’m not fully sure how I may knot these threads into a bullet-proof research question.

Bluntly, this is how I came up with my initial research proposal: I have been doing the ghost houses for 3 years because I like exploring them, I find them fascinating. I had been doing (and went on doing) other things I personally found equally interesting before doing the ghost houses (photographs of woods where light was very fairy tale-like, random wood sculptures, dream paintings, found objects assemblage) but those were constantly rejected from exhibitions. Then out of nowhere, the ghost houses started being accepted to about a third of the exhibitions I offered them to, with on top of that quite a few of “sincere” (i.e. personalised rejection letter with comments, not standard letter) sorry-we-think-they’re-great-but-don’t-quite-fit-the-subject refusals. To me it was an amazing success rate. It seemed when I started the ghost houses, I had unknowingly started making fashionable artworks !!! Indeed, when you look in AN, there are quite a lot of events going on about space, urban, the built environment and such. These is obviously a fashion going on about that. I was completely unaware of it when I started the ghost houses, I did them because I found them fascinating. But, hey, I’m not suicidal either, if one of the things I do is fashionable by sheer luck, it has to be in my research project !

So exploring derelict places became part of the research project. It could not, however, be the complete research project for several reasons:
1) I don’t live near the ghost houses and can only explore them in summer (derelict places in England are heavily guarded old public institutions that require a lot of jackass skills to get in). Even if I lived near them, I’m not sure I would like to spend all my week ends in places where there might me asbestos, pigeon droppings and such. A couple of times per year wearing a good dust mask won’t kill me, but I would not like to spend my life in there.
2) You cannot predict the productivity of a ghost house. It may be locked up, wrecked, empty, too dark or without anything interesting in it. It is not only in the Art world that space/the built environment has become fashionable over the last 2 years, urban exploration as a hobby has become hype, with dedicated websites flourishing. Some urban explorers seek fame and glory from it, advertising their explorations with exact location name as trophies. The consequence being that the place owner just has to google the name of their property to learn about the unwanted visitor, and heavily lock up the place, making it inaccessible to others (I have even been wondering whether this consequence was not intentional. After all, the rarer the trophy, the more valuable). The best places I had planned to visit this summer were heavily locked up after some high visibility reports were put online about them … Thankfully, this type of behaviour is not too common and most urban explorers are relatively discreet and helpfully share tips about access to places. While I’m at it, I just would like to state than the urban exploration moto is “take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints”, so it is a peaceful, non destructive activity.
3) I might get bored of the ghost houses, in which case I’ll stop, however fashionable they might be.

So the research project had to have other things in it. I had been making paintings of dreams, and love cinema exploring consciousness, so the obvious was to make videos inspired by dreams and inner worlds.

Then came the issue of how to knot those 2 apparently unrelated threads. This is the main issue I am researching in books at the moment. Instinctively, I know space and consciousness are related, but I do not have a couple of smart quotations to prove it (tough luck). Why do I know it instinctively ? One of my favourite paintings is Birthday by Dorothea Tanning. The corridor seems to go on indefinitely, there is a mirror on the left but the real space does not seem any more real than the reflection. It seems this beautiful strange house is not the outer world but the (infinite) inner world of the artist.

Dorothea Tanning - Birthday

I’ve always seen my house as a shelter: I can make it look the way I like (since a teenager, I have skimmed bric a brac shops and garage sales, lovingly doing up old fashioned objects in the colors and patterns I like), and in it I can do whatever (harmless thing) I like without the fear of being marked as odd. To me a house is a private place where people are free to be themselves away from the judgemental looks of others. See also Virginia Woolf’s essay “A room of one’s own”: people need a private space to be able to think independently. When I am invited in other people’s houses, I look at the colours they chose, the objects they like and I feel I know the host more intimately thanks to those. I see their house as the closest approximation to a physical projection of somebody’s inner world. Many Raw artists actually takes this statement literally, and turn their whole house into a huge artwork, creating their own self contained universe with a unique mythology.

A recurrent theme in films and books set in the former Soviet Union (Dr Zhivago, The Master and Margarita) are the dreadful communal housing, and the nosiness, gossips, mutual spying that came with them. What was probably started as an emergency war-time measure to give decent housing to everyone was soon turned into a control instrument to make people conform by encouraging neighbours to spy on and denounce each other. The recurrence of the theme shows how traumatising it must have been for people to be suddenly deprived of their private space like this. One of the selling point of Capitalism was that, within Capitalism, contrary to the Eastern Bloc, people were granted the right to individuality and privacy. Yet, today, many young adults with decent, steady jobs cannot afford a private space and are forced to live with perfect strangers met through the small ads well into their late 30s. Flatshare are contemporary Communal housing. It is not greed but flatshare-phobia that made me take a boring but reasonably lucrative engineer job in the first place. Open space offices are another contemporary example of the use of space as an instrument of mind control. In contemporary UK, people do not talk of “houses” anymore but of “property”. What used to be an intimate space where people were free to be themselves is now a commodity passed from hand to hand every 3 years in order to reap the profit from speculation on it.

In many movies, madness manifests itself as a distortion of space and time. In David Lynch’s films, there a recurring image of a corridor with drapes whenever a character goes insane, looses grip on reality or feels a menace. In many of his films, the inside architecture of the houses where the character live do not make sense (at least not within Euclidian geometry …): the inside seems far too big compared to the outside, there seem to be doors and corridors leading from everywhere to everywhere, characters walk around the house and they seem to go through the whole of it as though the house was built as an endless circle. In many interviews, Lynch confesses an obsession with houses: he sees them as self contained worlds were dreadful things happen, unknowingly of the outside world. So his vision of houses is tainted with menace and claustrophobia. Strange architecture is also present in German expressionist movies. In Last Year in Marienbad, the characters seem trapped in the immense hotel, going round in endless spatio-temporal circles, unable to leave the space until their mind makes sense of what is happening. In Polanski’s Repulsion, Catherine Deneuve, alone with her hallucinations, traps herself in her flat, a refuge turned menacing prison. Generally, in movies, people often drive themselves mad in close spaces (Kubrick’s Shining). In popular culture, the haunted houses and poltergeist phenomenon suggest a strong link between people’s minds and the places they used to inhabit.

So a house, a shelter, place and freedom and projection of one’s inner world may very quickly turns into a prison, a projection of one’s anxieties and obsessions. Where/when is the turning point or the trigger, or are both aspects constantly present ? Are they the same thing ? This question is definitely one of my obsessions.

Yet, I don’t think I want to call my research project “space and consciousness” or something like that, because this is not all I see in the ghost houses. Another important aspect of them is the unpremeditated compositions and putting my own meaning on something that already exists by itself. I feel it is an important part of my art process as I was already exploring something similar when I made the random wood sculpture. So I don’t want to leave this aspect out of the research project.

When I said “madness manifests itself as a distortion of space and time”, there is also the time factor that I could not explore in photography and paintings, but that I will use in moving image.

So in the end, the only common thing I could find in my obsessions and interests is subjectivity. The subjectivity of one individual’s vision. The problem is, this does not make a research question ! So I decided that the best solution was to call the project Digital Surrealism, since the surrealists were themselves interested in many of the things I am want to explore (dreams, consciousness, randomness). That will do the trick, I thought happily …

But then I’m reading “Surrealism and Cinema” by Michael Richardson, where he says that David Lynch’s work has nothing to do with Surrealism because Lynch has no desire to change the world, and his interviews show he has a bad understanding of what Surrealism was. Indeed Lynch is no revolutionary (though I have no clue what his political leanings are, and I don’t care). The interviews in question, I don’t remember them if I read them so I cannot comment on the level of expertise in Lynch’s understanding of Surrealism within Art History until I read them again. However, my humble opinion is that, even if David Lynch was a trotskyist and held a Phd in Art History about Surrealism, he could not be a Surrealist anyway because Surrealism as an Art movement died in the 60s at latest. In passing, Richardson does not comment about Lynch’s use of images he does not know the meaning of (the blue box in Mulholland Drive) and his use of altered states of consciousness (namely transcendental meditation) in order to find ideas for artworks without being censored by his “Conscious”: he dismisses Lynch as a neo/post-surrealist purely on the ground of intent, ignoring method or process.

Anyway, even when Surrealism was alive, there was no clear definition of who was or was not a Surrealist. Breton and the hardcore wrote theoretical texts about the principles of Surrealism. Some of these texts are better forgotten for Surrealism’s sake, especially homophobic rants and ludicrous dogma about women’s say in the practical organisation of sexual intercourse. But many artists gravitated around Surrealism without being formally part of the movement, which did not prevent them from being invited to take part in surrealist exhibitions. They were attracted mostly by its aura of freedom. This included many women artists without formal training, who were not bothered by Breton’s outdated views on female sexuality, or simply granted them the amount of attention they deserved … Some of these artists did not want to join to preserve their independence, because the authoritarian personality of Breton annoyed them (Leonor Fini), or simply because they could not be bothered (especially Belgian painters who were away from Paris). Later on, Breton became more dogmatic and starting “excluding” lots of artists for all kinds of dubious reasons. This did not prevent those excluded dissidents from going on making their work, with or without Breton’s approval.

Even if the theoretical writings about Surrealism were completely free of rubbish, no contemporary artists could be expected to follow them literally nowadays. They were written in the 20s and 30s and the social conditions in which the artwork are produced have drastically changed.

All this to say that what at first seemed a convenient title now seems like a needlessly dangerous magnet for criticism by hair splitters who think they have the authority to decide who is or is not influenced by Surrealism in 2009. There was a hint in the chat that in the “contemporary context” part of our project proposal, we could give names of current academic research. So this seems to imply that the way we pitch our research proposal could influence academic opportunities we have at the end of the MA. With that in view, it seems suicidal to choose a title that is like a criticism magnet, however convenient it might have sounded at first.

So it’s now 00.01, I have written 2352 words and I still don’t know how to call my research project …

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My Project

Research Question

I am interested in researching the relevance of the concepts of surrealism to contemporary art using the new possibilities offered by digital media. In the tradition of Surrealism, I do not see my research as a rigid question resolved using a linear, predetermined methodology, but rather as free experimentation guided by a set of philosophical principles.

Important above all to me is the refusal to tell people what my Art is “about”. Most of the time, I do not know myself what the work is “about” anyway, all I know is the mental process that lead me to produce it. This mental process, I have no objection to discuss it in a academic context. It is an interesting and enjoyable intellectual game. I will also discuss some interpretations that occurred to me when I looked at the finished piece but these interpretations will be just this: interpretations from an external viewer and none the truer because this external looker happens to be the artist. They will be aimed at starting dialogue and discussion with the audience, not forcefuly imposing a meaning on them. If there is a “right interpretation” attached to a work of Art, the consequence is that only those people from the audience with “the right educationnal background” that can lead them to this “right interpretation” can enjoy the work “the right way”. The others are left out. I do not want my Art to be discriminatory. I want the audience to enjoy (or hate, or get bored by) my work in their very own way, the way that allows my work to strike a chord in their mind and, because my work is the very product of my mind, that creates a very unique connection between my mind and their mind. I believe that, once I decide that a particular piece is “finished”, stop working on it and show it, it aquires an independent life as a concept. I no longer have the right to claim sole understanding of it, anyone has the right to make it a part of their intellectual and inner life. Whether that process involves finding a political interpretation of my work or gazing at the shapes and color is equally fine by me.

Some of the concepts I wish to explore in my research are: the use of randomness and unpremeditated compositions, the study of the way our subconscious reinvents and transforms our surroundings and experiences, the study of dreams as worlds of their own independently of the interpretation of the symbols present in them.

Context

My research is inspired by Surrealism in the wide sense. This includes previous Art movements which inspired or were liked by the Surrealists (Symbolism, German Expressionist cinema, Dada …) and later Art movements born from or inspired by Surrealism (Situationnism, contemporary cinema experimenting with non linear narrative or concerned with subjective visions of events).

For example, my interest in abandoned buildings refers to Urban Exploration, a contemporary subculture influenced by the Situationnists (although most contemporary Urban explorers are unaware of this parentage), the Surrealist’s interest in discarded and outmoded objects and places as highlighted by Walter Benjamin, along with the Celtic concept that places have a spirit. I am inspired by dreamscapes and strange scenes as pictured in the paintings of Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux and Dorothea Tanning. I am inspired by the films of David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman (Hour of the Wolf, Through a glass darkly), “Last year in Marienbad” and also by short experimental films such as “Meshes of the afternoon” by Maya Deren and “Dictio Pii” by Markus Schinwald. I am interested in Raw Art is it offers a raw (unprocessed, unfiltered, void of theorisation) glimpse into another person’s mind.

Generally, I am interested in the discrepancy between physical reality and the individual’s perception of it and the mental processes by which individuals reinvent reality. This could be pictured through fictional scenarios in literature and movies or studied within psychoanalysis or sociology.

Methodology

I will continue the Ghost House project using photography and video. My process is about looking for compositions made out of discarded objects. However tempting, I never move anything to create an artificial composition myself. I look for beauty, harmonious and balanced compositions and cultural meaning into what, to most eyes, would be no more than heaps of rubbish. As the Surrealists would put it, this is about moving beyond the “manifest” reality of things to enter the infinite realm of the “latent”.

Here are some of the ghost house pictures with some examples of possible “latent” meanings:

The position of the chair, fallen pillow and the paint scaling looking as though nightmarish creatures are crawling down from the ceiling strangely evocate a scene of death by hanging to me, which oddly contrast with the peaceful eerie light and the childish apple green tone.

The “immaculate conception” icon discarded on an unmade bed is a very striking example of random occurrences producing a highly composed scene with heavy socio-cultural connotations. But can we be assured of randomness ? Could another visitor before me have composed the scene on purpose ? If so, did I unknowingly take part in some kind of Land-Art Cadavre Exquis when I took my picture ? Does randomness exist ? Or do we call random the events on which our limited perception was not able to impose a external logic ?

Death, crucifixion, nails. A box of pills: are they medicine to delay death or “opium” to forget it ? As soon as I stepped into the windblown white washed deserted cottage, I was overwhelmed by peace and contemplation. This particular scene irresistibly evocates an Ingmar Bergman movie to me.

I simply like this picture as it seems straight out of a David Lynch movie: the red curtains he uses everywhere (on stage in Blue Velvet, draping the corridor in Fred and Rene’s House in Lost Highway, in the red room and log cabin in Twin peaks) and the menacing stairs straight from Twin Peaks.

A picture of Jesus and a piece of paper bearing the word “ejaculation” ! If this had been done on purpose, it would be such a teenage cliché but happening randomly, it is rather fascinating, at least to me. I find the concept of a “randomly generated Cliché” highly entertaining !

Still within my practice of Urban Exploration, I have started a new photo/video/installation project exploring places of imprisonment, especially “unofficial” ones used to make undesirable and/or helpless people disappear discretely. Last summer, I have photographed and filmed inside abandoned and derelict Magdalene convents (used to imprison women), mental asylums and workhouses. Rather than purely documenting the buildings, I am interested in showing how the long gone inmates might have reinvented their surroundings and experience in order to make their pain bearable (fugue state), and how their presence keeps imprinting those buildings long after they are dead. I hope to gain access to more buildings in order to get more footage and images.

I will start sorting and editing the footage shortly, starting with the Magdalene asylums. I will start by making a video showing the inside of 2 abandoned Magdalene asylums in Ireland. Most of the video will be documentary-like, showing the derelict buildings and objects left behind in them. However, shorter flashes will disturb the documentary, as though a poltergeist phenomenon was manifesting itself on screen. These flashes may include: photographs and names of Magdalene inmates, newspaper clippings or official documents about them, historical documents concerning witch hunts and short dream-like sequences recreating the Magdalenes’ dream of escape and freedom. I may also use occult references to the figure of Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic tradition .

I am interested in using digital media to document my dreams, thus moving beyond the technical limitations of painting. I could introduce narrative through traditional video, and use animation if I need to represent a setting or character I cannot find/make in real scale due to budget limit. Still compositions using digital collage and photo manipulation would be appropriate for those dreams that are a vision without narrative. For this part of my work, I keep a Dream Book where I keep record of the dreams when I am awake enough to do so. The records take the from of a written description with subjective comments and very primitive sketches. The process of writing those down enable me to keep a rather clear mental picture, much clearer than any sketch that I could make in the limited amount of time available before I either go back to sleep or tend to daily business. I can then retrieve the mental picture later to work from it. If the mental picture is fading with time, I can revive it by reading the notes. I have discovered that if I do not keep notes, I either completely forget the dream, however vivid, if I go back to sleep, or keep the mental picture for a couple of hours only if I get up straight away.

Installation wise, I would like to create immersive experience inviting the viewer to experience a situation. The way David Lynch uses visuals, loops of events and rhythm to “simulate” the mental state of fugue and invite the viewer to experience it along with the character (in Lost Highway, mostly, but also in Mulholland Drive). I have 2 ideas so far, but am yet unsure about the technical feasibility of either. The first one would be some kind of corridor delimitated by drapes. The viewer would step into it and moving images projected on the drapes would give them the illusion to explore something, while remaining stationary. The visual could create the illusion of getting lost, thus causing disquiet to the viewer. The other idea is some sort of large box in which the viewer would be invited to sit. Visuals would be projected on the walls of the box, and sound played in it. The idea stems from the traditional child game of creating imaginary houses, castles, or other places inside packing boxes. It is also a reference to a (probably fictional) story heard in a movie or TV series, about a high-functioning autist who had created a machine in which they sat and that provided them with everything they need. I found the idea of such a self contained world fascinating. By stepping into the box of the installation, the viewer would be invited to experience a self-contained and self sufficient inner world.

Resources

Hardware: Canon EOS 500D digital camera, Canon HV30 HDV Camera, HP Pavillion laptop.

Software: Gimp for image editing, Serif Movieplus for video editing, Goldwave and Audacity for sound.

Output

Definite: Photographs, Videos, Video installation

And possibly: Still compositions using digital collage and photo manipulation, animation (Flash ?), interactive elements.