Had a great tutorial with Nathan which is really helpful with my reflection for the manifesto. I’m amazed by how well language can be used to express the deepest thought in one’s conscious and how writing can help push one to dig and capture all the little thoughts that are often ignored or taken for granted while important or essential to link ideas or concepts and practice throughout a project. I realized how this reflection writing could help me be more clear of my practice in return. Nathan made some edits and suggestions to my draft:
Surrounded with all kinds of advertisements in every aspect of daily life, unconfident consumers are unconsciously manipulated to form values conveyed by hidden ideas of advertisements. When the values become major within society, social pressures increase for consumers whose original beliefs and desires conflict with the demands of the society, which follows struggle in the conscious self.[1]The aim/goal of my photography work is to show this conscious struggle to people suffering from not being able to achieve authenticity, the way of existing where you are in full control, regardless of external pressure.[2]WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
I created two sets of slides, each consisting of four photos in sequence of a clear female or male figure to blur gradually with “cross-dissolve” while the contrast between the color of the background and figures’ clothes gets stronger. Both the background and figures were projected with unreadable dense texts. It is a process of being exposed to increasing manipulating information and becoming more confused to determine opinions of existence.
The idea of projecting texts came from Fiona Banner’s installation work, 1066, wall projection as part of ‘Words to be Spoken Aloud’, Turner Contemporary, 2013.Banner interpreted a visual scene in the Bayeux Tapestry with winding and increasingly dense texts to show the brutality of the Battle of Hastings.[3][4]Another inspiration was from Shirin Nashat’s Unveiling, a series of photographs of Islamic females’ face or body written with poems expressing female independence to question the culture of “the veil” and female identity in Islam.[5]The texts I used were the scene I wrote for the manifesto where “I” struggled with making a choice between pasta and salad for dinner. It shows theforces and influence advertisements bring to consumers.
To further suggest the power of shaping cultural norms of advertisements, I set the color of background same as the figures’ clothes initially, creating an effect of the figures getting absorbed into the background, which was inspired by Anthea Hamilton’s installation work, Brick Suit.[6]
Using blur to capture disorientation was originally inspired by Amrou Al-Kadhi and Holly Falconer’s portrait, GlamrouI saw at the exhibition ‘Kiss My Genders’, Hayward Gallery, 2019. A triple exposure is used to describe the experience that can fracture your sense of self as well as hold it together.[7] HOW DOES IT DO THIS? HOW DOES IT ACHIEVE THIS? HOW DID IT MAKE YOU FEEL? HOW AND WHY DID YOU ATTEMPT TO USE A SIMILAR TECHNIQUE IN YOUR WORK? I decided on only displaying blur through long exposure instead of a clearly layered image because it expressed “struggle”, “unclear”, “mess” and “hesitation” better. HOW DOES IT DISPLAY THESE? COULD YOU DEVELOP THIS FURTHER? HOW MIGHT YOU ATTEMPT TO DO THAT?
I have also experimented and thought about other medias to address this phenomenon. I did an installation set with wafted teared colorful paper strips as background projected with a female saying the texts I wrote for the manifesto under constantly color-changing lighting. The creation of distorted background was inspired by Pascal Gaudefroy’s installation work, Litote & Hyperbole. The color scheme was influenced by Fiona Banner’s installation work, CMYK vs RGB. To further create the sense of uncertainty, I added Echo Delay Audio Effect. However, photography work is better displayed in a zine than installation. I also had a plan for overlaid text printing on reflective material such as mirror card. When viewers read the texts, they could see their distorted face, which encourages self-reflection. HOW DOES THIS EXPRESS YOUR ORIGINAL IDEA? WHAT DOES THIS TEACH THE READER?
In conclusion, in response to our group manifesto about manipulating advertisements, I focused on its effect on individuals and visualized it through texts projection and gradually blurred portrait photographs. EVALUATION – WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM THIS PROJECT/PROCESS? DID YOU ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL? WHY/WHY NOT? WHAT WOULD YOU DIFFERENTLY WITH MORE TIME? WHAT WOULD YOU DIFFERENTLY/MORE OF IF YOU WERE TO WORK ON THIS MORE?
[1]My view on this has been inspired by my reading of Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992). Alex, Wood & P, Linley & John, Maltby & Michael, Baliousis & Stephen, Joseph, ‘The Authentic Personality: A Theoretical and Empirical Conceptualization and the Development of the Authenticity Scale’, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55:3 (2008), 385-399. And Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008).
[2]Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962).
[3]‘Postscript: An Ambitious Take on Conceptual Art and Writing at the Power Plant’, Caitlin Sutherland (31 July 2013) https://www.dailyserving.com/2013/07/postscript-an-ambitious-take-on-conceptual-art-and-writing-at-the-power-plant/[Accessed 13 August 2019].
[4]‘Fiona Banner: The Naked Ear’, Fifth Street Gallery https://www.frithstreetgallery.com/exhibitions/fiona-banner-the-naked-ear[Accessed 13 August 2019].
[5]‘Shirin Neshat Unveiling (1993)’, Hemispheric Institute https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/hidvl-collections/item/2727-shirin-neshat-unveiling-1993[Accessed 13 August 2019].
[6]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2019).
[7]Amrou AI-Kadhi and Holly Falconer, Glamrou(London: Hayward Gallery, 2019), p.
I have to think further about these questions and develop my reflection.
We had a group discussion on the zine. Some members suggested me to add some texts on my pages to help readers to understand. I think I’ll try it to see how the layout is like. We’re going to integrate all our pages together tomorrow.
Eva Wang 