I’m still very impressed and a big fan of Niko’s work. It’s crazy how effective he is producing work, although I have a hard time understanding most of it… I’m still a bit confused about Nathan’s reaction to one piece of his work. I understand that it can be inappropriate to approach a serious subject without actual related experience and the effect of the work can hurt people who had those experiences. But wasn’t what Niko did trying to question those kinds of artwork? Anyway, I can’t have my attitude towards this without clearly understanding this work and the history, although I don’t think the value of Niko’s other work should be denied.

After seeing Niko’s work, I felt the subject of my work was so small that it’s not worth talking about… But I don’t really have a choice as the focus of my current world is myself.

Most of the conversations were about reading the meanings of my photos. Multiple people related the keyboard letters to technology although my point was communication. But I would say technology was a reason of my difficulty of communicating with the outside world. It’s good that people could read isolation, connectivity, sadness and loneliness from the photos, which were the overall atmosphere I wanted to convey.

I thought about the title today and I decided on FUTILITY. FREE OF USELESS ATTEMPTS was suggested in the critique but FREE isn’t very appropriate to describing the feeling of frustration after the useless attempts as I still have the desire to fill my empty inside but I don’t know how.

Jiao mentioned about removing myself from the photos. But In those settings, the interaction between me and the frame is necessary.

Adam suggested I could photograph situations of the useless attempts or moments when I feel those situations in different spaces online or offline without obvious staging, or maybe another staging. I still don’t know what to do next… I need think.

Adam also questioned the significant objects I used in the photos and he thought the relationship between the photos and the camera needed to be strengthened, which I had kind of realized. I’m not sure if I understand the second problem right though, the function and effect of photography don’t really show well in my photos. He also said my previous 5 photos were seductive but not the 6 photos. I guess they’re not nice photography work but just documentations of staged scenes. I think I do have to balance the setting of objects and the overall visual effect. It’s very hard for me to solve these two problems as they’re my usual way of thinking and producing work. But I know I have to face it and try to deal with it although I don’t know if I am able to at all.

I’m miserable. I don’t have belief in myself at all.

Most people had produced more and better work than previous projects, which brought me so much pressure… I feel I don’t have enough work both in quantity and quality although I’d say I have tried my best.

I’m especially struggling with the discussion about openness and closeness, and potential possibilities of an artwork. I think it has much to do with the motivations. Some artists make art for other people. They explore themes and raise questions while they don’t necessarily have answers or certain attitudes themselves, leading to the openness and more possibilities of their work, especially like Hanna, Jiao or Terasa’s work. But my motivation is simply self-expression of certain situations, which leads to closeness and maybe just an end to the work I have produced. It somehow sounds negative and it frustrates me especially today. I’m just thinking, if I don’t have the urge to express my specific emotion or attitude, why I want to produce work. I understand many topics can be very interesting, but what’s the point of working on them?

I read a sentence from Edward Hopper and I found it very similar to my process of working:

It takes a long time for an idea to strike. Then I have to think about it for a long time. I don’t start painting until I have it all worked out in my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hopper

I have to have a clear idea of what I’m doing and why I’m doing before I start doing anything. I can’t really stand not having a reason for every element in my work. Thinking takes a lot of time to me, sometimes more than practice, which is also a reason why I’m not able to produce a lot of work.

But seeing other people’s work today, I deeply doubt myself in doing art. Maybe it’s just not how art works. Maybe I’m just not able to make art. Maybe what I’m doing just doesn’t and will not make sense. Maybe the way how I understand and make art is just way too simple. I really don’t know. And I have no idea what to do next. Again, I’m at a point where I feel unable to do anything meaningful in the world and there’s no exit for me but keeping going.

Had a tutorial with Isabel yesterday. She asked me which series of photos I preferred and I picked the later one because I thought the narrative of the later one was tighter or more closely related to my idea of useless attempts to try to fill the empty inside with external distractions.

Isabel was interested in the clothes I piled up in the photos. She shared Colin Smiths’ paintings of wardrobes and clothes. I thought of a painting I saw before and I found it’s really one of those paintings.

Isabel said the fluffy hanged clothes indicated absence of people and the clothes in my photos made people curious especially when I was buried with only a part of my face showing. It reminded me of what Clare said about how I always showed a lot of things in the photos, however, not showing could make viewers curious. It makes me think again about what I take photos of. My photos have always been serving the narratives I want to tell, which decides the props, space, models and their positions I use. I hardly think about what they would make viewers feel. I only think about if the photos make sense for the narratives. I’m not really after good photos but expression. But if the photos are not good or interesting, no one will care about the ideas. I’m still not sure how to deal with it and it’s a bit frightening to doubt what I’ve been doing. I guess more practice would help maybe.

Isabel also mentioned private human activities unfolded in domestic places and interior space related to psychology could be interesting. She shared Giorgio De Chirico’s paintings of studio space and Freud museum.

She also shared Edward Hopper and mentioned architectural features, different private spaces could be interesting. I looked through his paintings and I kind of liked their sense of silence.

I was not sure how big I wanted to make the prints and Isabel said small pieces would be more private for single viewers while big ones would be public for multiple viewers. The prints may also be piled up on the floor.

She also shared The emergence of the interior by Charles Rice, The experience of architecture by plummer and the domestic space reader. She mentioned the relationship between different culture and interior, different rooms, different areas of interior such as cupboard or kitchen could be interesting. I still don’t know what to do next. Have to think further.

Made my first prints yesterday. Thought for two hours about the size of the prints… Finally I decided to go big because I wanted the viewers to keep a distance to the photos. The photos are about the failure to connect the inside and outside world, so I think certain distance relates to the theme better. I wanted to use Epson but it’s broken so I could only use colorwave. It’s strange that the color got greener when I converted the file to pdf…

The Past

The present

The future