1) Medium-Photo Series
My family is very sentimental and loves to look at old photographs. My thought was to take old photographs and recreate them now. I would include the same people, try to make the outfits/environment as similar as possible. It would show how much things change over time. it depicts moments captured in history and how people grow. For example, one of my favorite childhood photographs is one of my sister and I dressed up as the stereotypical witch for Halloween. Back then, the situation was fun, exciting, innocent. Halloween and witches meant nothing to me, really. Just a fun holiday and getting to dress up was enough for me. However, in the photo, we are contributing to a culture that consistently portrays Witchcraft in a totally incorrect light. Since then, I've researched and read a lot and I now actually am a Witch. Although I don't get upset or offended with witch costumes or the way Halloween has become so commercialized, I still am adamant about dispelling the negative stereotypes surrounding Wicca and educating people about the religion. So I can show how the old photo and the new one relate to each other, how those moments in time are similar and how they are different. Halloween has become accepted, adored, and commercialized while witches face oppression. (So witches are satanic and evil and green and ugly and eat babies, lets discriminate against them and strip them of their basic human rights and privileges, but lets misappropriate, lets keep their most sacred holiday for ourselves so we can have fun.) In the past, I took part in this and now I aim to change it.
2) Medium-Film; "The Shining" Concept
The film The Shining by Stanley Kubrick is one of my all time favorites. I recently watched the documentary"Room 237", revealing all kinds of crazy symbolism and hidden messages in the movie. (Highly recommend if anyone is a Kubrick fan.) One thing incredibly interesting that I learned was that the Shining can be played forwards and backwards simultaneously and the scenes will match up and relate to each other in some way. They could contain metaphors, foreshadowing, etc. I thought I could try to use this theme in my project-film some kind of story in sequential order, and then use some overlay effect to play the film backwards at the same time so that the scenes match up and relate to each other. I'm still not completely sure what the subject matter would be or what kind of story I would tell, but I will mull over it some more.
3) Medium- print installation
After working in the print making studio, I noticed that after I had been reworking the same stamp over and over, the print gradually started to fade, blur, lose quality. This gave me an idea to make a single print of an object or figure of some kind and then repeat the images closely together so that the resulting effect would be that the object or figure is moving. Not only would the piece capture a moment in time; it also addresses time progression and how things/memories/events/scars/pain/happy times fade or deteriorate over time.
Thank you for posting. All three ideas have merit. I will depend on how you approach each.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I have seen similar ideas posted online as #1 = recreation of a photo years later. This does make sense for time, as it links up directly to time passed and to the present. The subject of halloween/being a witch might come through or might be a subtext. Depends on the shot.
Playing with The Shining sequence sounds exciting. Would you do some sort of split screen? It recalls tales of listening to the Beatles backwards for signs that Paul was dead, or watching the Wizard of Oz and listening to Pink Floyd at the same time. Is this planned? Do we as fans build more into text/art then the artists intend?
The last idea is direct. The process of mass producing a mark will lead to break down of information. For example, a high quality photo that is constantly reduced in pixel resolution will eventually blur and be unrecognizable. What kind of mark would you start with? How large would you work? How big could you take this? Could you fill a room? 50 sheets of 18 x 24" paper? More? Is color important?
KR