I am beginning to feel repetitive when I write how useful these tutorials are; I generally come away with a useful piece of information, reference, or thought. Today was no exception. We discussed the video piece I am developing for the final show and the collective picture making. Judith commented on the lack of coherency between these two aspects of my work. Superficially I agree and I am still working out the ‘logic’ that connects them. It is there but verbalising it feels quite hard. At present I am continuing work in both directions because it ‘feels’ right. I think there is a connection, at least intellectually if not visually. The difference in the look of each type of work is extreme. And this is inevitable; I am not the author of the collective pieces, although I am the author or the circumstances under which the pieces are made. I am also dictating the ‘rules’ that define the way the piece is made.
The interesting word that came up in relation to the video piece was ‘anxiety’. I’m not sure if Judith said it made her feel anxious or she saw it as anxious. I had shown the video to a friend earlier who said it made her feel anxious. I had intended to convey dislocation or tension between image and movement by splitting the screen, originally into a grid, finally into three bands, in parody of the ‘rule of thirds’. The images in the middle section constantly degrade and re-define themselves. I suspect this is at least partly a physiological reaction to the way each section appears to move in different directions. I shall have to wait until the final show to see how this piece is viewed.
Hearing mention of anxiety reminded me of a moving image piece I made just before starting the MA, a grey grid showing a barely perceptible flicker of colour, it also felt disconcerting to look at. It also made me think back to an installation I made for the Norwich fringe in 2006. Funnily enough this installation contains the conceptual seeds for both aspects of my present research. I had worked, as a community artist, with people with mental health problems who we encouraged to create pieces with no preconceived plan. I was interested to try and make a work with no intentional content – quite hard – I also created a soundtrack designed to disorientate the viewer. I don’t believe I thought very much about why I wanted to do this, it felt like the right thing to do, so I did it. So now I have to think about why I want to create tension in the viewer or audience and why I think it is important to ask people to make work collectively according to a (very limited) set of guidelines laid out by me.