Art Studio IIIA - Week 12

 Week 12



Following on from last week's test in the dark space, I wanted to try making a recording of the rewiring of the neuron structures which could potentially be projected over the urn, either instead of or as well as a live performance.

I opted to use a timelaspe sequence, to help illustrate the change over time. The time-lapse was filmed on a dark background, to illustrate the emotional darkness and heaviness, dressed in black as traditional mourning colours, with the neurons kept white to represent light coming from the darkness.


Above - rewiring the hanging neuron structures.

I then wanted to test out a different way of showing to neural remapping, so tested out drawing on Perspex and filming this action. The action involved drawing onto the perspex a neural map and then wiping away the map and redrawing it. The idea is that both of these videos would be on a continuous loop to show the ongoing process.


At the same time of filming these I took a series of stills to give myself another option of presenting the work. For these images I set up in camera multiple exposures to try and illustrate the movement and change over time



Pull back of studio set up - single octabox to camera right, with white reflectors either side. Perspex mounted in-between camera and subject.
 


Altered Realities

Thinking about the experience of grief to like being in a film, it's almost like being an observer in your own world and not part of it, with everything happening around you. I have also been thinking about the expectations from others of what grief looks like and traditional views of women grieving, and how to behave. I was interested in exploring stereotypes of women grieving.  Cindy Sherman's film stills series was a reference point, with role-playing of different characters, and expectations from our society of women in different scenarios.  I also looked at traditional mourning clothing.

Research

Cindy Sherman - Film Stills

 
Left - Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #6, 1977
Right - Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still#17, 1978



Left - Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #7, 1978
Centre - Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979
Right - Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #27, 1979


Traditional Mourning Clothes

 
Left - Gamma-Keystone, Getty Images. 1963, Jackie Kennedy,  
Right - Image form Met website - One of Queen Victoria's mourning outfits. Half mourning, due to the lighter fabric and touches of other colors  

 
Left - R.Round, Getty Images. Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret at the funeral of King George VI
Right - Oli Scarff, Getty Images. 


Expected attire for grieving widows for set timeframes. This was really cemented during Queens Victoria's reign after the loss of her husband Albert (1861), which she wore until her own death (1901).  She set the standard for mourning attire after the loss of a loved one, with the timeframe being anywhere from three months to 2.5 years. The amount of black that was worn and the weight of the material was dictated by the stage of mourning the griever was in. 



During Edwardian times, the style and length of time to don mourning attire began to become more realistic, until the first world war when so many people were grieving somebody. By the 1950's women tended to wear black and other dark colours for 6-12 months, and by the 60's other dark colours were seen at funerals. By the 80's Black was largely worn only at the actual funeral. The change in clothing and length of time in mourning attire, links in with a decline in active involvement in the funeral process, with funeral directors taking over more of the aspects of a funeral. In Western cultures today, for the majority of people, many aspects of death of the funeral process are deemed too unpleasant to deal with, with funeral directors taking on many of these tasks. This may be why there is less understanding of the length of the grieving process and what is entails, with many of us considering being far removed from it.

Today black is still considered customary for funerals in Western culture, although women are not expected to wear black for a set time after the loss. The wearing of black in the situation of a funeral or memorial service makes it clear that the person has suffered a loss and others are able to offer their sympathies. The wearing of a view acts as a way for the mourner to have a layer of privacy, as well as a signifier of grief. 

 “The roots of the tradition of widow's veiling lay in the veils of nuns, which were emblematic of modesty and chastity.  The mourning veil was often described as a means of shielding the mourner, and hiding her grief, though mourning dress was also a form of public display, viewed by some women as an outer expression of inner feelings.".
Janet Regan.  Co-Curator - Death Becomes Her - A Century of Mourning Attire. 2015, The Met

Veils were also at times described as a shield for unwanted social attention during the grieving period - 

"Widows were often represented in popular culture according to certain stereotypes – as women vulnerable and worthy of sympathy, or alternatively, women who were alluring to men, and whose relative freedom presented a potential disruption to the prevailing social order.”
Janet Regan.  Co-Curator - Death Becomes Her - A Century of Mourning Attire. 2015, The Met

Throughout history, funeral wear and fashion have been intertwined, influencing each other, with the crossover between glamour and grief being a vexed question.

Sources - 







Barrowcliff, Jaqui. The Gaze, 2019


Further Making

For this series, I wore traditional black, the first being a 1950's style dress with a variety of black hats, as traditional mourning and funeral clothing. For the images, I opted to hold the small unfired ceramic urn with the kowhai seeding to represent the loss, and to also bring the practice of planting memorial trees into the work.



A veil and a variety of hats were used in the shoot, along with using my hair as a substitute for a veil. The clothing was sourced from a custom hire venue, with some items having a 1960's feel and others from the Victorian era. The top with the leather look shoulders and mess is one I had at home, but to me adds a dystopian movie feel, so I felt this was a fitting vibe for the works also. 





Submerged in Greif

I wanted to bring in an additional element of water into the images - both as representation of tears and also the feeling of drowning in emotion and being overwhelmed.

The effect was achieved through splashing water onto the perspex that was between the camera and the subject. The lighting was keep the same with octobox and reflectors. I then adding in an additional element for the water, by placing a clear tub half filled with water in front of the camera and shooting through it.





The effect of the water wasn't as intense as I was looking for, so to bring out the reflections and refractions more, I changed the lighting t a beauty dish place directly overhead of the subject.




The shoots worked out to be effective in what I was wanting to communicate for the most part, and although I was wanting to stay away from photography and explore other mediums, I feel that trying to install a sculptural piece and using video projection would be too much for me to achieve at this late stage. I am leaning towards presenting s series of images as the final handin.

Tutorial

At the meeting with Simon, we talked about the videos above and how they could work for hand-in, although to me they feel unfinished and unrefined. We also talked about the image and selecting a few for the final presentation. 

We talked about the re-mapping and the fragmentation and confusing elements of this. The idea of being between two worlds, and showing this through a repetitive action. Cubisim was talked about as way of having multiple views of the same subject, understanding something in different ways all at once, with multiple experiences rather than a singular truth. 

Futher Making and refining.

I decided to remake the film, but this time as a video rather than a timelaspe. I still wanted to effect of dipping in and out of the shot, but wanted to movements to be more fluid, so for me the video works better for this. The video was shot using a video light to the camera right, with the same backdrop as the stills to keep it consistent with the other works. Being new to Adobe Premier, I wasn't sure how to create the effect I wanted so after a bit of playing around, I ended up adding lots of cuts every 2 seconds with a dip to black. I wanted to effect to be like a visual heartbeat.


At this stage, I am thinking of presenting a triptych of printed images along with the video. 

The images selected will look to tell a story or the grief process and the different aspects to it. I would like to present an image that represents the initial loss and shock, the formal/public part of the process with the act of creating a memorial, along with the small sign of hope with the new growth of the tree, and then the start of the redrawing of the new reality in our neural maps. 

Printing the works, for me, talks to the permeance of the situation - it is fixed, and it can't be changed.

The video, on the other hand, talks to ongoing nature of the grief process - it doesn't stop, it's always there, being a learning process and something that you learn to live around.



Breakage and repair

I want to show how I can talk to the brokenness of the experience and how often at first we try to fix it. One of the images was printed, ripped and then stitched back together with gold thread, to try and show this aspect.




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