between thought and expression

The denouement of my degree is fast approaching and January is set up to be an invigorating if necessarily anti-social month. While the majority of this period will be spent giving my dissertation some semblance of cohesion there is also the small matter of my final project to consider. Fortunately I have been able to do just that over the last few weeks and consequentially I have some direction but also numerous obstacles.

To set the scene it would be worth explaining the basic premise of my project. In essence it is quite simple: show a series of films at a number of outdoor locations. The films will be simple, straight on shots of the location in which they will be shown. They will be projected onto a screen at night so when seen the viewer will simultaneously experience the location in both day and night. Complicated? Possibly but hopefully this mock up will help clarify things a bit:

There are a dizzying amount of conceptual and practical problems to sort out with the project and these will undoubtedly crop up in future posts. But one of the immediate issues that got me thinking is how will this project translate into a gallery space. The question is mainly a contrivance of my course as I need to physically submit something come late May. But there is a bigger question here of how does the documentation of something that is in many ways site specific alter the piece?

In this case the change is going to be significant. When viewed initially the projections will very much be directly related to the place they are shown. I aiming for a sort of gently interruption to our usual perception of a place. This achieved I hope it will allow for a reconsideration of our environment. At the heart of this project then is our interaction with the world around us and reflecting on this space. The artifice I insert into this space is a catalyst to provoke this process and the work itself is not the focus of attention. However once documented the physical site is no longer present. The project becomes seen through an intermediary and this fundamentally alters the premise of the work.

Or so I thought. After taking a walk and thinking these things through I realised that the documentation could actually facilitate the same sort of reflective response I am after. However the viewer would no longer be reflecting on a physical place but the general process of representation. For example if I produced a film there would be a film within a film. This can't help but draw attention to the tools by which we record the world around us.

When this first came to me I thought it felt a bit dry. I was concerned that I mind end up simply discussing the merits of a particular medium and the process of documentation. I want my work to have a broader reach than this and not simply address what I felt were narrow issues. But after a bit more thought I realised within the process of representation there exists the possibility to make a much broader statement. When thinking about this I had David Hockneys Joiners in my mind.

What is initially so remarkable about Hockney's work is the process he has used to record his subject. We recognise the use of photography but the feeling of dislocation we get is not something would be usually experience when viewing an image. In short this is not something we are used to seeing and the photograph seems unfamiliar in this role.

That Hockney is able to make something as ubiquitous as the photograph appear strange is quite an achievement. Our expectations of the medium have been subverted and we are left to reflect on this unusual style of presentation. That are our assumptions are confounded allows us to reflect on how we would usually engage with a photograph. In newspapers, magazines and adverts the image us usually presented as a cohesive entity and is employed to convey a clear message. But Hockney reveals that this is not a characteristic inherent in the medium and the photograph can be put to quite different uses.

So what may initially appear as a comment on representation acts as the starting point for how the photograph operates in society. Such a point seems particularly relevant in a media saturated world and increased awareness of how such media are constructed is surely of benefit.

For my own work then I hope the way it is presented directs you away from the rather dry technical issues of presentation and towards a broader consideration of the media and how it is used.