ze video, without the performance

Independent Project

Alright, this is my third attempt at submitting an update. Let's see how it goes:

I am utilizing video and performance art in this project, which i shall submit in tandem during the opening and closing project exhibitions. I am combining these two forms in order to create a visual take on an internal monologue, which has become a pseudo-dialogue. I will be interacting in real-time with an image of myself that I have prerecorded. In preparation for this project, I have written a script.

The performance references a number of topics, including the recent contraception-mandate, the associated Sandra Fluke/ Rush Limbaugh scandal, and blowjob classes, respectively. Additionally, including myself in the work has made it, therefore, reflexive, and adds a dimension of documentary-style subjectiveness that itself comments upon how a "Jane Doe" relates to the aforementioned issues. The central theme of this project is modern feminism, however, it highlights the ambiguity of such a concept.

Like, i said, there will be two performances. Otherwise, there will be no running exhibit in the gallery. My materials include a monitor, dvd player OR my own computer and connection cables, and a ceiling-mounted light source.

Here is a copy of my script!
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Stage directions are in italics. The within-the-monitor character, "I," is written in bold. External character, "O," is written plainly.
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Pre-show speech: I should like that any among you that calls yourself male and and willing to be objectified, stand right here, please. I'm going to make eyes at you during my show. Sometimes I may just really need to look out there and lock eyes with someone with whom has a contractual obligation to look at me, too.

***************

Oh my god. That's cute.

Television turns on. I appear to be staring at the same distant spot.

…/he's cute.

Don't.

What!

You're going to make us do something stupid.

I shrugs aggressively and reaches off-screen to pick up a boombox, and presses Play

Insert clip of Inside of You (Hoobastank, 2:09-2:19)

I triumphantly smirks and starts wiggling in time to the beat.

O looks mortified and paralyzed with fear. Flails helplessly. The song cuts off--

OHMYGOD! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!

I'm sorry okay! Nothing in my life has ever prepared me for this moment!

O sighs, walks closer toward the monitor, and sits down heavily, and places her head between her knees.

We're cool.

O slowly raises her head and has a dazed and wondrous expression. There is silence from the monitor as I completes some nervous gesture like, like rubbing her hair.

I know how you can get boys to like you. Blowjobs. And good teeth. But not together.

That's pretty fucked up.

Yeah, but you don't have to like I cups the air near her mouth and awkwardly pantomimes weiner-wanking all the time. You just have to give one really fantastic blowjob to one self-promoting guy. Ideally he will tell as many people as possible, and then BOOM your blowjobs become legendary. Then you can rest of you laurels.

Yeah dude, sucking male-penis seems totally natural.

Yeah and just in case, you can take a blowjob class. I don't think there's a lab fee, but you have to bring your own banana.

How many credits is it?

Three.

Long Pause.

I think I'd rather, um, give my boyfriend a blowjob. Like, when I get one.

That's putting the cart before the horse, dear.

No, I mean, whatever. I'm just saying that I don't want everybody to believe that I give good blowjobs or that, in fact, I got an A in blowjobs.

Woah, hey, IF you get an A--

I'd rather artfully blow my loving tender boyfriend. And I don't have any room in my tight, collegiate budget for class bananas.

Yeah dude being a student is expensive. I feel like someone should address the issue of the rising cost of education versus minimum wage and the cost of living because like, I'm barely getting by.

It's totally weird that you said that.

O excitedly turns to face the monitor, looking slightly upwards at it.

There was a girl named Sandra Fluke who testified before Congress that there should be some mandate for insurance coverage of contraceptives. She was supportive of a blanket-mandate that would cause private secular and non-secular institutions to provide insurance for their employees that included access to free birth control.

It wouldn't be free. Insurance companies would just adjust the annual premium to cover it. And that still wouldn't be free, because employees or students or whatever have to pay for their insurance by either having it deducted from their paycheck or included in their tuition. But, whatever, I like it, go on.

I mean, it caused a stir among those who think that such a move interferes with religious freedom. Like, if a Catholic doesn't agree with contraception, they don't want to be forced to provide it. Those whole thing boiled down to a War on Religion versus a War on Women.

Lol like the War on Drugs? Do you think it's hard to suck cock?

O seems caught off guard.

I dunno, I mean, my tongue is a pretty sensitive organ, and it feels comfortable in there.

Beat

They called her a slut.

Who?

O gestures impatiently with her arms. I looks defensive and tries to continue.

I mean--

Emphatically: They! Rush Limbaugh and his pitchfork-wielding followers, teenage boys who don't know any better, teenage girls who felt an implacable pang of jealousy, then revulsion at their own lowliness, their middle-aged parents who never waited until marriage to have sex, and the stalwartly faithful who did: the mob just under the surface of our modern discourse that hates women. They're not just men anymore.

They both look at each other, and speak in unison, slowly: Nothing in my life has ever prepared me for this moment.

Sperm-burping gutter slut.

Nasty, disease-ridden, plodding uterus.

A prostitute-slutbag juice-receptacle.

I'm not against the freedom of speech. I'm not supportive on internet censorship. Fuck!

O's voice hitches.

Condoms are free.

I brings a banana into the shot, and appears to be trying to put a condom on it with her mouth, while O continues.

They said contraception is a woman's responsibility, but what they meant was it's a woman's responsibility to keep her legs closed. They said that to a woman who was not only an adult, but attending college full-time. But she's also a slut. Who isn't a slut?

O sees I with the banana.

Will you fucking stop that!

Long pause. O seems struck dumb, with a growing look of horror on her face.

It's you! Trying to please everybody!

O walks up to the monitor and pounds her palm flat against it, over I's hand. I appears startled and drops the banana.

Well, you can't please everybody, because even when you're on your way up, somebody's going to call you a slut, sometime. That doesn't mean you have to earn it.

O pulls her hand off the screen, faces audience.

Just. Get out of there

O exits (wherever available). Recording ends, monitor blacks out.

of project documentation, summary, and daydreams

i discovered in almost no time at all that i have a knack for making uncomfortable, queasy faces. i amused myself for almost two hours before i got any real work done.

~~REAL WORK~~

it became apparent as i started filming that my original storyboard wasn't directly applicable to my now very tangible and chlorine-y environment. for one, my boyfriend was very unwilling to sink head-first into a 4' shallow pool, no matter how much encouragement i showered him with. i led a horse to water and he turned into a chicken.  i gathered footage of underwater movement, which i used transitionally, in hopes to still convey descent. unrelatedly, i collected a ton of footage that i didn't use, like this:

 in the editing process, i found out that i liked a different combinations of scenes than i intended. suddenly, the video wasn't about decent. my figure instead appears to be suspended in turquoise, and the camera eye is that of a curious fish. i kept the slurping audio, and added other voices that i recorded away from the y. i spliced bits of red in there, too, which i liked as a visual complement to the watery green. overall, i loved the way the water treated my subject. it looked dreamlike, floaty, and eerie.

besides that, i tried a few different things, after having reconciled that my video would turn out differently than i imagined. now that i could no longer feature a fixed perspective, i aimed to create a new one of alternating angles. i didn't throw out the idea of keeping my subject as center, and instead moved the camera around them. i disrupted the consistency of the video by adding red, and tried to provoke a feeling of dreaminess in the shuddering relapse of pool footage. i wanted my subject to make eye contact with the viewer in order to create an immediate, cinematic relationship between these two spaces, and then i wanted the viewer to feel dragged-long and ultimately expelled from the space with the abrupt transitions. i tried to make a linear progression on familiarity, like, the subject is the first thing the audience sees. they see him with clarity. and then he becomes removed from them, and the icing-type audio bit, "i didn't recognize you," is the defense-flavored farewell.

the other bits of audio in the video are as follows:

"can you hear me?" (that was actually asked by a kid in the pool, completely unbidden. he went underwater and i guess experimented without us knowing. i couldn't hear it in the playback. i found it when i amplified the sound in video-editing-place.)

"i was like, how did that happen?"

"hello."

"i didn't recognize you."





                                                         (((TEN MINUTES LATER)))


1. sincere
2. asexual
3. spooky
4. troubled
5. hysterical
6. diseased
7. scripted
8. situational
9. interview
10. musical

cinematic space project summary

although it is a viable approach to literally construct a space in which to shoot, i am not interested in building a scene in which to point a lens. My aim is to create a cinematic space as one directs a gaze: an intent look upon a thing. the lens always acts as an eye, and i am more than happy to allow the cinematic space to be that thing which is at its focus. i will shoot less than one minute of video, accompanied by the sound of slurping, gargling drain noise. i will be under water, in a pool. there will be several seconds of just the ambient blue water (or whatever color the pool happens to be painted) and the noise. then, there will be hair. i want the hair to appear as though it is being sucked downward. this will be followed by a head, and then the body of a peron, as they descend into the water, and then below the vision frame of the camera, until they disappear. for a few seconds, the slurping will continue, until the empty vacuum roar, which we will recognize as the sound produced by an empty drain.

if i'm able, i would like to make it appear as though the water is draining after the subject. so, i'd have to make the water level fall and film some air. i'll see what i can do in editing. but, if not, my above idea will work well enough. my boyfriend has kindly volunteered to be my model, and he has shoulder-length blonde hair, which may be long enough without extensions.

i drew inspiration from a short movie called breath, by samuel beckett (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ZON66BbB0)

i also found a wealth of underwater photography, which is quite beautiful

i am also interested in the femenist vibe i'm channeling through the use of water, and especially with the image of a male figure being immursed and then passed through it. it's a visual interpretation of birth, supplemented with disgusting noises rather than blood and baby screaming. i suppose this means that my boyfriend will have to be naked, although i haven't told him.
tl;dr: underwater video of sinking person. drain suckage noises.

1-26-12 Cinematic Space

prompt: Please choose 5 examples of what you think is cinematic space and post to your sites.
ok tom
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1. A set that uses figures, structures, and props in order to create an illusion of space.
2. A space that utilizes time in a visual narrative.
3. A space that utilizes movement in a visual narrative.
4. A space that necessarilly manipulates or augments a viewer's perspective of images, subjects, and events.
5. A space that is wholesome unto itself and a complete "world" in which images, subjects, and events cohesively occur. 

 

inspiration for ze final project

fear and art

preguntas!


1. when is a person educated enough to have a valuable opinion about art?
2. can art be unintentional?
3. meh, who's afraid? that's dumb. what's there to be afraid of?

i mean, really. be self-conscious if you like, but that's as silly as egotistical.