Research/Notes: Fiore & Berlusconi

https://www.tcd.ie/French/assets/doc/BlattOnErnauxMarie.pdf

I had reason to return to the above text recently. I referred to it in S&O A5 as it mentions writer/artist Alain Fleischer and his work made in Ferentillo which is where I am now. He links photography with mummification as I quoted in S&O. One of my partners highlighted a different quote when I shared it with them.

“In the darkness of the catacombs … mummies are like

photographic images that have been developed but not fixed,saved from a fatal and definitive exposure to the light of the living, rescued from an ultimate oxidation by death’s

corrosives, thanks to a red, inactinic light, a laboratory light.

Like photographs yet to be printed, cadavers … to become

mummies, were initially material supports, emulsions, conserved in the dark, subsequently treated with acids, then exposed to light before being brought back underground.”

I visit the village regularly as my mother moved here in 2000 with her husband. He died suddenly in 2005. I made work for TAOPA5 and S&OA5 as well as a smaller project in between modules.

https://ocasjf.wordpress.com/2018/05/17/assignment%e2%80%8b-5-i-will-have-call-you/

http://sjf-oca.blogspot.com/2015/06/assignment-5-context-narrative.html

This summer, after my mother broke her ankle badly and ended up remaining here for far longer than she might have done, the boys and I decided to spend most of the break in Ferentillo with her, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was a desire to escape the U.K. and it’s interminable internal wrangling over Brexit.

As the collaborative project I’m involved with (Pic London) is based around the idea of a village it is perhaps fortuitous to be in this particular village with its references to death, mummification and previous work for an extended period.

I have also been re-reading James Elkin’s and struck by the discussion he has with himself about a realisation we are at times little more than hungry, violent critters despite all the symbolism with which we prop up our illusions of reality.

In addition, I sent in an essay for CS1 and have had some extremely helpful feedback from Roberta, my CS tutor which has prompted further thoughts and responses. I’ll revisit this on my return to London – however, some of my thoughts will likely end up in some writing I’m doing in preparation for the pic london work. (Not sure yet, how this writing will inform or be part of any work yet).

The writing centres around a man called Fiore who lived “both inside and outside” the village (Field, 2019 – draft foundation text for Pic London project). I don’t want to repeat myself but briefly, Fiore befriended my mother and her husband Roger. He built an illegal pool which we swam in and which was never blue, as Fiore couldn’t quite get to grips with the filter or chlorine. He had lost his wife to cancer and his daughter killed herself in grief soon afterwards. Later he got together with his housekeeper, Dora. He was a good friend to my mother’s after Roger died. Fiore owned a goat called Berlusconi who was strangled to death when his chain got caught on a tractor wheel. All Fiore’s neighbours were invited to a feast of Berlusconi but Fiori refused to eat him.

The writing is, like my previous writing, like a plait made up of different strands that will incorporate Fiore’s story, my reasons for being here – austerity, middle-class angst around failure, and a discussion about photography in relation to bacteria, citing Elkins’ book, and death.

At first I thought I’d be making a film like the previous two projects I’ve done – Origin of the Common-Place and Sirens. But the more I work on it the more it feels like it might be a photo-text like the ones discussed in the paper above:

The interphototextual dimension of Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie’s L’usage de la photo by Ari J. Blatt

There is not very much time but we’ll see.

Things to do;

Look at Robert Mapplethorpe’s work. I keep coming across his stuff which feels odd, like the universe is asking to to look at it. Then I suddenly clicked – flowers/Fiore. (Not to mention death).

In Format’s Talent there is a series called Flowers for Donald. I plan to take another look at that in more depth.

Try to find a vintage film/old book about flower arranging for possible use

Themes other than the subject of flowers which has emerged in the highly flashed night images I’ve been taking; water, stars, shooting stars, hear, climate, death.

Not sure how this work relates to BOW yet but some of the research Roberta talked about re. Modernism and appropriation should be relevant at the very least.

(NB: Quotes about photographs being mute and the closed circular arguments that arise out of only reading photography books in Blatt’s paper)