BOW A2: Assignment reconfigured

31/08/2020

A PDF copy of the zine I am including as part of my final submission can be found here:

As well as providing evidence of my experience producing a zine, this project should not be viewed as a separate appendage, but rather part of an ongoing discussion/exploration addressing deep and seismic structural changes in Western society. My inquiry looks at the move away from a Cartesian view of reality towards one that is more rhizome-like, I have cross-pollinated the work with images that appear in the zine and again in the later BOW publication, as well as taken a frame from a film I edited while making this work, shown at a group show facilitated by pic london (an OCA Blog post about it can be seen here).

This image appears in this family too and why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers

22/03/2020

I am submitting a zine which includes black and white images and text for A2. It will be roughly A5 (dependant on what options are available to me at this time).

Background

After submitting final DI&C work to Pic London, I was pleased to have it accepted. I was put in a group with five other artists and we worked across time and distance using the internet, following three workshops, on a group project. I was in Italy for much of that time.

Three strands of work emerged for me and I had to make choices about what I did with what.

i. a film made with found footage inspired by conversations that had taken place between all of us in person and via FB messenger.

ii. a sequence of colour images taken with flash (which I personally prefer compared to the black and white ones)

iii. another sequence of images I rendered black and white in LR – it suits the mood best, sombre – see below

As well, I wrote something which was inspired by my time in Italy and the conversations I had with the other artists and how the project made me feel, included in the Pic London show, then point ii. above which I’m not submitting.

• The inclusion of the text is an important step for me – and shows development in further work where text plays such a big role. Text has long been critical in my work but the creative rather then essay-like style is a step in a new direction.

At the moment, I am NOT submitting each of these elements for the OCA. Just the Zine but including background information to show how it came about. I have chosen to do this as it shows steps towards the development of the anthology I’m creating for my main submission – i.e. creative text and image in book form.

While all of this was going on, Trump’s government was on shutdown and the tragedy of Brexit being argued about. There were fires, dreadful heatwaves and fascism was showing its ugly face in more and more places.

BOW Assignment 2 original 

There was so much work coming out of this collaboration and not all it sat well together. I ended up submitting the writing and the coloured images (see above) to my tutor for A2. I like them but after some time, I felt they were not sitting with the writing as well as they might. I played around with the black and white images and decided they should be valued and put them on my website. A little while later I started thinking about putting them in a zine format. And shared an early example on this blog. This week I have written the introduction and reset the text.

After chatting about the work yesterday with the TV group, I have decided several things

• The cover will simply be an image, no title or other text.
• I am thinking of moving the intro to the back or elsewhere  – need to experiment – to break with linear convention. In A4, I am opting for a very strict structure that follows traditional anthology inside of which the signifiers will be allowed to rit and party. But here the signifiers are less chaotic so there may be room for containing structure to be more flexible.

Questions

• Please compare intro texts and let me know which is stronger. The short one in the PDF doesn’t give away too much but maybe it needs more.
• Does the longer text spoonfeed people?
• It’s currently called This Family Too.  This links to This Family – my very first assessment project – which linked to Family of Man. I have the book still. But I think it might be better called On The Edge of the Village
• Finally – I am concerned about the image with the swimming ring. It is plastic made in China and says so in text on it – the sequence and edit was made before Trump started spouting his shite, and for me referenced shifts re the West’s global consumerism and the East’s increasing power. Like the later (currently A4) work, this project looks at entanglement  – time, culture, waves, intra-action of phenomena, walls – manmade and natural. We discussed this at length yesterday  – people reassured me, it did not seem like I was suggesting Trumpian xenophobia, although I could choose to clone out the Made in China to be safe, which I had considered. But we also discussed dangers of self-censorship. I recall Rachal Maclean saying when she made her film pre-Scottish referendum that both sides of the debate assumed her film was on their side due to its ambiguity. If my own work can contain an element of that ambiguity, that would be good. But if it just seems like an accusation I will need to remove the wording at the very least. I’d like to know what others think, please.

Current edit of the book  – Mono only 2 full

Things to do –

• Add the cover image to the sequence inside.
• Make sure no title on the cover.
• Play with text/pagination – not linear.

Alternative longer intro

This project emerged while working on a collaborative project titled A rumour reached the village. While the poem was included in the resulting exhibition, these particular images were not. These various manifestations were made when I visited my mother in Ferentillo, Italy, for the duration of the summer school holidays in 2019. While there, it was impossible not to consider the political uncertainty affecting Europe, along with increasing levels of tension and fascism being witnessed globally.

The United Kingdom’s transitional exit period officially began in January 2020. By March, all of Europe was in lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Italy has, at the time of writing, been one of the most severely affected outside of China. The UK was one of the last European countries to introduce severe restrictions on movement and social interaction but looks to be heading in the same direction as Italy in terms of loss.

The village of Ferentillo consists of two wards, each with their own crumbling, medieval hilltop castle built for observation, protection and a place from which to call the alarm in case of danger. It is known for its museum beneath the crypt of the Church of Santo Stefano, where naturally-mummified bodies are displayed in glass cases. Some bodies are nearly four centuries old, the youngest is from the nineteenth century. The preserved inhabitants include birds and animals, villagers and visitor’s from afar, including China.

The work is made to acknowledge the fragility and ingenuity of humankind, and the entanglement of past, present and future, as well as financial, cultural and organic systems. It emphasises the fleeting moments of our personal experiences; and celebrates, as well as recognises, that which is greater than the individual. It focuses on cultural structures and natural phenomena, growth, and the vastness of existence. It is the third project I have made in the area.