It is the end of my first week of my MA at LICA, it has been a very long week to be honest, not in a bad way but just in terms of doing a lot things and trying to get my head around the challenges of the upcoming year for myself. (Not that I am looking for sympathy from anyone because I would not be taking up this challenge if I did not want to push myself and set myself a challenge in the first place!!). The main difference I have noticed from my undergraduate studies to my postgraduate studies is the amount of freedom I have not just creatively,(which I will say more about later on this in this blog) but also personally and socially. I have started to feel more secure in myself and also started to take up very strange habits, such as doing the washing up straight after eating and tyding my room and as anyone who knows me can testify (particularly my girlfriend Anoushka!) I am not the world's most tidiest or cleanest person! but I am slowly starting to take an interest in actually looking after myself, which for long periods of undergraduate studies I didn't! and subsequently I felt like I had no direction. Sorry to sound so depressing, I know doing the ashing up isn't the sexiest image to imagine whilst reading this but we all have to do it I guess!
Anyway back to this week and what did I get upto? On Tuesday I went to Manchester to visit two exhibitions which I had been interested in seeing to try and get to grips with the notion of exhibiting digital art / new media art in a public gallery, which is something I have no experience of doing. The first was at the Manchester Art Gallery: "Recorders: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer",Hemmer is a Mexican artist and the exhibition is based around interaction between the spectator and the instillations, many of which employ technologies used by Governments to keep tabs on the general public. It was a fantastic exhibition mainly because the instillations were interactive, you as the gallery visitor felt like the works were designed with you in mind. That for me has probably been the most important thing I have taken from this week, the sense that good art whether that is in a gallery, theatre space or whatever the ability of the audience to gain a personal meaning from the art is vitial. It is the personal connection I definitely felt whilst walking around the exhibition, not just from seeing myself on a camera, or a device that felt my pulse. It was the fact that it made me reflect on my own connections to technology and if there is one thing that art should be able to do aside from anything else it is for the spectator to leave knowing it has made them reflect on their views of the world.
The second exhibition I visited was at the Cornerhouse (next to Oxford Road Station in Manchester) called 'Unspooling: Art + Cinema', a nice exhibition showing responses to two huge areas of the cultural landscape: Art and Cinema. Some of the works I felt didn't really do much for me, of course Art is deeply personal but it didn't really feel to me as though some of the works were entirely designed and thought out to reach as many people as possible, but that is just entirely a personal opinion, overall I thought it was an interesting concept for an exhibition and one which I can take some ideas from for my practice.
Finally I saw at the Nuffield Theatre in Lancaster the new performance from Forced Entertainment 'The Thrill of it', which I have blogged on in more detail on the LIVE@LICA blog. Forced Entertainment are a great and unique company in the field of contemporary performance, notably for their longevity and excellent body of work. Their previous show 'Spectacular' in 2008 did not win me over, I did not feel it actually was conceived with audience reaction in mind. Not to say I lost any respect or admiration for the company during this time. 'The Thrill of It' was a masterclass in how to put on a show which had everything at its disposal, film and stand up references. Comedy, music, dancing. Like the exhibition at MAG, they clearly thought about how to communicate with their audiences.
Moving on now to what I have been working on myself. My MA is practice based, i.e. developing my own artist practice so studio time and personal reflection is vitial. This week I have only had one opportunity in the studio, so I only really have one idea I can report on!. In essence the idea is based around the development of new technologies and how we as media and technology consumers have been targeted as a target market and react to this. My starting point is films from the 1960's as I said in my last post, the 1960's holds a personal fascination with me because a) I wasn't there so I have had to experience it through media documentation and b) the 1960's are always seen as the heyday for prosperity, design, ambition and happiness. With this in mind the idea I had was mixing film clips with music (the film clips I have been working on are: the Ipcress File, Robbery, Bullit and the Italian Job - for no particular reason aside from these are some of my favourite films!). There are several reasons for my interest in mixing music and films and re editing them in a performance based scenario:
Firstly the dominance of soundtracks in films, and how these come to have such a cultural importance and significance for people (taking the example of The Italian Job and 'Get a Bloomin' Move On'). This fact is also illustrated when I was writing my blog response to Forced Entertainment the only thing I could really think of was the soundtrack, underlying not just the significance of it to the performance, but to me in my overall response of the piece.
Secondly the ability in our current era of new technological developments. The ease and speed with which we can edit films. We can edit them at home by picking alternative endings, picking the version with an audio commentary and selecting the chapters we even want to see. On Youtube we can dub funny voice overs and post our own responses to our favourite films. So the ease with which I was able to change the meanings of the film examples I was working on, just access to Youtube and the free music service Spotify.
Thirdly the dominance of music videos in our daily media consumption and the effect it has on us. The dominance of sex based music videos and the effect that has on us, have we become to descentised to it? You look around in any night club when a song comes on and the dancing and theme of the music video will be immediately represented on the dancefloor.
This idea is as I say the only real idea I have been working on this week and hopefully by next week it maybe a bit more grounded.
Its the end of the first week, and I am feeling very positive. Being able to work freely on my own passions is fantastic!. For the last two years I have felt a bit frustrated at not being able to take ideas further due to being confined to working within a set brief (i.e. course outlines and marking criteria). For example last year in our end of degree show (THEA 313) I was in charge of media, I shot the videos, sorted out the projections and controlled all the media during the final performance. During the rehearsal process I found that my own interests were leading me over to different areas and I became increasingly frustrated personally because I knew the one thing I wanted to do was to have the space and time to really find myself creatively (not wishing to sound completely up myself here!) and now I have the fantastic opportunity here at LICA. But of course contrary to this enthusiasm and the ambition I have for this year, I do have worries. Chiefly is how much of a challenge it will be for me. I am currently recovering from depression and so for me, I am very worried that due to the fact I will be on my own for a long period of the next 12 months, and in previous years when that has happened I have just turned in on myself and not looked after myself. So for me It is essential that I keep in touch with the wider world and keeping visiting exhibitions, and performances and to keep a work / life balance otherwise It will be a complete waste of my time.
Anyway not to end on such a downbeat assement, Tonight I will be going to the pub and getting very drunk! So I will report on my expectant hangover next week!.
Have a lovely weekend!
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