MOVING ONWARDS!

Hi everyone, just to let you know that I am in the process of moving this blog to Tumblr, in order to display my images alongside my writing more effectively. Hopefully this won't take too long but please feel free to take a look at my new blog:

www.falklandsgirl.tumblr.com

Problems problems...

Unfortunately due to laptop malfunctions and a hectic moving schedule, I won't be able to update this blog until August, but more texts and images will be added once I've got all of my files and information back and in one place!

A RITUAL IN THE WASTELAND.

The crunch, the crack, the hollow snag
Stumbling deserted plains with sightfully sightless stares,
Against the wind that sears and howls that dust dissolves;
We can never seem to stop those steps.
Head hidden with an enveloping dark, with eyes still open, see
Bubbling... burning... sliding... slipping... melting...
As the desert dances- letters breathing in the constant rise and fall,
Shaking the breath that cannot, will not, stop the change.
Unobtainable silence... reverberates.
Underneath the buzzing, humming muted gasps,
Rippling fires at the water's edge' the flickering house of lights.
When they've gone out, it is lost until the lights are lit again.
So I will stand at the edge of the world, and laugh
Testing rising, falling waves against the final line
Although they will always pull the sand back out to sea;
Washing infinite imprints from changing sands.
These imprints- mirrors of the footsteps of these staggered doubts,
Untold and unseen is the fear when the record ends,
Becoming another moment lost to a looking glass of sand,
When the eye closes and opens; and sees nothing.

More Ideas...

• Exploring ritual spirituality as a means of counteracting displacement... deriving a sense of hope from the 'waste land' whilst simultaneously learning how ritual can embrace spirituality, and visa versa.
• Playing with my particular metaphor of ritual process, and how it embodies a sense of transformation and change... suggesting a transcending of the wasteland, or the possibility of eventually being able to do so?
• Considering how the use of the alphabet letters incorporate a sense of play in their use of navigating the wasteland... expressions of hope and journey towards self- reconciliation? The messages they express however need changing to lighten the mood and to steer my work away from religious satire and criticism... I don't want to dictate a fear of displacement to the viewer, just to show an exploration, delibiration and then movement towards more optimistic possibilities.
• I want my rituals to embrace spirituality, but perhaps I need a sense of spirituality to embrace my rituals (an inherently my fears of displacement)
• Also perhaps need to conceptually define the mechansim of hope that will carry me on the next stop...
• Consider Sartre's 'reflective consciousness', and Heidigger's notions of the Imagination rendering us homeless, (in our sense of being and belonging) and Kant similar notion of the imagination being nomadic.
• Remeber properties of artist's works (such as Brian Dettmer and Nathan Coley) and how they use texts as objects and enable them to become something else... CONSIDER THIS IN OWN WORK... what kind of objects can they become? Will also carry on using fire as the ritualistic metaphor and medium for appropriating and transforming text... melted letters experiments... how do I further and develop these to take my project to the next level?  

POSITION STATEMENT... MARCH 2011

• Less literal literary allusion to the 'wasteland'... return to the T.S.Eliot and pick out my original instinctive choices... 
• 'Hope' and 'Wasteland' are cyclical processes... CANNOT HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER... there is always an essence of hope in the wasteland, and aspects of wasteland within our hopes...
• not continuing the idea of the letter pyre... will experiement with the laser cut quote (having letters/wax melted over and around them) on a smaller, more singular scale
• Video editing can be simple and succinct... the content holds the most visual power, and not the editiing effects...
• Also make a video consisting simply of the blurred, distorted shots [visual representation of the in- between; the wasteland]
• CONCENTRATE ON VIDEO RATHER THAN GETTING CARRIED AWAY WITH IDEAS OF INSTALLATIONS
• Sound as an integral expression of the notion of the wasteland, correlating with movement, representation of literary [T.S.Eliot] wastelands...

• IDEA OF MELTING ALPHABET LETTERS AND WAX MIXES INTO WOODEN LETTER MOLDS... CREATING MY OWN FORMULATIONS OF HOPE AND THE WASTELAND...

More melting experiments...

Tutor feedback and a new direction...

• Form a "raft" of communications to lessen isolation within the wasteland and increase a sense of hope throughout... CLOSE THE GAP!!!
• Thought as dialogue/monologue
• Less FEAR of the ritual, and more PLAY!  Alphabet letters already presenting an aspect of this... but also need to explore how I can use ritual to embody play without literalising fear, or heightening it further... N.B Ana Mendieta and her use of elemenal material and forces to explore her notion of 'earth body'...)
• Start reading Ernst Bloch 'The Principle of Hope'... Hope as human drive, and the 'Not- yet Conscious'...
• Think of the way artists such as Brian Dettmer, Martin Creed and Nathan Coley use text as a "small intervention in a world that contains so much... and also how the use of text as object enables it to become something else...
• Study T.S Eliot's 'The Waste Land' again... look at concepts of wasteland vs literal wasteland imagery (Eliot's narrative- referring at times to tension of religion, reality, fear and the imagination and issues of desolation in the modern city and the futility of existence- narrative pessimism, fear and doubt link to the Gothic/Romantic affectations of my own research and thinking)
• Notion of the 'dissolving' of language, and changing the temporal states of the wasteland... considering the "SIMULTANEITY OF ENTROPY AND GROWTH"...

 Position Statment Jan/Feb 2011:

During my ritual process experiments- which I carried out at home- I discovered (or perhaps more correctly, rediscovered) a fascination within my subconscious need to follow through and enact certain rituals as an effective defence (or preventative) against fear and doubt derived from unshakeable feelings of displacement. These rituals are inherently driven and directed by elemental forces; which in itself is highly ironic due to the unpredictable and at times uncontrollable qualities of such natural elements.

Although I experimented with a range of natural elements and environments which incorporated my notion of 'ritual in the wasteland', the burning and melting experiments proved most effective, both visually and metaphorically for my purpose... which as my work has developed, is not so much about using ritual to identify and destroy the overbearing senses of displacement, but of dissolving the resulting fear and doubt- which was paramount to the internal creation of the metaphysical wasteland- and replacing it with aspects of play and experimentation that enduce a feeling of hope within.

Essentially; a potential to reach the end of the wasteland, and to no longer feel afraid.

Concurrently, the literary hope of the alphabet letters are also changing to incorporate notions of hope, steering away from the serious, and at times rather damning biblical quotes, to dictate a fear of displacement, and finding a more spiritual literary voice or medium in which to navigate the desolation of my own internal wasteland... I want spirituality to embrace ritual; but perhaps more aptly, I need ritual to embrace spirituality (and I do not have to use the bible to do that).

Any future experiments shall play with the notion of ritual in a way that still identifies, examines and exposes fear of displacement within ritual, yet allows hope to  appear within reach beyond the images of the wasteland and its imposed mental boundaries.

As of yet I must determine whether it is the message itself, or the ritual process which embodies the transformation or change which allows the transgression from the endless displacement of the Wasteland, and to conceptually define the mechanism of hope which will make this next stop possible...

"I like to use words because they come from us. They don't exist in Nature. Even as silent objects, they speak to us. I'm not telling a story, or creating a narrative, or even commenting on the space. In fact, I try to activate the space around the words. Hopefully the viewers will see themselves reflected in the words, in more ways than one." - Robert Barry.

Working over Christmas...

When I got home to the Falklands the ball really started rolling with my practical, ritual processes experiments... with nice weather and the beer flowing (obviously never when I was concentrating on the serious nature of my university work... hehehe...) an ideal backdrop landscape for filming and photography was provided on many an occasion.

I  took in mind pointers that my tutors (the wonderful Bob and Lisa) had given me during my end of term tutorial- to consider biblical font versus the message of the text and the way my aplahabet letters change the viewing of controlled messages, to steer away from my habit of being a little over- ironic, to deliberate on the metaphysical and physical landscapes surrounding the text in my images and their correlation to, or juxtaposition of a sense of displacement... and also a few cataloguing and sketchbook organisation issues which were already underway and just needed more work-

After sitting down and deliberating on the possible stages of displacement throughout my own life, and how certain metaphorical processes invisaged my personal notions of ritual, I creating small notes and sketches depicting the intial ideas for the experiments; and how carrying out or completing these rituals would correlate with my conceptual processes.

I started looking at what I named 'earth experiments'; looking at alphabet letters in natural, wild surroundings and their connections to the earth and the natural elements surrounding them. Using part of a bible quote from FIND QUOTE NUMBER! 'And unto dust thou return'. The photographs really brought out the contrasting colours of the surroundings (the dust really literally incorporated the notion of the wasteland) but unfortunately I couldn't manage to get any good film footage with the wind blowing all of the dust about!

Later on in the evening I tried a similiar experiment using the modernised version of the Exodus 3.14, 'I am that I am' to bring out the sublimity of the free, open landscape outside of my house... although perhaps the lighting did not bring out the contrasting colours as well, it was still an interesting experiment to try;

I also tried with a non- Biblical quote, placing the letters reading 'Come Home' outside the  gate, the threshold of my parents house (obvious alliteration, but I wanted again to play around with the visual qualitites and contrast colours whilst I had the chance);

The next experiment was (quite fun to carry out although not particuarly effective) to run over the alphabet letters with the landrover... but unfortunately I underestimated the swampiness of the wet ground, and the letters sank into the ground rather than being squashed or broken like I had anticipated. The letters did leave a few light imprints in the ground after several increasingly frustrated attempts of reversing over them, but overall it was not an effective method of experiementing with ritual process...

This next experiment became the initial experiment for my determined ritualistic direction, and gave me a chance to iron out any problematic issues before I tried to do it again...
For an entire evening I melted candles over alphabet letters, and photographed the ensuing results. I began the experiment with two candles, one with letters reading 'light' at its base, and the other (the longer candle) 'darkness'. However I only got as far as manually melting the 'light' candle, as the process was so time-consuming and labourious that I took up my Dad's suggestion to use a handheld blowtorch to melt the second candle.
Melting wax over the letters proved to be very visually effective for my photographs (and highlighted the dedication to time-consuming ritual that occupies my day to day life, not to mention embodying metaphors of light and darkness, etc) but I decided that a second experiment, filming the melting wax of the second camera whilst melting it down with a blowtorch would give the experiement both speed and edge.

The second experiment of wax melting really exemplified my visual notions of ritual process in the wasteland, and the sped up film of the wax melting outside my house with the dappled sunlight reflecting through the wind blown trees on to the wax really added a sense of movement to the experiment. We accidentally began to melt the alphabet letters whilst burning the wax down, but it resulted in a fascinated effect that I intend to focus upon and pursue throughout my future works;

 (N.B due to lost footage, which was again found, Dad and I melted a second, round candle down, burning it until the alphabet letters set alight and melted into a bubbling mass which was an amazingly powerful image and seemed to  me as though we were burning the message away; and DISSOLVING LANGUAGE)

Even though this previous experiment made my mind up about what ritual notions that I wanted to continue exploring, I carried on experimenting with other ideas; through 'water' and 'burying'. It has become increasingly apparent how natural elements both change and direct my ritualistic processes, bringing ideals of home and belonging into my displacement, whilst simultaneously altering my conceptual notions and constraints).

Using earth from Dad's newly dug flowerbeds (I like to recycle :P) I played around with 'burying' (or more accurately, covering, hiding) alphabet letters, and looking at how concealing physical parts of the letters themselves changed the visual qualities, and the message itself. I also took some landscaped images of the letters stuck into the soil next to a pool of water... playing with visuals rather than focusing on concepts that I usually centre on and forget the physical, literal qualities of my work...

Following on the theme of ritual process I experiemented with placing alphabet letters in water, (harking a little to baptism, cleasning rituals and the washing away of sin, of fear and doubt... maybe) an experiment which I tried out in three different locations around East Falklands; Darwin, Stanley and the Van Tan.
I photographed the letters (which you might've noticed that I've glued and stuck on to cocktail sticks to elevate, or 'stick' them into the landscapes) firstly in the sea at Darwin Harbour, focusing on the movement of the tide and the rippling of the water. Then, although with a far more unsuccessful outcome than I had anticipated, I tried to take similar images in Felton's Stream at the Stanley Golfcourse. However, the water had dried up considerably from the bottle experiements I had sailed on it last year for a previous project, and the fresh water had been contaminated with salt water, so the murky brown depths didn't give me the contrasting colours I was searching for (I also had a slight tantrum with the cocktail sticks, and ended up trying a few images of submerged letters...). I then got the chance to go up to the slightly more remote Van Tan, a landscape which really magnified the atmosphere that I was looking for. Due to the rugged landscape and clear, fast- moving waters and minature waterfalls I was finally provided with the chance to experiment with water texture and the smooth, matte surfaces of the alphabet letters (and  I got to wade into the stream and walk along it barefoot, so some naturalistic fun was included!). These experiments were enjoyable to carry out, and have helped me determine and focus upon the particular ritual process that identifies with my notions of identifying and overcoming feelings of displacement, and the resulting concepts of ritual in the wasteland...