Last Saturday I went to a march here, in Santiago, in support of stopping the construction of the HydroAysén in Chilean Patagonia. If you don't know what I am talking about I would tell you check out the New York Times, but from what I can tell (way down here) there has been little coverage of it in the States. Instead I'll suggest IPS News; fact there is an article that just came out today.

I took my camera with me, obviously - prepared for the worst. The protests here are usually riddled with destruction ... and tear gas. But surprisingly (and perhaps because so many children attended), it was peaceful (well, that is until night fell and the families left, but still there was less destruction than normal).

Earth Rotations

As many of you know I have been collaborating with a collective photo project since July 2009: Eyes Everywhere // Ojos por todos lados. It was started in January 2007, by Elizabeth Ross (Mexican artist) and Ayanna Jolivet McCloud (American artist); they invited other women artists, spread through out the globe, to participate: to dialogue each week through images. Every week the artists post images from their location. Every month the theme changes. The project has involved artists from Mexico, USA, Spain, Uruguay, Malaysia, Argentina, the Netherlands, Dubai, Austria, Norway and France.
The image here is my post for this week (it's a sneak preview - do you feel lucky?? it will be officially posted on Saturday). The theme this month is "Earth rotations": We normally say that the sun sets up and down. I [Agnes, the artist who proposed the theme for April] say the horizon sets up and down. Can you [the other artists who participate] with your pictures let us see how the earth rotates by the means of simple observations?
What a challenge. The first week I posted a thoughtful, yet rather boring photo. Last week .... um I was a very bad collaborator and I didn't send my image in on time. But this week, this is my image and I think it says a lot about earth rotations, life movements, and how nature affects us.
Obviously in nature itself you can see this evidence (hence the photo), but this photo - or this theme, rather - has led me to delve a bit further and question where this is evident in my own personal work. Small things/events, gesture - considering gesture as a supposedly insignificant thing, or perhaps better stated "unnoticed". My research is about the unnoticed, but nevertheless perceived/received.
Gosh, I don't know if I really have a point, but I wanted to share this - this week's EYES photo and my thoughts about my image, with you. Maybe this logic only makes sense to me ...
I hope that you can take some time to think about the unnoticed changes that you have experienced recently - or long ago.

Using improv as material

Originally I was writing a post about process, in particular my process, meanwhile I would take breaks - since I can never focus and just do one thing anymore - to work on this new piece. Actually, I am not so sure it is a piece as an investigation. 

Do you ever do that? I think it is kind of like tinkering, right? You find something interesting so you have to take it apart part by part and play around with different combinations - to keep the creative juices flowing. So that is just what I started doing. The video is by no means complete - as with all the videos/work I post here, but again it is a thought, a way of tinkering. 

It all started when I began to help my friend prepare a DVD portfolio (the friend in the video). As I was asked to do something traditional with an improvisation, I began to realize that as the camera-girl I not only needed to do something traditional, but also improvise. So, we made the traditional video for her portfolio and now I am re-examining the work, looking, tinkering with her movements. It is an exploration of movement and gesture as an explicit symbol, not as an unconscious, yet deliberate, communication. 

(don't mind the interlaced-ness) I am thinking about the relationship of dance to pedestrian movement, the ideas that dancers and choreographers use interpreting themes, concepts, ideas as movement and the relationship that these ideas have to quotidian movements - as a viewer, as image, as moving image. 

Rather than consistently resisting traditional practices and opting for experimental, this work is accepting of a more linear way of thinking. I see this as another branch, an extension, of my work. I hope that it will organically open itself to ideas of a more experimental nature in due course.

a Sketch, a thought, something I am following

in FotoLandia ...

While continuing my study of lines and spaces,

I found some squares in fields today.

Just some ideas.

There will be time to edit later.

Looking and Finding

I know, it's a vague title for a post. I am feeling vague.

Photo Thoughts: France: round "un"

I have no idea what title to give this post.

So here I am, 2am and with insomnia - ok, not real insomnia, more like anxious thinking keeping me awake, but you know me: I like to self-diagnose. Lots of news and work to share - don't know where to begin.

The residency is going well. The project itself has had a lot of false starts (due, unfortunately to participants backing out or just simply not returning calls and/or answering emails - thank you to those of you who have), but I think we are finally getting going. Despite the material specifically for the project we have been researching in and around the city and we have each started our own projects. Matías has started these photo-portrait-collages. Not sure how to describe them, but once his website gets finished - they'll be up there and you can check them out. I have been doing some drawings, writings, and video-ing. Oh and I have been taking pictures. Ya know, taking in all that there is to offer here. And yet another "unfortunately" there is nothing sufficient enough to post, YET!

The drawings are based on gestures of couples: couples that I have seen interacting on the streets (then drawn by memory), or from images that I have taken. Some aren't even real couples, they are just a "couple o' people". The drawings are, of course, abstract - really, what would you expect?? I'll have to take pictures of a few and post them. [Yet, another thing on my list of things to do tomorrow - always tomorrow, but tomorrow really does get here quick!]

The photos are the same things you have always seen from me: funny juxtapositions, people on the street, pretty buildings ... I have been looking at them trying to find a camino, but one hasn't revealed itself yet.

The writings started as things on the computer, then mutated to actual physical writing in my sketch book (really, should I still call it that?? "sketch" when have you know me to sketch?), and then they became transcriptions from pretending that I am talking to an old friend (not anyone in particular, maybe I should choose someone).

Do you feel like this post is as anti-climatic as I feel it is? Oh well. I am in the smack-dab middle of the damn residency - what can one expect, really?

Oh the videos. These I am excited about. Not that I am not excited about the other things, but I feel like these have started to take a bit more form, even though I haven't actually touched any of the footage yet. Or maybe it is just because I think with these I am straying a bit from the gestures, or rather looking at them in a different way - AND starting to work with narrative again (that's how those texts started). In intimate situations (someone's home) I have been taking a lot of mise-en-scène (like how I am working on my French?) shots, which is something out of the norm for me. I have also been clandestinely recording these people's conversations. I don't know how this will all come together, but I like breaking out of my current usual. Who knows, maybe it won't turn into anything.

To Wait

I started a new video about a week ago. It is moving slowly. In part this is due to the fact that I am slowing down part of the video A LOT and then exporting that and slowing it down again, blah blah halb. And the other reason I attribute it to (besides having a million and one things going on right now, this video and Paris are only two of the many) is building a relationship with the video. It is about - get ready, this is new - perception. There is this waiting, this expectation, this subdued, controlled frenzy of anticipation. Then after the event the people scatter; there is a chaotic exodus. Basically I have been playing with cutting between the two, using two channels, changing speeds to introduce certain characters ... I think all three of them will come into play.



When I started this video, I wanted it to be a "quick-video" - you know, one of those that I make to make things happen, one of those that I haven't been able to make in over a year. Well, obviously this isn't going to be one of those.
I find something magical in this waiting that we are all so familiar with. The wait that leads to the let down, to the anticlimax. Children are notorious for embracing that wait. They don't even seem to notice it. The new toy, the new movie, the new episode, the new whatever. It happens, you see it, you buy it. And then, it is just over. The amazing part is that it doesn't bother them; thankfully, they still have yet to understand this particular type of loss.

Many of the adult situations of waiting are different (yet, I find similarities in weddings, graduations, and the like, but we will save that discussion for when I get my PhD in cultural practices and performance ... ha ha ha.). Perhaps with the anticipated flight (you know, the one to Paris) I am thinking more and more about my travel experiences: waiting just to wait some more. You wait to check-in, to wait to go through security, to wait to sit at the gate, to wait to board, to wait to sit on the plane, to wait for a drink or snack or movie or to use your approved electronic device, to wait to land, to wait to de-board, to wait to get your luggage, to wait to ...

Now that I think about it, I guess it is really the same as all the others, but there isn't a "celebrated" event around any of that waiting. Your anticipation is all about the arrival, and on the way to the arrival you have different stages of waiting. But it is that arrival that is key - because that is when everything changes.

Back to the topic at hand. Slow video.

It's over.

Well, it is finally finished (Zapatos, that is). OMFs have been exported. Why OMFs? Well, your friend Nicole is a little green with the official protocols of movie making - oh, I remember a time when I thought I was gonna "snap" get a job at a production studio, sigh. The story is, that as hard as I tried to make it easier for the sound engineer, I should have just asked him - exactly what format do you want everything in? But I didn't. This of course caused me to have to go to the studio, hang out, chit-chat, and just create general camaraderie with the techs. In the end I figure it was better.

And now I have no excuses to get on the ball with my own work.

Mati is the executive producer for this documentary, that is still looking for funding. I came in at the end of his meeting with the director on Monday. It got me thinking about "Chapter One" or "Prologue" or whatever the hell it was that I was going to call the piece about finding my birth family and the hullabaloo (after using that word for the subtitles of Zapatos, I have decided that it really needs to become a part of our vocabulary again) around it - and of course still swirling around the event.

So, there is this genre of autobiographical documentaries, but the key is that even though these projects are COMPLETELY therapeutic for the director - how to make the piece without it only being therapy. I have written about it before - in sketchbooks and a few here on the blog. I am desperately looking for the "clave". But it isn't about looking, is it? I know that. I have always known that, but for some reason it is easier to keep looking - it's that procrastination trap that we all fall into.

Why am I into this "final thought" business???? The final thought for the post - GET TO IT!

the Holy Weekend

Well, it is Easter (or I guess officially it is tomorrow). Here they play religious movies non-stop on all the TV channels. We have extensive choices ranging from Cleopatra (the 1999 made-for-TV-version), Moses: the Laws, Jesus of Nazareth ... I'm not quite sure exactly why Cleopatra is being shown - I guess her connection with the Roman Empire .... hmmmm. And needless to say they are all dubbed versions, which indeed is my favorite way to watch movies. In fact, I wish that every movie that I watch from now on would be dubbed - in any language - hell, in Quechua.



The good thing about this is that it is rather nostalgic for me, since I was subjected to Catholic schools for 11 years of my life and Sunday school before then. It is kinda delightful remembering the stories - and they are truly rich stories. I have even started picking out my favorite - King Solomon by far! He was everything a Jew was not supposed to be, yet king. His riches, the temple, his wives ... I do so enjoy contradictions.



Anyway, that's it, just a simple musing on nostalgia and the great stories that we (in the universal sense) have grown up with. I assume that every culture has their own counterparts. I bet if I googled King Solomon and equivalents, I would find many. Or Moses. Even thinking about it, Jesus.

Happy Easter - or whatever holiday you prefer to celebrate!

The Video Ed It Or ... what?

I started the way I had started my most recent videos. Of course since my most recent videos are experimental documentaries where I look for and thus carve out the narrative and/or "experience" (can I be so bold as to use that word?), it didn't quite work out so well.

So I reorganized. Remembering a time when each cut needed to be planned. I did what I had done so many times before: logged each shot, making markers and then planning the edit. That got the job done - and pretty much only that. I soon realized that none of my "education" (I seem to be really unto using quotes lately) was going to help me. Experience was going to help me, but that was indeed what I lacked.

Often I think that given my age (32) I should be much more accomplished than I am, that my experience should be greater than my learning. And in many ways it is, but not for structured, narrative, cinema editing.

I keep struggling with trying to find the correct word for the difference between what my experience is and the experience that I am lacking. A word that specifically and perfectly describes it. What am I lacking? commercial style? cinema style? structured? Structured isn't it, because I have done structured work before (I know, many of you who went to school with me, or have had a look at my sketchbooks probably have very large question marks over your heads - structured? Nicole?), not too often, I have to admit - I am having a hard time coming up with LOTS of examples. Maybe the difference is that in my personal projects I never really envision the end product? - No, that's not it - because the rough cut we have now looks nothing like the rough cut we had before (the rough cut where I drew footage maps, cut, and combined). I don't really know what the difference is, but there definitely is one.

Maybe someone can help me figure out what difference is ... Anyhow. In the meantime, check out the preliminary maps and subsequent notes thus far.












OH WAIT! I almost forgot the moral of the post: never think too far ahead.

On entering

It was raw. Raw, but allowed you to enter in. It made me think about a prior piece I was working on - well several actually, that all revolve around the same thing: that story, you know the beautiful one that grinds something deep and fierce in me. Making raw work (or at least this piece) where people can still enter.

Is it enough to allow you to feel, and cringe, when the finger nails scratch slowly down the chalk board?

I want to make you cry with me, and I want to make you feel those deep and beautiful emotions that I feel - the ones that I still can't explain - the ones that are extraordinary and astounding - the ones that rub against each other to produce that spark. I want you to wash yourself in the bathtub and realize who you are. I want you to see yourself in the mirror and have it all make sense. I want you to see a picture and burst into tears. And not stop. I want your tears of confusion to pour down forming puddles on the bathroom floor. I want your wondrous tears to mutate into ones of spectacular joy. 

It was raw, like I said. Life is raw. Raw and crude.

Where do you enter? You enter in the sameness you feel, when the differentness has been broken down, when the exoticism has been surpassed because you know that this person is human too. And you think about your life, and how these events would affect you. You enter when you picture your reactions. You enter when it makes you treasure your own life whether because of the sameness or differentness. You enter when you see yourself  differently. You enter when the contact point has been made.

When you realize that you are not the only one and empathy trumps sympathy, that is when they enter, that is when you enter. 

Desde el otro lado

close and f a r a w a y

uP and Down

Alva Noë interview June 2008

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Nothing

I feel like I have nothing and nothing is going absolutely no where.

Nothing seems to make sense, but I keep looking for something. I don't think you can see the subtleties of this video with this resolution. There is disturbance, something unsettling. It feels like nothing.

I am hoping that this nothing will manifest towards something, if not into something. Every ten minutes I have, I watch it again. I move things. I write. I try to make sense of why I keep toying with this footage. Is it the footage or the idea?

Just a little bit every day, right? That will steer the gray matter.

Sleep

I've been sleeping a lot lately.
I used to always remember my dreams, at least right after I woke up. Now I find that I don't. All that seems to remain is a sensation of the last feeling that I had.

What the rain brought

The past week has been dreary, rainy, gray, and cold.
Starting Friday night and not letting up until late Saturday evening we had an utter downpour.
But after the rain, the smog cleared and the view was magnificent, spectacular, and, yes, breath-taking.



The city was quiet (ok, fine, it was a holiday anyway). I think I saw smiles on people's faces - even though I suspect that the Chileans barely notice their fantastic physical location (this is backed-up by an experience the last time the rain cleared the smog: ¡Mira la vista! I said. ¡Tan bonita! ¡Impresionante! my chilean friend's response was, ¿Qué?)