Primarily a film maker, I use cinematic techniques to
document my journey through a passage of time, by doing this I am attempting to
explore my personal development and how art can be a way of challenging your
comfort levels to progress ones emotional and psychological state, or even to question
whether it is impossible to be creative without doing so.
My journey began in earnest in the autumn of 2016, making
my voiceover debut in a short film Dust
and Shadows, narrating the self-penned poem of the same title, I introduced
myself for the first time in my work. Being uncomfortable about how I sound, this
was a challenge, but with ambitions to be performer/ actor this was something I
needed to overcome.
Dust and Shadows is an emotional response to a personal
life event and it was important for me to be the one reading it, needing to
sound authentic I believed that my North-Eastern accent would carry an air of
authenticity which can sometimes be missing in more refined voices. This said I
still struggled to hear my voice without cringing.
Karaoke is an anathema to me, however I saw this as a tool
to help me override these feelings. Having never done Karaoke in the past I
decided to challenge myself to a session of it at my local pub, after building
up the courage I sang several songs (badly) in front of a packed pub. The
upshot being that I knocked down the wall of insecurity about my voice and felt
able then to record the voice over for my film. After rehearsing the poem I
then recorded it in an act of transcription attempting to create the
appropriate sentiment of the poem.
The film in which you can see my hands tear up a book of
poetry given to me by my ex-lover. This was a gestural performance in which I consciously
expose my emotions in a very public way. My logic being that this process will
allow me to see myself from an external point of view, I am determined to leave
no hiding place in this voyage of self-discovery.
Building a small set just big enough to show the actions of
my hands I wanted to allow the viewer the opportunity to suspend their belief
for at a short while, and for them to redact the necessary information to be able
to turn this simple act of destruction into an emotional understanding of the
cathartic process they were witnessing, and maybe even see the hands as their
own and make an emotional connection. Unlike Douglas Gordon’s piece, A Divided Self l and ll, in which he
shows two films alongside each other with his arm being controlled by his other
arm which has been shaved in one screen, and the reverse in the other. This symbolises
the battle between the two halves of the self, unlike my piece which shows two
hands very much united in purging this person and the connected emotions from
my body. Being very aware of the ideological process that destroying a book
entails it was important for me to show this as a sacrificial event and not an
act of vandalism.
My response to two separate viewings of Tracey Emin’s
famous work ‘Her Bed’ twenty years apart gave me the opportunity to make my
acting debut. I was keen to explore the feeling that even after three years of
academia studying art and twenty years of life I still viewed the piece with
the same indifference.
Performing from my bed I challenge the relative value of
the work of art and a regular bed. I also want to question the value of an art
piece which has no actual intrinsic value (as it could be replicated for a
minimal cost) and how, if indeed we can, justify that and whether the
re-selling of an art piece distances it from its original intent or concept. Creating
a script, again in the form of a poem, I believe the rhythm and beat of poetry gave
the words so much more power, I also attempt to act out the varying emotions in
a diarised, confessional style, something which I keen to explore again in the
future.
Historically I have used words to express my emotions, in
the form of prose, scripts or more commonly poetry. Ensuring natural
progression by interacting these with the discipline of film making I have
found an opportunity to push myself both physically and mentally. I also intend
to progress this with the introduction of a puppet. Using a ‘found’ Fozzy Bear
glove puppet, (of the Muppets fame), I will be a modern day Dr Frankenstein,
creating life! I will allow it to develop its own voice and personality and to
then use it as a foil to build a dialogue, to inspire scripts and then
ultimately film pieces.
