ONLINE DOSSIER: CRITIC ANNOTATION NO.2
To understand how to talk and write about my project, I found an interview with the German singer Herbert Grönemeyer enlightening. He explains how he abstracts and enhances his own experiences and emotions to make them significant to everyone. I have used this technique to be able to talk with my supervisor about a certain layer of my project and also applied it when writing my statement for Review B.
Another interview podcast was helpful in finding an approach how to take pictures of a person. Jürgen Teller, known for his provocative photographs, explains how he gets the pictures he intends and especially how (openly) and when (all the time) he communicates with the people he photographs.
Not all artists, that I looked at, brought up ideas for my current project. Yet, I still want to include them briefly as they might be relevant at a later point, either for this project or other projects in the future:
· Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbau (transforming a whole room into a different experience – in similar way my projections change the room that I am photographing)
· Yandell Walton (elaborate work with projections)
· Janet Cardiff and George Miller (working with a second visual layer in the same location but of a different time)
· Rosa Barba (working with projections but with a rather technical, yet humorous focus)
· Leslie Eastman (bringing the outside indoors with his camera obscura)
Naming a meta layer of my project, I researched different topics that could be of interest. The following artists are relevant in this context:
Theaster Gates and his view on “home” made me think about different perspectives on this term and how people define it. I am taking pictures of the house I live in and being in lockdown makes my home very relevant.
In 2007, my final work of my communication design studies was a catalogue about the topic forgetting. For 5 months I worked on my thesis Don't forget you will forget. It is interesting that – unintentionally – I am now working on a project that involves the contrary topic “memory”.
Researching the topic “memory”, I came across Anna Fafaliou. Her work formally spoke to me as she is showing her objects painted in white. White works best when projected on, therefore some of my sets, without the projections, have similarity with her work.
Finding a way to talk about my project, reading the book Memory, edited by Ian Farr, seems promising. Strangely, when reading about memory, even though I find the topic highly interesting, it seems as if that is only on the surface of my project. As I do not want to get stuck on the obvious, my mind is drawn to a deeper layer.
Sophie Calle, also mentioned in the book Memory, and her series Les Dormeurs might be the right lead. The way she invites friends and strangers to sleep in her bed and photograph them, speaks about intimacy made public. A topic shown in some of my pictures and intended for the next photographs to come.
Thinking about how to exhibit the whole series in the final stage, I looked at Tacita Dean's FILM exhibit. Projecting photographs of projections could close the circle of this project.