elvisstudio300sem2

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Final Audio - I'm getting in the bath.

This was the final cut that I did of the audio response that was sent to me from my godmother, I had it playing on my week 13 hand in morning but have decided to take it off and not have an audio incorporated into this work.

I felt the audio she made in response had ambient elements I really enjoyed and thought tethered the previous work to his work but there were also some really loud and abrasive sections that I didn't think would be cohesive with the atmosphere and also would be too stimulating along the written, visual and physical elements the work already had. After discussion with her and showing her what parts I liked and had put them together she wasn't happy with this version. So for the respect of her work and also to not compromise with what I wanted I have decided to not submit and export the audio on the final. (She didn't respond til after I had installed on Thursday evening)

[elvisstudio300sem2]

'I'm getting in the bath.' Blurb

Following on from my previous video work 'Buck wild' I felt as if the pendulum (as far as the tone) needed to swing back the other way as the aggressive swagger and masculine atmosphere in buck wild. Looking back at my past self still but other moments of development or importance but more through location rather than movement. The text accompanying the flickering shots of the Ōhau awa, shifts between reflecting and how I'm feeling in the current day and the connections between them.

Water as this unifying element throughout visual and written elements.

Installation of the video in a dark space, inset on the wall with a reorienting of the crown sculptural motif above the work safely above looking down with locks of long brown hair creating curtains acting as a privacy screen ways asking the viewer to come closer to engage. Introducing the hair hair as material felt important as there's reference to it in the text as well as the memories I have at this river and which version of myself I'm reflecting on at this time had long thick hair and also mirrors the long braids that were worn in my performance of buck wild. This feels like sharing my diary and feels vulnerable in a different way then I used to with my own body and performance. The negotiating of whether text will be an agent I use more in future works is yet to be decided but its use in this work I have enjoyed.

I'm getting in the bath references to this act of cleansing, relaxing and soaking. It's a private but vulnerable position to be in, you're naked and resting.

[elvisstudio300sem2]

I'm getting in the bath. - Digital File

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Final Install -

Over all I'm pleased with the way that the installation of the screen turned out and distanced itself from the atmosphere of a domestic television screen. The use of the shelf and the hair to kind of personify the screen as something beyond its obvious objective qualities and also create shadows around it to sink it into the wall.

The restricted view point of the work and size of the text meant people had to really come in close to the work and it feels like a dynamic change from the way the crowns were placed around the screen in formative exhibition as a sharp and warning barrier creating a large distance for viewership.

[elvisstudio300sem2]

trying to paint hair - install

I had attempted to paint the hair the same colour and metallic finish as the crowns and I thought if i had a dense enough "wall" of hait it would work however it didn't';t really work potentially if I could've used lighter hair s a base it mightve read better.

You can see if it on the inside slightly when the screen is showing an image with a high ligth output, and i think it;s micro detail that is helpful in keeping the colour palette clean and intergrated.,

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Video work list of text I used. Accumulated from different small written pieces in my notes app.

Perform 

Stomp 

Anger 

Sweaty 

Swing 

Buried

When I dance I imagine that my arms are wind and rain is prying out of my finger tips. I lie in the shallow riverbed not moving. The rocks are smooth and cold on my back, my stomach is warm being tickled by the water trickling over my belly button. The sun cuts through the water and warms just the top layer of skin. 

A soaked braid behind my back creating breadcrumbs behind my step.

Stomping through time at speed, reverberation flinging through my nerves. Collecting at the dead ends. 

They're keeping me awake. 

I search the river for the perfect stone. Once I’ve found it I’ll throw it away. 

I survive by swimming through sunlight, and basking in the trees. By moving my body; to the mirror, the camera, the music, to people.  My body survives by sweating, by crying and resting. The earth is my stage, my altar, my bed. 

My eyes sting from trying to open them underwater.

I tell her that you don’t shed these things, you just layer onto them. Opacities collecting to a deep dull hum. The scape endlessly morphing and reshaping. The weight gets heavier and in turn I'm stronger.

Progressive overload. 

I hope by the time I’m 50 I’m ripped. 

Mum's arms. Touches of love shared provide a well for me to pour it down the line. 

The people that line the walls of my life. Take one pass it on. 

Reckoning with what I am made up of, who I am made up of. Why may that be.

I was always a kid that asked a lot of questions. I expected my answer concisely, correctly and confidently.

I went out dancing with wet hair. I’m getting sick. I’m going to get in the bath.

[elvisstudio300sem2]

This is a response work to my formative work 'Buck wild." from my godmother- the touchstone/diving board that I chopped up and ended up using for the final presentation/sharing of 'I'm getting in the bath'

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Final Install

The choice of using a flat screen tv was to leave behind the crt monitor from exhibition behind. If I had been quicker to book out a dark space for this final submission I would've hoped to use a projector in a dark space as I find them the most formally charming and cohesive with the content of my work but alas the limited spaces to use a projector were booked out very quickly.

Using the screen in portrait orientation disrupts its domestic context and lends it more to being a page or poster on the wall.

Including text that has been written by me in reflection of who I used to be and who I still am, connecting this reflection from 'buck wild' earlier in the semester which was a reflection of another point in my life that felt like a pivot point for my own identity development.

Hoping it creates a diaristic connection point for the viewer

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Editing -

Creating and editing the individual lines of text and then its timing and relation to the visuals is alway a back an forward process, kind of how a painting is formed where you go and work on one part then jump to a different place and kind of isn an exercise of knowing when to call it. It's intuitive to me and doesn't follow too much of a pattern but knowing how long to give each lien to be read was new editing feat but I think there were lines that needed to linger and contrastingly with some of the listing in the text could be more fleeting and snappy.

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Shooting new footage

Coming off the back of exhibition I feel exhausted, pushing everything to get it ready to share with huge audience of friends, family and peers made it feel like a lot more than just a formative. I went back home to see my family an don the way I stopped with my mum at Kimberly reserve just outside of Levin a really special place for myself and my family where we would go and camp at an event called the organic river festival where my dad would teach yoga and my aunty would manage the kitchen and bars. I have summers swimming and dancing and exploring through the bush with my little sister my cousin and new friends I would make once I arrived.

Going back felt nostalgic and sad, the event no longer happens, my family has split up, the riverbed has changed and eroded away, there was a poster of girl who had gone missing a year and bit ago left on the public toilet (the only building at the reserve)

Just using my phone to record and going for one last walk down into the riverbed and into the marshy bush surrounding.

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Julieth Morales- week 8 lecture

Misak people - born of two lakes - defining themselves as outside of colonial terms

Kup - spinning, weaving and creating textiles 

Misak female identity through ancestoral traditions and rituals

Accessing western education is not a given, but is a way out of the risk of being a woman in vulnerability of violence and oppression 

The burden of being a woman in her community 

Chumbe- Wrapping children up in cloth cocoon as a form of protection and to help with bodily forming 

But done on her own 23 year old body in order to protect and change into the woman that her community wanted her to be 

Becoming comfortable with her own body 

Started off representing pain but now represents protection and connects her to the land 

Mojigangas - changing who you are 

31st of October til 1st November is new year in Misak 

Men dress up as woman and mock 

Celebration only men could do now woman can watch but not participate 

Realised she exists between mixed and indigenous woman and now she’s westernly educated she’ll never not be the inquisitive woman 

Woman excluded from tradition 

Video as a form to shine lots of light on what your thinking about / photography is safer though

Cloth and textile industry specifically blue and fuschia - she printed onto it 

4 is their cosmic number 

Nay Srap 

Weaving is something woman start from their first period 

Have to build a hut for bleeding 

Then she went and unraveled all her unfinished bags 

Go to the river to wash and release 

New configuration of traditional textile practice 

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Week 7 - Crit Notes

Flickering effect is cool 

Comedic quality swag boy 

Serene driving but swag boy 

Royalty - 

Urban/American character in rural space, pushing for development to the global 

Relationship of crown and body as empty templates for own insertion of own meaning 

Framing of tv to make room for crown, slanted to accomodate the crowns

The floor crowns create protection and barrier 

Lorde, basquit, signing off 

Krump hierarchies, community 

Distance stop movement confrontation 

No characteristics, no emoting. 

Carcass of people between mine and sage and then maias 

Shake it up transitions 

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Trialling -

Quickly discovered that having the CRT on the floor wasn't what I wanted, as well as the fact that the required DVD player wasn't exactly aesthetically cohesive and needed to worked into the display

Tipping the monitor back onto its back allowed the screen to watched from the viewer without having to crouch down and also reflected up onto the crown as well as the walls.

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Exhibition Install

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Getting Installed - Formation of exhibit

[elvisstudio300sem2]

Light boxes -