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[pplowden]

Half human half not

I started exploring the concept of humans embodying creatures and why this form of exaggeration is humorous/ interesting by watching David Attenborough talk over human actions, rather than animals.

This is was a good way in to recognising how people find humour in observing how humans and animals are similar. Attenborough - one of the nations most trustworthy voices is celebrated for spotting these similarities as his voice automatically tells the audience what he is doing, allowing the focus to be placed on the humour of the animal like actions of the human.

I found that it seems to be a common joke for a person to embody an animal; for example the tik Tok trend of people pretending to be horses and the trending Instagram filter when a persons face merges into an animals. I wonder if the is because people feel an ownership over animals but also out of control of them.

Wondering how to translate this into work, I came across ‘anatidapohiba’ - the phobia that a duck is always watching you. The absurdity of this phobia is what I find fascinating. How can people become so obsessed with a creature that they see it everywhere? Through reading up on it, I discovered there is actually much speculation of whether this phobia is even real. I felt this was the perfect thing to start making exaggerated work about half human, half animals as the idea itself is half true, half not and the phobia is something which engulfs people - which is what i’m interested in - peoples consumption and beliefs.

Earlier in the year I made a a cutout of aliens to explore the concept of how people balance the fake with the truth. I think it is a good way to explore anatidaphobia as it shows how people can see ducks everywhere in a comic fashion. It will also help me explore what I am trying to understand about people exaggerating to the extent they embody whatever it is they are exaggerating - in this case, a duck.

I then came across the artist Redmer Hoekstra  who combines everyday objects and animals. His work really made me realise drawings can be completely fictional while referencing real things. They are whatever you want them to be.

I find drawings help me generate ideas so I am going to try to merge my friends into animals like therianthropy and see what happens…

This reminded me of my friend Max’s obsession with ants. He loves them so much he buys colonies regularly (for his artwork, but also for company). He is the perfect example of what I am trying to express. I am using creatures as an example of something we can exaggerate endlessly because of peoples opinions and relationship with nature. Humans view nature as ours, but also unowned. It is part of us, but also something much bigger. When Max is bored of people, he goes to ants. He looks after them, but mostly admires them for building their own colonies and worlds. It is enjoyable to own them because he doesn’t really own them. We can appreciate them because they are like people.

This made me want to draw max as an ant. Through drawing I can exaggerate endlessly while questioning reality.

I was happy with this drawing (A1) but it felt incomplete. Both the duck are lively drawings and feel as if they need bringing to life. If my ideas are about a half real half fictional world in-between humans and nature, perhaps I should put this fictional character back into ‘the real world’

I planned for a film where a drone shows a wide shot of nature, then zooms in to find my drawing amongst the grass. The drone allows me to control the viewers perspective, taking further out shots as well as close up while playing with scale. Also it moves like an animal itself.

I was happy with the outcome of the film however it feels almost incomplete. It feels like part of a story rather than the story. To solve this I think I will try to add in a video of max daydreaming, going out to his garden before cutting to this film. Hopefully this will show that it is his imagination that is being exaggerated and there will be more of a story to it.

After adding in the footage of max daydreaming I am happier as I feel there is a stronger contrast between real and fake. However, I still feel I need to push this even further somehow. I have shown the real world and a world in-between imagination and reality but I think I need a completely fictional one.

Planning my presentation helped me realise this as while talking about my idea I realised that if its based on both drawing and embodiment leading to a limitless fictional imagination, this needs to be much more extreme.

I was happy with the feedback from my final crit as people understood the emphasis on a real and fake world and picked up on the exaggeration of imagination through scale. However I was not expecting people to find the perspective of the drone the most powerful thing. I was told the way in which it was filmed made the viewer not feel like a viewer, but rather a bird or character living the story. I like this idea a lot and plan to take it even further in my final piece.

I then researched into the artist Orlan and how her surgical art is like a form of very extensive exaggeration of drawing. I found this a very helpful reference to show how much further exaggeration can be taken, something Tilly told me in the crit. From this feedback I decided to create a drawn fictional world and place my half human half ant creature within it.

I think this is the perfect solution because my drawings are lively and representing limitless exaggeration and imagination. Therefore they should be ‘brought to life’. I drew a storyboard to plan out this idea and see how I could still follow a narrative of Max daydreaming entering and leaving different worlds.

When I started covering the room with paper however I realised I did not have enough to fill the whole room so decided to fill out a corner of it as if the fictional world is growing into the real one, as daydreaming often does. After playing around with various design sets I decided to draw a church alter as the house is originally a chapel and I am trying to recreate the space I am in fictionally.

The Editing Process

I decided to cut the outside drone footage and some of the footage of max to make it a more extreme and clear entrance into a fictional world. I also decided to edit the music to turn manic and excitable in order to exaggerate fantasy and create a manic feeling.

I also realised that if I am trying to show how my drawings can come to life I should make them move through the propellors of the drone. After spending hours on understanding how editing footage can manipulate the mood I drew up a new storyboard and put the piece together……!!

[pplowden]

Entering a world of fiction

I have realised that why I am so interested in exaggeration is because of the weird worlds and lies it leads to. Over the year my most successful work has been based on fictional imagination; the daydreaming dinner party film, the wax alien chandelier, the alien ballet, the candle of myself and the seagull film, because of the thoughts and discussion they provoked. I wonder what else beyond exaggerating the imaginary can lead me to creating more weird works? I believe fabrication and lies are things to explore which could push me further. Exploring the concept of puppets showed me that pushing the imaginary is limitless and I want to continue discovering this.

However, in order to exaggerate something there must be some form of story or narrative, which I can’t yet think of. I think an interesting way to form one would be to manifest a lie, as exaggeration relies on the artificial and the fake. For example I found an Instagram artist ‘lucage0rge’ who manifested the lie/rumour of a lasagne being made the size of Wembley stadium. It began as a voice note explaining the rumour and the more work and detail which followed, the more exaggerated it became, and the more obvious it was a lie.

In order to cleverly and funnily perform a lie, I need to practice mundane lying. I started simply prank calling my friends and tracking their social reactions. For example, I knew some of them would report it back to the group chat, a useful way to track how lies and rumours can develop and spread, like Chinese whispers.

Wanting to understand the difference between verbal and visional lies, I tried taking photos and titling them so they were obvious that I was lying.

My tutorial with Jala on the 5th May was really helpful in recognising the ways I work best. We discussed the fact that collaborating, especially in film, allows me to be under constant scrutiny of perspectives, something which is important when exploring storytelling.

She also challenged me to consider the timings of lies as to how to make them affective and how to keep the audience engaged in an unravelling narrative. Following her advice I did a lot of research into Alamia Ulmans ‘Excellences & Perfections’ series.

This taught me that timing is very important, not only in terms of its own timeline but also when the work is produced. The lie must be relevant to society for people to care about it, like the saying ‘the best lies are bad on the truth’. It was the timeline of her work which was sold as the artwork.

Through researching Richard Princes Instagram series and the film ‘Invention of Lying’, I realised people are often angry about being deceived /lied to. It is viewed as morally wrong and you have to question if you bare a responsibility when spreading a lie?

Undecided about what lie to manifest I reflected on my work from my year at foundation. From my work at the undercroft space where I was working on myths, I realised character, voice and setting is highly important. However, the works which really stood out were my alien series and bird series; in doing these I discovered peoples beliefs are very important, the aliens showed me that a lie must still relate to a person and the birds showed me how people dramatise for interest, but the familiar is still important. In my blog I wrote ‘i think we often use nature in art to try to understand and illustrate power complexes and ourselves - there is a craving to understand our place in the world’.

I still think nature is something we view as having ownership over, but also appreciate it is full of surprises and the unknown. It is therefore the perfect thing to base a life on, as it can be exaggerated limitlessly without questioning but while holding interest. As I discovered this year through researching creatures, it is easy to exploit peoples obsession with it as they want to familiarise it.

Therefore I think I should focus on creatures again, creating my own species. With the pollution levels dropping due to corona, there is a lot of fake news spreading that animals are thriving, making it believable.

To begin on this idea I will first try expanding pre-existing myths around creatures - The Trojan Horse. I want to create a conspiracy video further challenging the question of it’s existence - picking up on the absurdities of it by claiming that it still exits and using absurd footage. I will use editing and found footage to exaggerate this and the fact it is a lie.

My crit feedback was not very good. They were confused by how the video was a consequence of my idea. I was told I need to spell out my interests more clearly and consider the wider meaning of the found footage more.

I the fact I couldn’t explain myself was not a good sign and realise that this video did not deliver what I hoped. I think my thoughts were too all over the place and I was trying to understand how I could create myths around creatures in order to understand how to invent my own species. I now realise this was partly ineffective because it felt forced and I was confused. I do not want to design a new species, I am more interested in human reaction and life. I want to manifest lies based on humans and creatures, not purely creatures.

Through researching exaggeration as a byproduct of storytelling, I have realised it is often based on people embodying other people. What I mean by this for example is when retelling a story, we often quote the way in which we heard it and found funny then dramatise it even further. Exaggerating is about fabricating, not inventing. It must come from somewhere. For example, lamia unmans lie worked so well because of her timing and most importantly, it was buried among the truth. Creating a species does not excite me and I think this is because there is not enough new exciting things to base it off of;  it was loosely based on the fact I have studied creatures all year and it worked with the current world situation. However, I said at the beginning of this project I did not want to base my work off of corona and I now realise that to enter a fictional world I do not need to build it from scratch. I can observe lies and imagination and exaggerate them further.

I still plan on researching creatures and nature as I think this is an interesting and limitless subject to exaggerate, but through their relationship with humans. As I discovered throughout the year, it is humans understanding of life and nature which interests me, not the nature itself.

What reminded me of this was the instagram page ‘notmyanimal’ where people celebrate images of animals living as if humans. The images are hilarious but I find it an odd concept, much like when I researched the face on mars, I find it fascinating that people enjoy celebrating the familiar in a world of the unknown. Why is the chicken choosing crisps in a shop more interesting than the chicken in the farm?

[pplowden]

Exaggeration and puppets

I decided to begin researching controlling exaggeration through how humans do it in performance, rather than verbally. This is because when humans perform with their bodies, it is always controlled and often exaggerated. For example in mime, exaggeration is the bases of the performance, the silence demanding more attention on the movement of the body and each movement emphasised to represent simple emotions.

I watched the animations of Jan Svankmajor, ‘Meat Love’ being one which really stood out. I found it so powerful because it had everything - birth, love and death. The fact that it is performed by two vulgar pieces of meat and its length is what exaggerates it; how can it be that two nonhuman things can explain human existence in a mere 1 minute?

In my zoom tutorial with Luke it was suggested I looked at Paul Klee hand puppets. I was not taken by their aesthetic but was drawn to the idea of puppets to explore exaggeration. Citing Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs ‘music box dance’ scene, this temptation became stronger. I realised everything in it was centred around exaggeration, the crowds outfits, a kid of a king, the music, and most of all the inhuman movement of a toy on a person. It made me wonder; If a puppet is representative of a person, it makes the audience question why are we seeing a puppet, not an actor? I believe the answer is because a puppet is a tool for exaggeration. A puppet is a dumbed down version of a person and must be controlled. It cannot move smoothly or freely and holds no real voice. The audience is challenged into understanding why each puppet has been assigned the dialogue and movement it has. It can only represent a few, clear things, rather than a whole complex, real person. Like mime, it shows that to exaggerate you must simplify.

Running with the idea of simplifying to exaggerate, I decided to make a plain puppet the size of my living room. I have enjoyed working large before and think it is a simple way of exaggerating something as it demands attention and makes the audience wonder why it is so big. By making it plain I was able to focus on exaggerating only one thing; the size.

I was happy with the outcome, I find it unsettling and like how it almost looks normal. It reminded me of the Alice and wonderland scene where she fills the whits rabbits house. Looking to Jordan Wolfsons puppet at the Tate and 2014 piece ‘Female Figure’ I felt that although I find his work difficult to watch, I like that he creates one puppet to focus on one thing. It shows why exaggeration works so well in puppets, because they can only show so much, you have to pick one thing/ characteristic and amplify it.

Brian Griffiths puppets showed me something similar, the explanation for his exhibition being ‘the puppet in its purest form and motion resembles something of the artifact, tool, machine or musical instrument. They are contradictory things to be looked at and spoken through, that are animated and brought to life via imagination and will’.

Puppets are merely a tool for what we, humans, want to talk about further, the things we want to exaggerate.

Lost with what interesting to do with this, I have decided to take on some advice I got in my tutorial that sometimes it is best to get lost in the process and not worry about the outcome. After watching the film ‘Being John Malkovich’ and discussing ideas with my brother and sister who I am in quarantine with, we have decided to get up early and create a one day project film, arriving dressed  up as a puppet and seeing what happens, exploring how that accidental becomes the deliberate. Working with some floating ideas we already have, we are hoping a narrative will form itself. I hope this will be a successful way to work during this time of lack of events, conversations and coincidences which would usually create a clearer process.

I am really happy with the outcome - we managed to create a short film in just one day ! We picked a doll that looked like me and used this as a starting point. Dressing up in the same top and doing my hair and make up, we began by finding places we could film which would look as if me and the doll where in the same place, wanting to play with the idea of realness and the artificial in puppets. This helped us a form a simple narrative about control and truth versus fiction. While I, supposedly human, cook a breakfast, the doll moves freely around the (doll)house. My movements become more and more manic until the breakfast becomes a live being who is controlling me ; I am in fact the puppet stuck in the dolls house and the plate of food is the thing left talking.

We used flour and makeup to create a slightly alarming and explicitly fake look, and playful music by Nina Rota. To exaggerate this all even further, we used ‘fake french’ for the script to further play on the ideas of a simplified, broken puppet, and as an exaggeration of French mime, whose character is often clumsy and clown like. The final line is ‘parceque, le grande catastrophe, of course c’est love’, spoken by the bacon and eggs face. This is a final half explanation of the mad puppet woman, but more so an exaggeration of the film, there has been no mention of love before this point, the script is almost nonsensical and this is humorous to end with something so grand and in some ways, untrue, and yet of course- it would be love.

I was super happy with the reaction, that they realised it was about purposeful failure as a I played on this a lot, for example I edited in moments where I didn’t known I was being filmed and exaggerated them further, exploring the accidental coming the deliberate.

I found that at first people were unsure of what to say. I guess this touches on what Claire said in our tutorial about the audience not knowing what to think about why I’ve made my work yet I feel that this reaction was perfect.  They were taken aback and then once they started discussing it they had picked up on the things I had tried to exaggerate. If I can do this, then why must they understand why I have made each thing? It is boring if the audience can understand every choice and decision - I much prefer to create work I want to create without worrying how it will be perceived. As long as there is some form of reaction and connection I think this is good, if they understand  my mind then great and if not then perhaps even better? Its not bad to be a mystery ; as long as people are interested enough to start discussing. This is something my classmates agreed with, they said mood and feeling is what is important.

 he video and audience reaction to the doll seeming more real than me reminded me of this scene in Stardust of the voodoo doll. I would like to further explore themes on control in puppets through simplified, over-exaggerated movement.

Rachel MacClean’s video work

I really like her work for how modern and absurd it looks. Her characters are often uncomfortable to watch and it seems like its own fantasy world. However her message is clear and political. She seems to be the absurd and and unknown as a way to exaggerate hat we are doing to society, as if we are out of touch with a ‘real world’. Im not sure I agree with his, although her work inspires me, I prefer work which celebrates the unknown as well as the known. I think humans are still ‘in touch’ with the world.

What I liked most was the visual extremity. Her films are vibrant and immersive. Some of her characters reminded me of ‘whoville’ from the grinch which I am very fond of. It is a peculiar look in which a person is still recognisable but it feels uncomfortable to refer to them as people.

Her work also reminds me strongly of the new film ‘Paradise Hills’ directed by Alice Waddington. In both the sets, costumes and editing carry an aesthetic of rich, current culture as a vibrant, almost sickly and tacky look. Also reminiscent of the capitalists in hunger games.

Rosie Gibbens is another artists whose performances in my opinion take on a similar aesthetic as well.

Her piece which really took me however was this one, where on one screen she is moving in the form of an animal, with bras attached to her to distort her usual body shape and on the right screen is a zoomed out birds eye view of her. I like this contrastof perspectives and although I do not care for what the point of the script, I like how it is written as an examination. The audience feels as if they are studying a creature, a puppet. 

Through researching artists I have learnt that visuals are very important when exploring this idea of the artificial and exaggeration. Whether this be costume, camera angles or literal visual examples of fake products.

In my tutorial notes Ellie wrote ‘Keep pushing your story-telling through film and explore how using even more different styles can contribute to the absurd worlds you’re building. It would be interesting to see different characters and storylines as different chapters to this work.’

Reading ‘the absurd worlds you’re building’ pleases me to know this is how the audience is viewing my work. I now wanter to continue to explore the fictional using exaggeration and the artificial as a way to do this.

[pplowden]

Starting Fmp - The Head.

Reflecting on my blog, statement of intent and first zoom tutorial I realise research is crucial to making this ‘theme’ of storytelling and exaggeration powerful. I think that what my work is actually asking is in fact to understand how people understand and react to stories, rather then how I understand them. For example, I am interested in exaggeration because it is a byproduct of storytelling which often leads to be the most interesting thing. What humans do to stories is normally far more fascinating than the story itself. Therefore, I do not want to start with a definition of a story, I think its better to be open to discovery. However, something to consider now in this time of quarantine is, I do not want this to become the work. I think this theme will be overused, of course it will inevitably effect the work but I do not want it to be the subject matter, that is too meta and restricting.

While consequently feeling a bit lost in where to begin with a lack of human interaction and amusing tales occurring, I decided to revisit ‘the head’ story, as told above -

(at my aunt and uncles house there are three stone sculptures of heads on their mantle piece which my uncle found in a skip. He says that in the medieval times they believed murderers all had the same anatomy, and these heads are in fact death masks of murderers used to figure out the bone structure that would possess every murderer. While sat at a candle lit dinner, the heads glowing and watching over us, I was told the story of the severed head. Our family friend had gone to open day for a boarding school and while playing football had kicked the ball into a nearby bush. Going to retrieve it and continue the game, he kicked it out into the playing field. What landed was not the football, but a severed head. The school sent out a small apology letter, but covered up the story and it was never heard about again, except through word of mouth.)  

I decided to draw a series of drawings based off of the story as a way to materially visualise it and work out an engaging way to make work without simply re-telling. I find drawing a natural and useful way of sparking off ideas, I think this is because it is a way of getting my thoughts down on paper in a visual way which is more developed than floating thoughts in my head.

From doing this I decided that what makes this story so amusing is a series of things;

-the absurdity and grotesqueness in finding a literal severed head,

-the reaction of the person who found it,

-the fact the school covered it up,

-and finally that is retold but with no evidence, becoming its own sort of myth.

Working through these components as a sort of chain of events, I started by trying to recreate the severed head in an interesting way by burying my friend.

While doing this I realised it is funny because it is so absurd and peculiar to see someone so clearly alive buried. To exaggerate this I coated her lips in lip gloss and requested her to pout. I found that while talking about death is of course sad, because there is no real evidence of this being true and it is so far removed from us, that hearing the story it becomes merely funny. Both the head and tale is removed from any feeling of humanity or sense of realness. The feedback I got from some friends and tutors agreed with this, saying it was exploring surreal narratives and humorous as she looks unusually long.

Wanting to explore dark humour around death further, I watched two Monty Python sketches - “not dead yet” and ‘undertaker sketch”. The ability to joke about death in a non-serious, sarcastic tone while remaining inoffensive was something I wanted to adopt.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35g9ib

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdf5EXo6I68

This propelled me into thinking about the person who found the head and their reaction. I wanted to portray the shock and upset of it in an overly dramatic way. After toying with multiple ideas of how to do this I came across the film ‘In Fabric’ by Peter Strickland where there is a scene of a man dreaming of his wife giving birth, he tries to take on her pain, his face performing a powerful embodiment of agony, making me consider showing the emotional pain in a physical way as a form of exaggeration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWm7-cYIMas

I filmed my mum sobbing and screaming while chucking water over her, to emphasise the amount of emotion. After cropping the video to be super close up and focused on her face without seeing where the water is coming from, she becomes the severed head. It is uncomfortable to watch.

I think film was a successful outcome for this idea, as it is able to capture the senses of the emotion, immersing the viewer into the suffering as well. Her scream is desperate and it is horrible to watch.

Happy with the outcome, I continued to research the concept of embodying other peoples emotions. Ryan Mosleys ‘Duchess of oils’ is a painting which was in Whitechapels Radical Figures exhibition. I find it amusing in its morphing of people into one figure. I think this is a thought provoking way of pointing out what humans do naturally - merge emotions and tendencies.

https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/whitechapels-radical-figures-and-the-famous-paintings-that-inspired-them/

Moving on to look at the ‘cover-up’ aspect of the head story I became engrossed in the nature of secret keeping and how this leads to conspiracy. I looked into ‘secrets’ and mysteries around old famous paintings. Also Jeanne Claude and Christos work was interesting here; their practice of wrapping objects, made me consider how removing the viewer’s associations with an object can restore its raw structure. They force us to confront what’s actually there: the formal qualities of surface, shape and structure, as opposed to our memories and connections. This creates an interesting and mysterious physical object, as well as concept. How can it be that physically covering something up such as a chair has this affect, where as covering up an account, such as the severed head, does the opposite, leaving people to confront memories and connections rather than a physical report?

This led me to question, do people always hide secrets because it reflects badly on them? And why do people then confess? Is it over guilt or longing for forgiveness? Using ‘The Brick Testament’ to understand confession in religion more, I found it is taught that confession is encouraged in order to ‘forgive and forget’ but also as an almost rule to life. It is seen really immoral to lie.

https://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/wrapped-monuments

http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/following_your_own_moral_compass/dt29_20c.html

Wanting to apply this all into a form of work I decided that what was most important to focus on is the physicality of hiding something and the digging to discover it. Drawing from the work I had already made on this story and these ideas, I decided to bury a message in a bottle. In the same way burying my friend showed me, this form of documentation seems completely mythical and ridiculous. This story is in some way meaningless, as is burying a bottle in the ground with a message, apart from the fact they are both humorous. I thought the message being a hopeless poem addressed to the head would be a funny way of taking this one step further, it too means nothing, especially as it is so pathetic.

I do not feel particularly impressed with this outcome, it does not feel very finalised and I feel uncomfortable in having to document it as it sort of defeats the point. However, it is very useful in moving onto studying the next part of the narrative; the retelling.

The poem I left also acts a form of retelling and it highlighted for me that the more a story is retold the more it is exaggerated and slightly changes.

This made me think of ‘Chinese whispers’ and the affect of humans on stories. Thinking about how to portray this physically I found an artist called Susie Ray who copies paintings exactly. I find this a weird and fascinating job and similar to the retelling of a story. People are comforted by repetition while also craving new interests. Telling a story often does this as it reminds people of their own experiences and allows them to then retell these.

This made me want to copy out my own work again and again until I have similar but different versions of the same thing, a sort of parallel to the telling of stories. From researching Judy Chicagos ‘The Dinner Party’ I decided I would do it of a scene of a dinner party, a formal setting which relies heavily on conversation and opinion, and as a triptych, a form which traditionally was used for storytelling in paintings.

From planning the drawing, I have decided to not copy it out completely as I want it to represent a more dramatic change. Therefore, I have decided that as it moves from the left to the right of the triptych the characters will merge into being the same severed head. I have also decided to use watercolour as this is less controllable than a pencil, meaning it will differ more from painting to painting, like retelling a story.

Here are the final A1 paintings. As I was painting them I decided to do it onto a rough surface to pick up the background as a parallel to the telling of a story, just by it being done of this surface the painting is affected, as a story is depending on the person telling it. Charcoal was a good medium to use for this as it is easily manipulated and is affected easily by bumps and scarring on paper. I also decided to lighten each painting from left to right, as the characters round the tale become enlightened.

Finishing these paintings I feel I have exhausted the story of the severed head. After exploring a singular narrative I realise that exaggeration is what attracts me most as a byproduct of a story rather than the story itself. I now want to pay more attention to this and see what happens, perhaps forming my own narrative inspired by aspects and components of other stories, rather than using a singular story as the base of my work.

After my zoom tutorials I learnt that I must observe techniques artists and filmmakers use to exaggerate and the effect this has on an audience to understand how they perceive something as exaggerated.

Something I was asked was  ‘how do you know when exaggeration is accidental or deliberate?’

Im not sure I have the answer to this yet, It seems both obvious and impossible to tell at the same time. I think that the accidental often becomes the deliberate, and this is what I now want to explore and exaggerate.

[pplowden]

PRE FMP Exaggeration and storytelling

Exaggeration and storytelling are inherent in human society. What I really find interesting is the structure of how humans live their lives. People find a comfort in routine and success in repetition. There is a unanimous decision in how we should form our days; at what times we brush our teeth, eat, get dressed, go to bed etc. Not only does this satisfy people, it makes them feel secure and entertained, we even try to recreate this artificially, for example the game ‘Sims’ is all about building your own society, it is like playing with your own life, only with slightly more control.

I decided to take this even further, living by a strict manifesto of only eating orange food in my orange room. While there was a sense of comfort in the limitations this provided, it felt ridiculous and inevitably, made me physically sick. There are many artists who decide to live with such extreme routines - the most famous probably being Gilbert and George. People are infatuated with the mystery around their commitment to structure. Real or not they provoke the idea that structure provides something for humans, even if it is just people's interest in it.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gilbert-george-day-routine-life-453958

Perhaps this obsession with routine is about allowing us time to search for what is really important; our purpose in life. Often people long to turn the mundane into the interesting, which seems both an act of desperation and a form of existential crisis. The thought that there is something beyond us is scary, exciting and somehow important. The artist David Huggins is a 74 year old man who has spent his life painting the extraterrestrial woman who took his virginity and the hybrid human alien-babies this produced. What interests me about him is that he refuses to sell the works of his (fantasy) wife - his paintings are personal objects which form a part of his life, not mere pieces of work.

https://www.theartblog.org/2011/08/david-huggins-an-uncommon-life/

Furthermore, although he has lived his life in what we assume to be half fantasy, he has embedded these alien figures into an ordinary, human life. He is in a monogamous relationship and fathering a family. As much desperation there is to find something beyond humanity, there is still an urge to bring it  back round to what we have created. This led me to draw a series of imagined scenes of aliens performing the daily acts of humans, such as eating dinner.

This is why I am interested in exaggeration; people want to find something new and exciting, but only so they can share it with what human experience we already have. There is an absurdity in how dramatic humans are often tempted to be, it is humorous.

https://www.siff.net/festival/dj-nicfit-presents-fantastic-planet

Inspired by Roland Topor's ‘La Planète Sauvage’, which explores the relationship between human and alien, and his costumes for a production of the ‘Magic Flute’, I decided to knit alien costumes and perform a ballet, green screening it onto a background of the face on Mars.

I decided performance is a good way to dramatise what I am trying to explore, as it relies on amplification and being extravagant. The use of a green screen allows importance to be placed on the movement of the performer and any connections with setting to be removed. By replacing it with the the face on Mars, it represents perfectly what I am interested in, how humans have grasped a familiar figure and celebrated it, in a place full of the unknown.

It is this balance between truth and fiction which really holds my attention. Ultimately, fact and fiction is merely what people claim them to be. If stories are about perspective, how can we deem one version true and another false?

https://www.henson.com/storyteller.php

Folk tales, fables, and legends are interesting here, as the oldest and most famous forms of stories historically. The kids tv programme ‘The Storyteller’ by Jim Henson tells such tales, emphasising the importance of dramatics in storytelling through voice, setting and humour. The opening lines of each episode being;

“When people told themselves their past with stories, explain their present with stories, foretold the stories with stories, the best place by the fire, was kept with for storyteller”.

The act of a story is presented almost like a ritual which affects everyones everyday life, but also something which has a skill to it. As often seen in literature and art, this programme is a story about stories. It is not simply a retelling, there is importance in its own characters and their narrative.

Inspired by my own experiences and stories about being attacked/attacking birds, I researched the greek myths of Icarus, Prometheus and Leda and the Swan. Once again I found myself interested in the dramatic nature of such myths; the dramatic monologues and inevitable rise and fall of characters, the shifting perspectives and interpretations and mostly, the tendency to fabricate something unimportant to transform it into the important. To reflect on this idea, I wrote an essay;

Reflections on swans (and seagulls)

The swan is often considered to be the most beautiful and powerful creature. As described in Yeats’ poem ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, they are “mysterious, beautiful” and “unwearied”, traits all humans aspire to have. We are in awe of them; as we are tempted by materialism and infidelity, grow cynical and die, their symbolic beauty doesn’t fade: the swan remains monogamous and elegant, living a simple, pure life.

Swans carry a purity in their graceful paddle and colouring as well as symbolising a sort of British greatness. They are believed to be silent until singing a final “swan song” – the pinnacle of their greatness - at their death. Perhaps this and the fact they are owned by the Queen, gives them a mysterious authority. We are taught to admire them from a respectful distance.

However, no matter how blinded by their beauty we are, we know never to forget their power. They are fierce, quick to feel threatened and will “breaking our legs” to protect their young.

This recognition and portrayal of their danger is not a new one. The myth of Zeus disguising himself as a swan to rape Leda has been a prominent tale explored in art for centuries. Although this story uses the swan to represent a cruel and deceiving character, Michelangelo painted it as an intimate and romantic scene, supposedly causing it to be destroyed in the seventeenth century due to its ‘lasciviousness’.

I find Stephen Pearsons’ ‘Wings of Love’, famously known for illustrating the divide between Laurence and Beverly in Mike Lees ‘Abigail’s Party’, reminiscent of this. While ‘Wings of love’ symbolises the progression and divide between romanticism and realism, exposing people for being over consumed with nature while also applauding nature for holding such power, ‘Leda and the Swan’, symbolises the relationship between cruelty and power.

Yeats has also written a poem on this, emphasising a much cruel explanation: “A sudden blow”, “He holds her helpless breast upon his breast”. Immediately we feel the brute force of Zeus raping Leda. However, what becomes surprising as you read on is the threatening softness in which he continues to describe it; “feathered glory”, “thighs caressed”. This seems to perfectly sum up the character of a swan - silent but deadly.

I find this imbalance of opinions peculiar and recurring with swans - perhaps it is only superficial beauty and the fact that the Queen owns them which makes us feel so proud and protective of them? In reality, they are dangerous and cruel.

I once ate a swan after it died flying into an electrical wire on my grandparents’ farm. Its flesh was dark, forbidding and fishy. It was unpleasant and I felt as if I was being let down, as if it was meant to be something life changing when in fact it was vulgar and sickening. I wonder if the pride of national ownership only added to this feeling? It was meant to be an honour to be eat something usually untouchable, admirable and wild; free but royal; yet it was disgusting.

Do we misunderstand all animals, all birds, all nature? We, like the Queen, assert ownership over animals with our pets. Yet we keep them in cages and on leads. We have a hierarchy – swans above seagulls, seagulls above caged budgies. What does it mean and is it more about ourselves than the animals we portray?

I am interested in this and in our relationship to other birds. I wonder if it is the status of Royal ownership which separates swans from the common bird, which we often fear or diminish. We fear birds trapped in houses. In a recent news story, we fear a seagull that stole a woman’s pet chihuahua. Why underestimate the seagull? It is an enemy because it steals our chips and our chihauhuas. But what has changed since the lesson of Prometheus, which warned humans not to be arrogant or misunderstand the natural order of the world? Why are we now taught to hate and disrespect the common bird?

I think we often use nature in art to try to understand and illustrate power complexes and ourselves - there is a craving to understand our place in the world. The conflicting views on swans is an example. In a way, swans are irrelevant to humans, they are in our art because there is a deeper craving to understand something much larger about ourselves. Thinking about this prompted me to make a film about the neglected and maligned seagull; to draw comparisons between the survivalist impulse which exists in these lonely, maligned birds and in lonely, maligned people.

What writing this essay and the script for my film really taught me is that it is the absurdity in the obsession of trying to understand something bigger than us which interests me, whether its natural order or power complexes, the need to exaggerate human importance until we understand such topics seems unavoidable. David Lynch’s new film ‘WHAT DID JACK DO?’ I find represents what I mean here: the nonsensical, circling script of cliches eventually defeats the storyline. Instead, what becomes entertaining and successful is the humorous journey of the dialogue.

netflix.com

In some ways, it seems a critique of stories as they are meant to be, instead suggesting it is the ludicrous way in which we tell them through exaggeration is what becomes the story.

Since realising this, I think what I am really interested in is not just the stories people are telling, but how they tell them that I am attracted to. For example, at my aunt and uncles house there are three stone sculptures of heads on their mantle piece which my uncle found in a skip. He says that in the medieval times they believed murderers all had the same anatomy, and these heads are in fact death masks of murderers used to figure out the bone structure that would possess every murderer. While sat at a candle lit dinner, the heads glowing and watching over us, I was told the story of the severed head. Our family friend had gone to open day for a boarding school and while playing football had kicked the ball into a nearby bush. Going to retrieve it and continue the game, he kicked it out into the playing field. What landed was not the football, but a severed head. The school sent out a small apology letter, but covered up the story and it was never heard about again, except through word of mouth. Becoming its own kind of myth, I hear and retell this story often, surprisingly regularly receiving a similar story in reaction.

I am interested in how to turn such accounts into their own visual stories or pieces of work. I believe one way to do this is to learn what is so interesting in each individual story and focus on this, whether it as obscure as the fact it is so dramatic and making an installation full of shadows and mystery, or as specific as a particular description of an object and recreating it.

I am interested in interactive works; I believe giving a role to the audience to be immersed is very powerful in its effect, especially when exploring storytelling, where the audience and the memories they are left with is half of the experience. Saying that, I believe it should be a memory they are left with only. Often people are interested in taking a physical object away from an artwork, as well as a memory.

https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/yoko-ono-cut-piece-1964/

For example in Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’, the audience members were invited to come and cut off a piece of her clothing. What is powerful about this performance is not the fact they walk away with a piece of her cloth -  an artefact of such a famous artwork - but the fact they committed the act. The fabric has become the documentation, the intimate act the work. Therefore, I find it more exciting to leave the room empty handed. If there is nothing to tell except for the story of the experience - we are left with a series of interesting experiences and accounts, becoming a story and artwork in itself.

Another way in which we can dramatise is through physical size and dominance. Working on a large scale excites me. Phyllida Barlows' work at the 2017 Venice Biennale felt almost like a stage design. The construction and emphasis on under cladding became the artwork, it was compromised of monumental structures of various, large heights filling the gallery.

https://www.designboom.com/art/phyllida-barlow-british-pavilion-venice-biennale-05-28-2017/

I hope to continue researching storytelling and exaggeration through an interesting, dramatic aesthetic.