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One of the questions that always bothered me was what is it that we like about ugly things. Why they started appearing and being popular nowadays and why people enjoy them so much? I noticed that objects with imperfections and seemingly wrong design attract more of my attention and sympathy rather than polished, seemingly perfect ones. For me, classic idealistic designs are equal to consumerist fast food that many brands are adopting every day because an average customer likes it this way. But the definition of a good taste never stays the same. It evolves in every aspect of its cultural existence: movies, fashion, design, music, art, etc. In many progressive campaigns and art projects, we can find such a statement as 'perfect is boring,' and we start to search for glitches and replicate them to attract attention.

Some of the main trends of the last two decades have been phenomenons criticized and mocked at first but then became a type of ironic pleasure. Brands such as Balenciaga and Vetements, The room and John Waters films, handpoke face tattoos that are imperfect on purpose, viral teenage pop music videos such as "Friday" by Rebecca Black all gather their popularity due to the amount of judgment they get. This signifies that maybe good design is indeed not enough for a modern customer.

Susan Sontag explained this phenomenon in her essay "notes on camp" (1964), where she defines that "good taste is not simply good taste; that there exists, indeed, a good taste of bad taste." For a similar reason in the 20th century, avant-garde art became popular because, at the time, people viewed it as crazy and irrelevant. The 21st century went further, and instead of appreciating controversial opinions of artists showed us the situation in which there is no particular opinion expressed. What if something is just wrong and has no specific idea or purpose behind it? How can people enjoy it? We come to the primary instincts here, it's just fun, people laugh at it, and discussion starts to spread and bring this joy of mocking something together to masses, which makes it viral, then popular, replicable, and then people begin to enjoy it sincerely.

But how do we define that something is campy rather than tasteless? What makes it a great irony that people can appreciate? First of all, it was proven scientifically that people who appreciate trash cinema, for example, are amongst more intelligent members of society and have some level of education and knowledge. So one of the factors might be – relevant historical or cultural references implied in the design intentionally or unintentionally. Intentional campiness is also defined by accurate editing and knowledge of the established rules that are going to be broken. So again, the designer is mocking certain traditions to create something obliviously "ugly" and ironically memorable.

It is a big talent to use this move strategically so that the end product looks cheap and cringy but attracts people nonetheless. The designer should beware of the repetitiveness of this process as an educated society values varied humor and will not tolerate fakes.

[shiartistic]

“Fata Morgana” short film / Experimental film and video

This film tells a story of someone who’s enclosed in a familiar space for so long that he/she becomes afraid of anything that’s outside. The natural curiosity pushes this being towards looking out of the window trying to see everything around, but it’s impossible without overcoming the barrier of fear. I used a simple shape to cover a piece of the video to irritate the viewer and make them want to get rid of this barrier. The overlaying effect combines both worlds the imaginary, unfamiliar “mirage” world that may or may not exist and the tiny familiar apartment where the character is in a trap. The sound is meant to make casual noises that you get around the flat into the weird hypnotic melody that would create tension to match the moment of a difficult choice that is built on the edge of these worlds.

Since the beginning, the brief seemed very abstract to me, and I decided to stick with a poem in my language that is about a man who’s discussing the advantage of not leaving a house, a familiar place. This helped me to create a structure for my work, but later on, I didn’t need this text anymore as my plot drifted away and approached the idea that I used for my artist book too. The comparison of a familiar and unfamiliar space became my primary vector. I tied to look into a process of how we can be attached to a space and afraid to move to another one and haw a place can be scary yet appealing while being unknown.

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I’m finally approaching the time when I’m ready to tackle the film brief. I thought quite a lot about my “character” that is never going to be presented on camera but is going to be shown through his personal living space and his perception of this space. This person can be any gender any age, probably he/she is quite lonely even when people come around. When they come they are irritating but when they are not there the room is suddenly empty. However this space is never empty it’s filled with his/her dreams, thoughts, sometimes voice, shadows... 

This space can be anything a tropical paradise a crowded city when the character wants it, but the space is equally cold as cozy. 

This exploration of a real place versus imaginary space that we want it to be is the goal that I’m trying to achieve. 

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These are the sketches for my final experimental video project. They explore the idea of a  character believing his room to be the whole world and experiencing it in the same way. Sometimes this person is peeking outside, but he sees nothing but a hostile emptiness. So, he builds his most cosy world of dreams inside his little room.

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This is the final version of the film made during the first part of our course. It aims to describe a ‘trippy wonderland-ish’ place inside a mundane space that we see every day. The bright colours mix into greys like paint and then into white like light combined with different sound rhythms and video speeds. 

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Week 2 experimental studio practices.

Today we had to work with professional equipment to capture the essence of the place that is Stockwell street 10. Doesn’t sound like the island of adventure in the heart of South-East London, but we actually managed to find some tropical spots on the second floor. Most of our footage comes from the “fish corner” of the building where we were able to collect as many sounds of water as possible. Combined with various “fishy” visuals it actually represented the atmosphere of the building in a very unexpected way. In my video (that I am actively struggling to edit now) Stockwell street 10 looks like a mysterious yet very “zen” mangrove forest. 

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16mm film experimental project. Working with that medium taught me to limit my color palette and try to be consistent using repetitive motives.