2021 Art in Process: What the Heck am I doing?

This post is going to go over what the heck I’m doing, how I got to this point, and how I’m jumping into process no-matter if I don’t actually know what the final outcome will look like.

I’ve written in my posts over this year that I’m working towards an art residency that begins in the middle of June and runs till the end of July at RM Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

An arts residency is difficult to qualify in terms of: what it is or what is expected from the gallery, as galleries will have very different processes and expectations. I applied last year for this residency, as I had already exhibited at RM and found that there was mutual understandings around art and community – so I wanted to engage with them again. In my application I discussed how my main practice is moving-image and my interest in exploring different approaches to ‘making’. Instead of fitting content to the usual commercially driven narrative structures, my intention was to take objects of nature: for example, a shell or a feather, and analyse these objects structurally and then use that information to influence how story or theme unfold. Luckily the gallery was interested in my application and they are very open to what outcomes forge out of my research and creative practice.

So, now I’m 8 weeks out from the residency. The residency consists of a working space to create work and has wifi, a kitchen, a wet area and quite a lot of tools and resources for art-practice.

Going back – I’ve been making moving-image for a long while now. I’ve worked in television, film, corporate video, social media content, even done a wedding or two, and now I teach it. However, lately my main interest in moving-image has taken a turn towards art film, avant-garde film, experimental film, poetical film and DIY filmmaking. This interest started quite some time ago, however at the time I was still engaging with the commercial industry as well. It’s only in the last couple of years that I have committed to an arts-practice approach to my moving-image making.

Since January I’ve been slowly researching my idea, which looks like reading, viewing, drawing and taking notes. And I’m at the “What the heck am I doing?” stage. I’m asking myself that a lot. And if you are also engaging in a creative process and feel a bit lost in it all – it’s OK. It’s actually part of the process. There’s always this moment, many moments when self doubt kicks in, even confusion or a feeling that the idea and project is sh*t. But this is where you push on, keep moving, even if you don’t know exactly where you are headed.

The latest object I’ve been working with is a pinecone. (So difficult to draw). The main aspect of the pinecone that I’m interested in structurally is ‘layers’. There is so much you can do with layers, I jotted down a few ideas but I think I need to think about layers more, before I go into the next stage. So for this week, I want to look at the idea of layers conceptually, and what it means for storytelling in moving-image. I have some ideas.

I just re-watched Marcel Duchamp’s Anemic Cinema (1926), where he is super inspired by Dadaism and reduced form to shape and movement. I’m really interested in this type of graphic reduction, and my intention for this week is to play with reducing the ideas of ‘layers’ into a diagrammatic image – this will be a 2D drawing, but will allow myself to think-and-play further on the concept of ‘layers’. Actually Duchamp’s Everyday (1929) is very much a layering of plot and character to create form and intensify the theme of modernity at work. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth a watch.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I don’t know where I’m going or what the final outcome will look and sound like. But that’s perfectly OK. I know I’m gaining momentum and I just have to trust myself in this process.

If you are in the middle of a creative process, let me know down below how you are going…..