3D Maya mock ups based on allocated space:
Thoughts on this idea …
Install Progress/making photos:
Thoughts on this…
Making Spiders:
Thoughts on this:
My recent practice has centred around absurdity and our environment. I’ve researched phenomenology through the work of Merleau-Ponty and Camus’ ‘Myth of Sisyphus’. I have found linking the concepts of environment and memory through recognition of the world as somewhere familiar to us as influenced by Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics of Space’ has brought me to my final project as a recreation of the bedroom through the distorting lens of the absurd. The bedroom is a focal point for this idea, for me personally I have only had bedroom space as a place of security and belonging up until this point in my life. In many ways my bedroom represents to me the true boundaries of my experience with and understanding of the world. As Bachelard says in the poetics of space “At times we think we know ourselves in time, when all we know is a sequence of fixations in the spaces of the being’s stability – a being who does not want to melt away…in its countless alveoli space contains compressed time that is what space is for’ (p30).
However, as with absurdity and Camus’ idea of the familiar becoming alien and so unrecognisable, when my mental health worsens my connection with outside life and other people shrinks and all that seems to exist or matter to me becomes constricted to only that space and those four walls around me. As anxiety increases the environment outside my window suddenly shifts from a place of opportunity to one that seems other and dangerous and with this a sense of fear creeps in bringing with it absurdity and a disconnection from my sense of self.
I’ve come to view my bedroom as a reflection of my mental state, when I’m struggling to keep track of myself and my life that bedroom becomes a minefield, layers of rubbish, clothes, mouldy plates and abandoned attempts at making working surround me. It feels like your buried in your own failings as a person. It’s a constant reminder that you are struggling and a reflection of the things you dislike most about yourself. Its inescapable.
When these elements are combined with a sense of disconnect from reality and your sense of self it can create the experience that yourself and the space around you are one and the same, one entity or hole. The borders of your physical body and identity become blurred and the space surrounding you feels more like an extension of your being that something separate from it.
Phenomenology tells us that the body and lived experience through physical movement connects our understanding of past, present, and future and physical space as well as our travelling through it becomes inscribed on our way of navigating the world. Therefore, I hope to recreate this feeling of absurdity and loss of self through the distortion of a bedroom environment both through creating a sense of stagnation and an absence of movement as well as the creation of an absurd setting that obscures the familiarity of a bedroom setting to allude to that loss of recognition. With the difficulty in recognising the bedroom being synonymous with the difficulty of recognising oneself. By distancing an otherwise safe and comfortable setting where as Bachelard claims that recognition and bodily understanding acts as a connection to memory I hope to display that disconnection from self and environment as being one with a lack of access to past memories.
In order to elicit a response from the audience that mirrors the confrontation found in absurdity and my own fear experienced when in a dissociative state I plan to create this absurdity and environmental distortion by transforming the bedroom into a spider’s nest. The concept behind this is both to surprise and shock my audience as a way to generate feelings of absurdity and difficulty in recognition as well as to generate the aforementioned loss of movement through the sense of being trapped withing the confines of a web. Furthermore, I hope that by having the spiders appear as a swarming mass I can also elicit feelings of overwhelm withing my audience as I am overwhelmed by my environment when my mental health declines.
As for questions I hope to resolve through the creation of this work:
– The main question would of course be whether this installation concept will translate into the intended emotional response I want to impart on my audience.
Additional thoughts –
The creation of a spider web as an allegory for cyclical behaviours.
The room as a living space as made explicit by its representation as a spider nest.
The use of horror to create engagement and an emotional connection in the audience. I hope through the use of spiders as a known catalyst for feelings of fear will cause my audience to question the piece and perhaps take something away with them in the form of an awareness of their own familiar environments and their connection with them.
‘Stephen king once wrote that ‘nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations….’ Alan wake nightmare
My initial thoughts on how to create this unsettling of recognisable reality was through the use of film as opposed to a physical installation, as described in the following paragraph.
I think it would be interesting to play with the depiction of space, time and direction in the portrayal of the environment on camera. By having the layout and items within the room disappearing or shifting position continuously, having the camera angled from positions that distort the space or using post effects such as flipping the image or applying subtle warping effects. I would like, potentially, to explore the idea of feeling unable to trust your own experience and perception. Perhaps having other characters or outside voices disagreeing with the experiences of the protagonist being displayed or shifting the portrayal on screen to show the protagonist and the environment from differing representations in an othering lens. For example, during a conversation with a mother figure, having the presentation of the protagonist becoming more childlike or uncertain and in need of support. In this way I’m hoping to show the questioning of yourself and the disparity in how you might revaluate and view yourself as a person when confronted with understandings and opinions of yourself from the wider world that conflict with your own self-image. Showing a switch physically and spatially in the character as they hear the way in which another individual perceives and categorizes them and how this can be internalised. I want to generate an air of constant uncertainty and distrust for what’s being shown on screen. For myself, especially as a child, I felt like I was holding many different and sometimes conflicting self-concepts. I was constantly analysing my actions for any way they could be misinterpreted or misunderstood. There were layers to the expectations for how to act and behave to portray categories and identities that had been placed on me correctly. I think having the character themselves lacking knowledge and important information about themselves while hinting the people around them possess this information could potentially be another direction in which to explore this. I’m hoping I can find a way to capture these experiences and ideas through film and using the bedroom and the objects within it as a device to communicate this. I have many inspirations I would like to draw from in attempting to achieve this goal. Internet phycological horror series such as this house has people in it and films such as Room and Get out. I’m also heavily interested in body horror and its links to the LGBTQ2+ and gender queer experience. YouTube videos such as Abigail Thorn’s piece on suicide, Bo Burnham’s inside and many more. I want to research film techniques in terms of conveying emotion through colour, light and sound as well as poetic symbolism so I can incorporate these into my experiments.
I’m not yet sure what method of filming I would like to use. Up until this point I have been relying on and using simply my computer webcam. I’m in too minds about continuing to use this method as I feel a proper film camera and better equipment would help make any effects, I might want to incorporate clearer and easier for the audience to pick up on. However, something about the idea of using grainy webcam footage for all of it has quite a visceral feel to me and I think it could create more of a feeling of isolation and ‘shouting into the void’ which reflects a lot of what I experience during these times. There’s a clunky, inelegant and inexperienced element to it that I think relates to the struggle of navigating and understanding the world.
However, I chose to move away from the use of film as a way to communicate my ideas to an audience, partly due to my wish to pursue a career in physical making- as an installation would better serve this goal- but also due to an issue that arose with my ability to hire out equipment where I was unable to access the necessary cameras and recording tools for several weeks. Although the issue has since been resolved, it presented a major problem to my initial film-based concept that I chose to result by pivoting to a physical outcome.
I plan to rely heavily on textile art to create the desired web like affect. I will use draping and hanging sheets of material to bring an intimate and therefore hopefully more intense feel to the space. I also plan to emphasize the absence of memory by removing as much colour from the space as possible and will be utilising white to do this. As well as this I plan to experiment with a range of approaches to creating spider webs from thread and glue to stretch fabrics and even special effects tools such as spray web as used in the film industry. In order to preserve the spectacle of handmade spiders alongside forming the sense of overwhelm through a mass of many spiders I will be both creating textile art spiders from scratch as well as modifying cheap plastic spiders by adding foam, wire, paint and material to them. As for the rest of the installation such as possible sound and lighting additions I will be exploring a range of potential options. In light of the studio space allocated to me I have had to problem solve my wish to create an enclosed space with the existence of large windows and an open ceiling. In order to counteract this, I plan to add a canopy over the ceiling and black out material covering the windows.
To create that feeling of shock and so absurdity, and potentially fear in my audience I will include a curtain over the entrance to the space so the environment will be revealed once they choose to enter. Additionally, by angling the web to alter the audience’s perception of where the walls are and so removing the basic box-like structure most rooms are modelled after, I aim to emulate the loss of recognisable and so navigational space, as seen in William Utermohlen’s paintings, ‘The conversation pieces’- to further unsettle the viewers expectations and sense of understanding and recognition, based on their lived experience of firm, solid boundaries in built homes. I’m hoping that by taking something instantly recognisable and identifiable to the majority of my audience i.e. a bedroom and altering it to create a sense of otherness- this will be more impactful in creating a sense of altered reality than simply making an installation focused solely on generating a completely alien landscape. Space provides a connection to memory and our own past through each environment recognisable as a ‘Room’, being so as a result of our lived experience of previous examples of rooms. In this way, each bedroom we experience has the ability to remind us of every previous bedroom we’ve encountered. Through attempting to cause pause in this process of recognition, as a skip on a CD may momentarily jolt us from the comfort of daily activity and make a usually unremarkable space into the unexpected- I want my audience to see the concept of a bedroom environment with fresh eyes.
The audience I plan to address through my work is focused on those who have found overwhelm in their own personal spaces and environments and who, therefore, the experience I am attempting to capture within my installation might be more familiar.
It’s important to me that the relationship between the version of myself in this project and the people around me is made clear as this is where I feel the strongest emotions towards this topic. Generational trauma, need for connection and acceptance, fear for those you love and your future as well as the impact of personal difficulties on others is a big part of my motivation and draw to projects like these. Sharing experiences and stories of personal struggles that I hope other people might relate to or see part of themselves in means a great deal to me. I struggled to communicate and feel understood when I was younger and as a result there is a drive within me to describe and open up these feelings and topics in order to make myself visible to a world that didn’t seems to have much in common with my understanding or experience of it. Further to this, having discovered I’m not alone in this and in many ways despite the huge variation certain human experiences are almost universal have helped bring great comfort and self-acceptance to my life and I feel an obligation to continue the conversation and to try to do the same, if I am at all able, for others.
