Beginning the Final Major Project, there was a lecture giving a briefing by tutor Steve Hemmingway. What I hadn't realised before this point was that the stimulus of the project was decided by me. This at first felt daunting because 3 months seemed like a long time to keep enthused about producing the work from the same brief. I therefore wanted to ensure the Statement of Intent was broad enough that I could keep working with it, retaining interest and not limiting myself.
I decided to keep a blog rather than a sketchbook for the Final Major Project because I felt that with my previous projects I have completed on the Foundation course, my sketchbook and development work leading up to the final piece was not of the same standard as the final outcome. A lot of this comes from the fact that I have been producing a lot of digital work and because printing all these photographs etc was building up to be a large cost, that segment was lacking. I also have been producing video work and with creating an online blog, I can upload this material as well.
I chose the working title of 'Identity' as a starting point for my final major project because it is a broad theme that I can play around with and not be restricted by. There are a number of directions that I can take the project and I enjoy that feeling of freedom, without having to tie myself down to what it is exactly I will be producing as a final outcome. With mind mapping the topic of identity I have understood the vast scale of it. I am excited by ideas of ancestry and looking back through my own family history, listening to memories of my grandparents etc but then also of the physical side of identity and appearance. I wanted to look at the effects appearance had on identity as the way we look and how we feel about ourselves is a huge aspect in making up who we are.
As demonstrated above, I began to mind map ideas I had around around what work I was interested in producing over the course of the project. My ideas were diverse and the initial aim was to produce a vast amount of work over the course for the three months and then produce an installation that would hold all of this work. The arts and entertainment collective group 'Meow Wolf' influenced me at this stage. The type of work they produce could be classed as installation. They create huge complexes of rooms with different themes. I had a similar idea for my final outcome. To have several rooms that the audience walked through and they were all themed differently but all had something to do with my identity. There could be an empty room, perhaps decorated like my grandparents living room, with just audio recordings of my grandparents talking and recounting their memories. Another room could be full of all the photographs I had taken over the course of the project (I have begun a mini project in which I photograph myself everyday, as inspired by On Kawara and his daily paintings) with the photos stuck from floor to ceiling. All the audience can see is my face over and over in different settings, with or without make up, having just woken up, etc. A third room could be an installation in which there's a television playing what seems like day time TV and I'm on a chat show being interviewed. I even had an idea that I would include a room in which performance took place. My plan for after completing the Foundation Year has always been to buy a minivan and travel to anywhere that can be accessed by wheels. Therefore I would need to downsize and sell a lot of my possessions that wouldn't fit within that space. I therefore had the idea that one room of the installation I could set up like a shop and have all these excess clothes, furniture, belongings up for sale and me sitting at a desk with a kids toy shop scanner, beeping these items. I wouldn't expect that they would sell but it would be interesting to see how the audience would interact with this setting, being confronted with me face on as oppose to observing pre-recorded work.
The audience would be bombarded by me and my identity, taking different forms in this mass work that takes form in so many different medias. I want to make use of installation, video, sculpture, photography, audio, performance, recycled materials. I want to observe the relationship the audience would have with me. This clash of what is the real me and what is performance would be the main idea and toying with the minds of the audience.
After completing my plan for the 'Statement of Intent', I spoke to my tutor Charlie Barnes for some critical feedback. After stating my ideas for the project she felt that 'Identity' was too broad a theme, a "broad vehicle to hang work off". She understood that the project was obviously intended to be a mass self portrait and that I wanted to create an immersive installation, something that an audience walked in to and were transported. She said however that she didn't think I was especially interested in identity, rather the broadness that it offered and that I was interested in the idea of 'the fake' but that I wanted to create it to feel real - hyper real. She discussed previous work I had created during my time on the course: a previous installation I had made where the audience effectively walked on to a set, a spectacle. They were put in one space and time, separated from the studio that it existed in. She said it seemed that the idea of trapping people was an important and recurring theme in my work. In another project I created a video of a day in the life of me, recording myself from waking in the morning, to going to sleep at night. She commented saying that she felt I wanted to make people feel and be present. To hold up a mirror saying, "this is also your life" with its mundane, repetitious routine. With us now being in the days of new and advancing technology she commented on the choice I have made to keep a dated brick phone, something unrelated to my practice but it carries through a sense of wanting to be present. Another project I have completed on this course was based on self portraiture. I dressed up as multiple characters for example a man, in drag, pop art, and chose settings to have my photograph taken in. Charlie brought up my interest with the theatrical and framing, photographing myself. She made the comment that, that project had used my body as the artwork. This led on to the perfection of image and ideas of plastic surgery patients.
In regards to my point on the mind map of official documents and methods that are used to determine the identity of someone such as a passport or driving license, she spoke about fake documents and fake ID's and the notion that we might never know who someone is. There is also a focus there on classification and what people might mention to determine who they're talking about in conversation: "the girl who wears the strange clothes", "the gay one", "they're black". How She reiterated the point that I shouldn't make the project too vague but in like manner, nor too specific. She felt I had an interest in the ego and super ego, multiple identity and perhaps even multiple personality disorder. We also discussed mortality and I mentioned the idea of a documentary in remembrance of me. This led on to the idea of me framing myself as a success, we all want to live a life worth living. To even go so far as having a funeral. Artists that she brought up as points of interest were Christoph Büchel, Louise Bourgeois, Orlan, Maurizio Catalan, Christian Boltanski.
I discussed my 'Statement of Intent' with my tutor Steve Hemmingway and he felt, the same as Charlie that the project was too vague. After I had explained my ideas about the project to him he said he felt that the project needed to be "epic" with multiple things going on, with videos dotted around but not everything that I made over the course of the project development need be fitted in to the space. He said that with the proposal I was putting forward, it felt as though I was treating myself as a scientific object to pull apart and analyse, (which he encouraged). He felt that the chat show was the idea I should carry forward of all the ideas on my mind map and that there was the definite need to focus in on something. Same as Charlie, Steve referred back to previous work I had made on the course. In regards to the portraiture project where I dressed myself as different characters, he felt that the proposal of the chat show with me appearing as different characters on the show was an extension of this previous work. These characters were now being interviewed and we as the audience will learn more about them than whatever you can pick up from a still image. In regards to the global warming piece I had created, he encouraged the production of a set alongside this: a living room with armchairs and wallpaper.
Within that chat show idea he suggested that it be humorous and revealing. I expressed concern that I didn't want the show to be a flop and the jokes to not be considered humorous to the audience in the studio. He then suggested that it could be badly acted and uncomfortable or awkward. I could even lip sync an already existing programme. We talked about music that would accompany the chat show and juxtaposing what is expected, including a disturbing, eery theme tune. He encouraged a sophisticated playing with the audiences minds, a subtle oddness - it starts off as a normal chat show and spirals. Sections could be played backwards. Making use of a green screen. Repetition of the script - asked the same question - formulaic response. He suggested the idea that perhaps it's a chat show but not of this world, could it be set in Heaven? I didn't take to this idea but it was an interesting take on the project. Steve recommended I look at artist Rachel Maclean, the television series 'Twin Peaks', the character Alan Partridge and his various appearances, the comedy series 'Don't Hug Me I'm Scared', the game show hallucinatory scene from the film 'Requiem for a Dream', David Lynch's films, the 'Triadisches Ballett' (or Bauhaus ballet), the film 'Cremaster Cycle' .
After discussing the project with Steve, my tutor, I further discussed it with a peer Ed Thomas. Rather than delving in to the multiple ideas I have around the project, I proposed the project to him as just the chat show with me appearing on the channel as multiple characters, all dressed differently with their individual personalities. Or a further idea I had was that I appeared as different characters in a series of shows such as a weather broadcaster, a chat show guest, a documentary host etc. He had the idea of the audience being able to change the channel, to increase the interaction they could have with the installation. This would mean that they wouldn't have to sit through all the different videos, if they felt that they liked character 6 but had to sit through character 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 to experience them. They would then have the choice on which character they wanted to watch. He also discussed the reality that people in this day and age don't watch lots of television and that we access all this data through smartphones, they're a technology that everyone has and people are familiar to them. This started making me think of a whole range of multimedia products I could include within the piece alongside the main article of the television, a magazine, a smartphone on the table that they could access with a social platform, to "make them realise what they do, just scrolling". He made the comment that I could comment on social media posts using a range of different forms of my name: Eleanor Anderson, for example Nora, Ellie, Leonard this stimulated an idea for me that everything within the installation could be focused on or around me, further enforcing the observation of Charlie that the project seemed like a form of self surveilance, an obsessive documentation like that of a stalking psycho killer.
