Dean explores both specific historical events and formal qualities of the 16 mm film, as seen in her Disappearance at Sea (1996) and The Green Ray (2001). Dean’s use of celluloid film, photography, installation, and drawing, seems an act of mourning for the analog world of documents and photographs as it passes into the realm of a massive digital archive. “A world that won’t forget is a world drowned in its not forgetting,” she reflected. “Do we want a world full of unedited memory? To be human is to be finite.”
I was told during a tutorial with David to look into Dean because I sometimes use landscapes in my work outside of university. He was keen to find out if there is a tension between this work and my subject practice, and if there was a way to use both at the same time, since my landscape painting technique differs so much with my painting in the studio. She edits her photographs to look like they have mysterious, unknown backstories; “I do not want to give these images explanations: descriptions by the finder about how and where they were found, or guesses as to what stories they might or might not tell. I want them to keep the silence of the fleamarket; the silence they had when I found them; the silence of the lost object.”. This concept is hugely interesting to me, but I’m currently struggling to find out how this could connect my two sides of work. Perhaps it doesn’t need an explanation at all?
saratrouble 