Peaches

This is my most recent piece, which is a film and stills from the film, that I’ve titled “Peaches”. The idea behind it was to develop how I wanted to display my ideas more clearly in films I’ve been making. I really wanted a story to follow without any words being spoken, which I think this film does rather well. I began by being a woman staring at two peaches, admiring and even licking one, which sets the sexual undertone immediately. This admiration is purely aesthetic, and then quickly skips to me crushing and moulding the peaches and pat them onto my bum cheeks as if to create and mould a new bum out of them.

This, of course, looked really gross and grotesque, leaving the audience to think this attempt at creating a “peachy bum” was indeed a failure. I also wanted these grotesque squished peaches to really be a focus, thus zoomed into these scenes. I also used a sound repeatedly of me squeezing these peaches, which is a loud squelching and dripping sound, which sounds both sexual and grotesque at the same time.

I believe my editing skills are slowly coming together, and will pursue to try and better them for future films.

Paul Grajon’s Professional Development lecture

Paul’s presentation was mainly about his commission to present new artwork at the Azkuna Zentroa gallery in Spain. He went through a lot of what sort of preparation he did for the exhibition, including how he designed his robots on SketchUp and gave us a quick demo of how it works, and excel for keeping on top of finances, which will all have to be done by the artist. He also explained how he dealt with the budget of 12,000 euro, and that he divided it in half; 6,000 on making the robots, and 6,000 fee as a payment for himself. I learned that it is incredibly important to keep on top of this and to note every spend down to make sure you don’t go over budget and end up not getting paid for the work you’ve put in. It was also important to know that if I were to do this, I’d have to register as self-employed (if the total came to over £1000), which seemed simple on the GOV website.

I think the most useful thing I learned was the financing and what to use to develop 3D designs online for free, which was SketchUp. They looked great considering it doesn’t cost to use it, which certainly will be useful when I try designing for presentations in the future, and was a tool I had no idea was so readily available to use.

David Cronenberg

I was recommended by James Green to watch a few of Cronenberg’s videos, particularly his earlier ones, which often uses scenes of violence, sex, and the grotesque, which sounded perfect for my research into the fetishisation of the woman’s body through food. I first watched Videodrome (1983), which is a study in sexuality, gender, and masochism. The film tells the story of a television producer, Max Renn (James Woods), who is looking for the next big thing in entertainment. He discovers a pirate channel called Videodrome that depicts genuine violent sexual acts. His introduction to the world of Videodrome leads him down a path of rebirth and revelation. Television and pornography within the film are used as conduits for sexual desire, including taboo and violent cravings such as Max’s. Male-dominated sexual violence towards women is highlighted, both in the masochistic character of Nicki Brand and in the torture chamber scenes shown on the Videodrome television program. As Max changes internally, he metamorphosizes externally as well, growing a vaginal slit on his abdomen and a flesh-encased gun on his right hand.  Through the progression of changes Max goes through, Cronenberg makes an ambiguous social commentary on the effects of violence against women in pornography and the psychosexual effects of the media.

Women are overly sexualized in the media to create viewership and sell products. As the old saying goes, “Sex sells.” The problem is when women are forced into masochistic roles in these sexual images. A study in the Journal of Advertisingstates that men tend to enjoy violent content and are less likely to be shocked by violence directed toward women in the media than women are (Capella et al. 38-39). Women are subjugated to violence and submission for mass consumption in almost every form of media, from a woman being forced to lick a man’s boot in a shoe ad to the beating, torture, and implied rape of Lara Croft in the latest Tomb Raider game (Hampton 4). As deviant behavior becomes more mainstream, the former deviants must become more extreme to fill their niche.

The films Max in the film views are not of actors in a studio, but of real victims in real violent situations. The character Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) describes it as “torture, murder, mutilation” with disgust on his face, but the character of Max Renn is fascinated (Browning 61). In the film’s commentary, Cronenberg explains that Max has become numb to the standard fare of pornographic titillation, as evidenced by his reaction to the soft-core film Samurai Dreams. Eroticism has become something perverted, like surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel’s “diabolic pleasure that is related to death and rotting flesh” (Indiana). Max also grows a flesh-encased gun on his right hand. The gun is the phallic article, the meaning of death and insemination. In his transformation, Max has become the masculine and the feminine, the sadist and the masochist. He receives orders from others through the vaginal slit, literally having videotapes inserted into his body to control him. The pseudo-genitals serve as the source of his control; he is subject the whims of men because of them. The men controlling him use the slit and the videotapes to send him after Bianca O’Blivion (Sonja Smits), the daughter of the man who was the first victim of Videodrome. She deprograms him using a sort of sadomasochistic ritual involving a false suicide – he envisions the television shooting him. After this encounter he is reborn, able to go after the men that hurt him. Bianca tells him to “use the weapons they’ve given you to destroy them” (Hampton 2).

In the real world, the effects of violent imagery in pornography are not as extreme as in the world of Videodrome. However, there is a directly causal relationship between the viewing of violent pornography and accepting attitudes toward rape and violence towards women.

This transformation into both male and female is something I am greatly interested in, and also reminds me of Louise Bourgeois’ pieces depicting these dual-genders. The transformation aspect will be highly valuable in my work, as I really enjoyed how it was a subtle change at first, and then a full blown vagina slit in his stomach, and a gruesome, immediate hand transformation, into a phallic, fleshy gun as the effects of female violence continued to effect him. I want my films to transform in a similar manner; have it look fleshy, sexual, but also grotesque using foods and other items that transform into gruesome objects once tampered with.

 

MovieMaker at Chapter

We were invited by Es to join her and a few other students for MovieMaker at Chapter, which included film makers and their short films from South Wales. The ones screening were; Birthday – Catarina Rodrigues
Cumulus – Ioan Holland
Good Intentions – Anna Mantzaris, with music by Phil Brookes
That Makes Two Of Us – Tim Hawkins
73 Moorside Crescent – Tom Margett
The Great Walrus Of China – Jack D Evans
Earthly Delights – Efa Blosse-Mason
Creepy Pasta Salad teaser – Lauren Orme

I wasn’t able to take photographs or note a lot down, since the lights were always off, but I especially enjoyed one about a male who was fighting his own identity as a masculine male, and a feminine male who enjoyed doing drag. Considering it was the first time this artist had edited or made a film (and I personally found it the most enjoyable), I found it incredibly motivating and inspiring as someone who’s only just become interested in making film. I was really focusing on the editing and lighting of the films, and I believe I took a few hints and tricks from the evening to adapt into my own editing as a learner.

Booster Week – 1/02/19

It was snowing too heavily for the university to be open, therefore I decided on dedicating this time to planning my exhibition proposal and submitting it, as well as creating a blog post for Morfudd Matthews, who works with marketing at university and is a Welsh speaker. She reached out to me to write up my experience at Aberystwyth last week and to also send over some pictures of the event.

This was the information I sent her;

Blog am Aberystwyth

Cyflwyniad

Cefais y cyfle i ymuno â Choleg Cymraeg i Aberystwyth am ddigwyddiad rhwydweithio. Mae cyfleoedd fel yma yn angen i artistiaid ifanc yng Nghymru, gan eu bod nhw yn helpu i ddatblygu cysylltiadau gydag artistiaid Cymreig ledled Cymru. Roedd y digwyddiad yma hefyd yn gyfle i ni i gyd siarad Cymraeg gyda’n gilydd am ein gwaith celf, sydd yn weithiau anodd i’w gael yn symud i ddinas.

Prif Destun

Gweld Celf artistiaid enwog a lleol

Cawsom y cyfle i weld gwaith Andrew Logan (flashy iawn), casgliad arbennig llyfrgell Aberystwyth o Kyffin Williams (oedd o’n rili cŵl, oni’n teimlo fel spy), a Paul R jones (sydd yn gwenud gwaith gwleidyddol Cymreig – wehey!).

Cyfarfod â phobl o bynciau eraill sy’n siarad Cymraeg

Mae o’n swnio’n fach, ond mae o’n gwneud byd o wahaniaeth i bobl fel fi sydd yn colli siarad yr iaith. Dwi’n teimlo fel dwi’n ffrindiau efo bawb sydd yn siarad Cymraeg pan dwi’n cyfarfod nhw oherwydd mae o’n teimlo fel gennych chi gymaint yn gyffredin yn barod. Mae cael y siawns o gyfarfod nhw i gyd mewn un lle yn well fyth!

Cyfle i wneud celf o’r profiad

Roedd y profiad yma hefyd yn gyfle i ymlacio a gwneud gwaith sydd ddim yn cael ei asesu. Mae hyn yn hiwj pan ti heb gael frêc ers donkey years i wneud gwaith eich hun sydd ddim ar gyfer eich pwnc. Mae o fel darllen llyfr normal ar ôl cyflwyno traethawd!

Diwedd

Yn fyr, mae’r cyfleoedd sydd am gael eu cyflwyno i chi am fod gymaint o fantais i chdi, petai chi’n gwneud grŵp o ffrindiau, cael brêc, neu yn dysgu sgiliau newydd tuag at eich gwaith. Cewch am gymaint ag y gallwch! (Mae nhw fel arfer yn rhad ac am ddim hefyd!)

 

My Exhibition Proposal went as follows;

1.

The fetishation of food has become a hugely important aspect of my recent work. The playful and flirtatious nature of eating on camera for an audience to document the sexual reactions has developed from paintings of a sexual emoji fruit machine into a grotesque representation of the female body as an object to be consumed. These have been heavily inspired by ORLAN’s body modifications, where I have challenged the use of fruit emojis as representations of the female body, such as cherries and peaches, and created a series of images documenting my grotesque transformation into these specific fruits.

These are shown through films and photographs of me using my own body for these failing transformations. I have used clay and fruit to make cherry breasts and peachy bums, and used the left-overs of these performances as pieces in their own right. These pieces will perhaps be displayed as objects to project my images and/or films onto them when I choose to display them. My work hopefully shines a light on the new era of impossible body ideals, where dating online has developed its own sexual language through visuals rather than words, and questions why exactly it is predominantly aimed at women’s bodies.

I’m still currently developing my ideas around fetishising women through food, but I’ve been really interested in using photography, film, and performance to convey these ideas. I’m currently aiming at documenting a performance and then displaying perhaps projections of photographs/films of what I performed onto pieces from the performance.

 

3.

Most probably assistance with setting up audio/projector equipment.

 

4.

If I were to project images/films, I’d need a darker area of a lit room. I would preferably need somewhere that people could see both my 3D pieces and my projections on top of them. I would also need at least two walls for everything to fit together.

5.

Diagram of what I plan on making;

6.

A projector and speaker.

 

7.

If I’m able to rent the projector and speakers, it shouldn’t need any financial assistance.

I also spent my evening invigilating and attending behind the bar at the exhibition opening for Survey at G39. The exhibition itself was hugely intersting, with a fanstastic range of artists, including; Emma Cousin, who made a fantastic “wallpaper” piece with hanging, colourful framed images on top; and Thomas Goddard, who reflects on our social and psychological experience of the digital age. This new work forms a dystopian account of digital consumerism as a type of ‘soft fascism’, where the subject ultimately challenges us to face forms of manipulation and ignorance whether on a personal or global level, through mass media and economic-led propaganda; and Ashley Holmes’ Good To Us (2018) is a new live presentation which has developed from a written adaptation of Dope, a poem by American writer, music critic and poet, Amiri Baraka (AKA LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka). In the original, Baraka takes on the persona of a black preacher giving a sermon. In an erratic, humorous and satirical manner, the speaker convinces his audience to believe that it “musta been the devil” responsible for the problems confronting black people throughout history. This new work has been informed by Holmes’ research that attempts to dissect the complexities of what occurs when a collective ideology is challenged and/or put at risk. This performance was great to watch live and quite moving as we saw the fast-paced images flicker by, only catching a glimpse of what they were.