The goal of my film and instillation will be to shine a light on the fetishisation of women’s bodies through food, thus makes our bodies objects to be consumed. These transformations, however, are very plainly failures, and they don’t end looking like sexual body parts at all, inducing the sense that this is another unattainable standard for women.
The work I will have chosen to display will help morph my film of transforming my body into fetishised foods even further, inducing the grotesque nature of it. The projected film will be projected from numerous projectors on top of plinths and onto numerous MDF boards. My original plan was to have them all in different positions, as seen below;
However, during the build, I made the decision to have them all exactly the same, as to not distract the audience from what I want to show, which are my projections;
I hung the pieces around eye-level, so that people can directly watch the projections. This meant that the plinths were built to be around 4ft tall, and spaced correctly so that the hanging pieces are all projected onto like TV screens.
I originally planned to only show three pieces, however after research, I changed my mind and displayed four. This was for aesthetic and practical reasons, which were to be able to have more leeway to have breaks in the films to keep the audience engaged with 1/2 films playing at the same time, while two others showed flashbacks (such as images, very sudden videos, etc) and colour blocks of the foods.
The film itself is a series of performances I’ve documented, and are heavily inspired by ORLAN’s body modifications, Cindy Sherman’s “Grotesque Series” of food and photography, and Rachel Maclean’s “Make Me Up” film. They share a grisly theme to their work, which I believe I’ve captured by using mashed up food on my body in my performances. The idea of being a woman who fails at attaining expectations put onto her comes from Vanessa Beecroft’s work, who explores how women are mortal and simply aren’t made to be like dolls.
The curation of my piece has also come from numerous artists and exhibitions I have visited. I recently went to Paul Eastwood’s “Dyfodiaith” exhibition and performance, who used sound very effectively, by having the musicians, narrator, and singers all stood around the screening of the film. The semi-permanent exhibition of the film also had a similar effect, as the speakers were spread around the projection. My aim is to create a similar effect, as I’ve used narration and food sounds in my films. This will be done with speakers coming from all media players, creating an atmosphere of the sounds.
Other exhibitions I’ve researched, like Shin il Kim’s piece “Active Anesthesia”, shows how the artist seeks to shake viewers out of a passive, anesthetised state into one that inspires active engagement with their surroundings. These blocks of colours really inspired my decision to have projections onto the pieces of colour blocks to split up the films nicely, by not having too much playing at the same time. They will also be useful to give the audience a chance to took at the relief paintings closely.
Achim Hatzius’ piece, “Speculations on Anonymous Materials”, also lead me to change my mind about only displaying 3 projections. I was always taught to display things in three because of the aesthetic of it, and it would have also been a great link to femininity, as witches always “come in threes”. However, I really enjoy the four projections from Hatzius piece, and it would also give me more room to experiment with the projections themselves. I did not, however, think the projector holders would suit my work at all, as my theme revolves around the unattainable standards women face. Plinths have worked much better to put the projectors into, as plinths are often used to display figures of traditional ideal women in museums and exhibitions. They also link to my references to Ovid’s myth of Pygmalion in my film. I ensured that these plinths were built to a high standard, mimicking a gallery’s plinth used for this purpose.
It was all then left to sorting my films for each projector and finalising curation aspects of my piece, such as choosing which of the relief paintings I’ll be using. The six I had to choose from were a variation of different fruits – some resembles grotesque versions of the body more, and some looked more life-like, and one was a plain board I was considering using for flashbacks.
My final thoughts were that I even wanted the flashbacks to morph as they are projected onto these boards, and felt that the more 3D/relief fruits did this the best. The different positioning of the objects will be interesting to watch with different films, and I did bare this in mind while I was choosing my films, swapping USBs around and seeing what worked more effectively.
I find it much easier to know what’s going on with my work by writing everything down in simple diagrams. I did this by drawing quick sketches of the boards I have chosen with names of the films I plan on showing onto them below the diagram. I then made a time-frame of what would happen in all of the films, taking into consideration of what was happening on all projectors at the same time. I planned this out so that no two film with me speaking would clash, and the only sounds that did were sound effects, which would only emphasise the grotesque sounds. There are also periods of flashbacks, images, and colour blocks to help with this. They all last 10 minutes, which also helped me in keeping track with each USB and what was shown on them.
I then decided to label each USB and will also label each media player to help me figure things out much quickly when I’m setting up. Each 10 minute film is now on the USBs ready to try out on the projectors this afternoon.
When I set everything up, numerous problems came up; I found that only one film would play due to the media players not working, overheating projectors switching off, cable health and safety, and speakers playing louder than others. I fixed all of these with the help of our technician, Neil Pedder. I was able to cool down the projectors by drilling in six new holes, and was able to safe-proof my exhibition to a high standard. The speakers were due to the levels my films were edited on, therefore worked on them and tried them out again the next day, resolving all issues that came up.
saratrouble 
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