When Things Cast No Shadow

Berlin Biennial. KW Institute for Contemporary Art

There were quite a few artists I really enjoyed in this Gallery.

My faviourite piece that I saw was by Sung Hwan Kim. Her video piece was surreal and dreamlike, there were camera shots taken from the back of a car window with the lights shining through. It was quite surreal and bizzare, for example, in the questions asked : Are you interested in men with long silky eyebrows? Bizzare


Pushwagner, Soft City, comic strip.


Giulia Piscitell. Photography and Video work, picture of a person lying on the ground with a cats head on them. Blurred.

Zhaoling, cityscene video, construction sites, weird situations in unlikely places, eg, man playing golf in a city.

David Maljkovic, lost memories from these days.

Hamburger Bahnhof Museum

Anna and Bernhard Blume

These artists have significantly extended the genre of staged photography. In their frequently multipart, large format, black and white photographs, this artistic couple staged temporal sequences in which they themselves act as the protagonists. These scenes are often reduced, estranged, and above all -odd. Order and chaos seem to mutually condition one another, role -playing and convention inhere in each object, conditioning modes and behaviour and provoking resistance.

I found their work to be very humourous and different, unlike any other staged photography which I have seen before, I don't know if I would like my project to go in that direction or not but I thought they were worth a mention!!

Wolfgang Tillmans however, is definately an artist whom I think will have great influence over me, and in which I wish to research better.

True North

We went to the Guggenhein Museum when we were in Berlin and we saw the exhibition called 'True North'

I really liked the work of Stan Douglas in the exhibition. His work Nu.tka examines the colonization of Vancouver Island's Nootka Sound on Canada's west coast and the repression of its native inhabitants. There is an acute sense of melancholia surrounding the work. There are two speakers which are presented with deranged voices of the two opposing colonizers, their voices overlap each other as to make them uncomprehenable. They both speak of paranoia and fear.

"When the eye adusts somewhat, one sees that the picture is comprimised of two moving images that repeatedly overlap while moving in opposite directions. The artificial, electronic perception of nature is immersed in a cacophony of voices that only seldom and briefly coverge to speak in unison. During these moments, the picture grows still and a constructed image of a landscape emerges -hypnotically beautiful, distanced, virgin -only to then blue again and dissolve into a hallucinatory flickering haze of the sublime. Stan Douglas calls this efect an "uncanny apparition." The temporal divide creates and image that blends different wide and tidal movements and compresses time in a synthetic manner." Frank Waner.

I would like my work to have the same hypnotic effect perhaps... or at least that is something I would be interested in trying to achieve.

Developing Ideas

Any concerns in earlier project work?

• Video footage of light and motion
• Photographing Reflections and using depth of field to play with focus
• Photographing everyday general unnoticeable objects
• I like Isadora
• Armosphere
• Experiencing the world in the context of being an artist (basically noticing everyday experiences and encounters and expressing them in my work..)Core year
• Story Telling (Core year)
• Flipbook, surrealistic in the sense that things come to life when they shouldn't.

Juxtaposing images with sayings that I read in the paper or see on the street etc

• Looking on the bright side of a bleak outlook
• Lives, the universe and others
• Escape
• It went blank and suddenly everything became clear
• Find the real places
• Daydream nation
• Real life is so much better than TV

What are the Ideas that are Importat to Me right Now?

This is a very very general idea of what I am interested in, and somehow I would like to interlink them together or make sense of all of these ideas... What seems to be predominant is creating a mood or atmosphere while perhaps making a statement on the human condition/experience??

I am interested in exploring maybe the human condition and/or human experiences. I would like to explore the way certain images make us feel certain things. (Very broad topic there...) When and Why we feel emotion?? A sensory/sensual experience? (audibly and visibly) (want to remain digital) Why do we feel the way we do?---how to visualise or make a work that evokes certain feelings. I would maybe like to make these experiences surreal or sublime perhaps? I am also interested in light and what effect that can display. More ideas that I'm interested in is the imagination, streams of consciousness, surreal and dreamlike states, atmosphere and illucid dreaming.

Workshop with Ralph Borland

Things to consider when coming up with ideas for a project:

• Reworking of what's already there
• Form/function
• Choices (artists continually making)
• Transforming Material
• Aesthetics (beautiful or not?)
• What is the function of the piece?
• Communication as a function
• Symbolic language as a function
• Provocative
• Visual language, symbolic language
• Language of materials
• Metaphore
• What's youre relationship with what's already there?
• Researching stage -What's already there?
• How widely understood are your symbols?
• What can you expect the audience to know?
• You can rely on your audience to read the work
• And read into the work
• Tension between two systems intersecting
• Tension between opposites
• What is the role of the artist for you?
• Provocater?
• Part of a family or artists and artworks offering alternatives?
• Humour
• What is the responsibility of the artist?
• How broad or narrow are your audiences?

Week 1 of Project, Brief.

Week 1 Brainstorming/research/warm up & workshop


When developing ideas initially try:
Reflecting on a broad range of ideas
Initially don’t be too critical; gather everything; deliberately but temporarily suspend your natural tendency to judge, to allow ideas flow more freely.This should help you to find your main interests within art and life.
Analyse and sort through concerns in earlier project work; are there things which you would like to develop further? At the same time don’t rehash old ideas; extend them.
Are there media or methods you particularly want to use ?There are a wide variety of sources of inspiration and diverse methods of working.
Think about: processes which interest you (technical, material and conceptual).
gather information on artists that interest you.
Consider ideas and subjects that interest you; these can include areas outside of what is traditionally considered art.

Gather a wide amount of drawn, written, photocopied, downloaded information together into a research notebook. KEEP A RECORD of the development of your IDEAS. Material can include imagery you make from direct observation, photos, sketches, and other information, i.e. writing, articles, work by other artists.