22/11/05 Seminar Information part 1

Working Title: Dance!

Perform or participate in a specified dance.
Leap or skip, especially in an emotional manner.
Make somebody dance or lead somebody in a dance.
Talk misleadingly so as to avoid facing an issue squarely.
Get to a particular state by dancing.


Aims

The aim of my project is to create multi media installations exploring the contrast between hard edged political/geographical territory and personal territory with the main emphasis on the human experience within conflict/ex conflict zones.

This work should be:

• Clear and confident in its form

• An engaging self contained environment

• Well marketed

• The start of a growing body of work developed around specific core issues


Rationale

From growing up in Northern Ireland I have always been acutely aware of political and personal landscape and territory, and of the fixed, polarised positions people tend to publicly adopt within areas of conflict. I wish to explore experienced and perceived personal territories within such areas - territories which are not fixed, and which can transcend geographical and/or state borders.

I am interested in how people position themselves and cope, within geographical areas deeply affected by conflict, and within their own emotional landscapes.

I am also looking at the influence technology has on the way we perceive and map the physical and personal landscape that we position ourselves within.

I am interested in the relationship between older forms of media, relatively fixed within their physical structure, and new media, easily transformable into different incarnations due to the fact that it exists within the digital realm. I find the parallels between this idea and the idea of fixed state/national territory and unfixed personal territory interesting.

I want to work with footage from news film and video archives, extracting human figures from the footage, and placing and re-animating them within neutral spaces on a screen, mixing figures from different times and spaces. Removing their actions from the context in which they happened, allowing the figures to perform a kind of melancholic dance. The figure will also be thrown out of focus just enough to avoid a more instant catagorisation by the viewer, making each figure relate more to a universal shared experience. Using footage from Northern Ireland news coverage of the troubles, but extracting the specifics of the location, to suggest a more universal experience of people caught up within conflict and changing territories, touching on their dislocation, loss, willpower, strength.
I will also cut these images together with aerial video footage captured from a kite, gathered from state border positions geographically of significance to myself.

This work will be like a kind of dance, with a soundtrack also constructed from archived material, newly recorded material (mainly voice and often abstracted, could include interviews) and computer generated abstract soundscapes. The sound will act as a kind of lens with an ebb and flow of focus, adding focus at points, hinting at possible narratives, then receding back towards a more abstract soundscape, drifting, giving the viewer only brief lucid moments. I see this work conveying a sense of time slowing, an opening up of space, of being meditative, melencolic.


Methodologies

I am researching into the recent history of conflict in Northern Ireland and the effects this has on the population and how they process/avoid processing this experience (self repression?). I have particular interest in how a population copes and continues daily life under these conditions, and the mindset that a conflict can create within the population of that area. I will look more at Blogs created by people within this and similar (ex)conflict zone as a way to her other voices.

For my pgpd essay I researched into the relationship between Nations and States, and of the nature of borders and borderlands. Concentrating mainly with Europe and using a study into the nature of peoples experience within the iIish borderlands.

I have looked briefly at the history of physical mapping up to the present and the forces, both geographical and social, that have driven its development. I will research how people’s idea of personal territory has been affected by technological advancements and economic changes, like live “as it unfolds” 24 hour news, the reduced price of travel, faster affordable portable communication (satellite phones), Global positioning systems (GPS) telling us our location from anywhere on the planet. All these advancements have effectively changed our perception of distance and location, but do they simply give us the illusion of knowing where we are.


Stills from Tryout annimations: