Amelia Daiz

Artist and Writer based in Nottingham | [email protected]

[ameliadaiz-blog]

Scrap Heap Boys

Some boys I know that fit my research description posted a picture on social media of them next to a heap of metallic trash and I thought it perfectly echoed the themes of my work and the structure and form of the armour. I convinced them to go back to the quarry and wasteland and let me film them messing around , being boys, and wearing the armour. Some of the shots are very natural and un-directed by me, and some of them are more directed but came out with good results like this image, looking like a very odd family photo, relating to how without fathers they form close reliant family like bonds with other boys. I added the footage from the quarry trip and the parkour boys in the final edit of the film, to give the armour context and the boys character.

[ameliadaiz-blog]

Parkour Boys

By chance one day I spotted a group of boys practicing parkour. I had my armour and camera with me and luckily they were happy to get involved. I was interested in these young men seemingly training for some sort of fictional warrior type battle, and how that represented a classic but turned positive trait of young masculinity.

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Patrick Goddard- trailer for Tune Into Sanity FM

Patrick Goddard was one of the visiting Live lecturers, and I also received a very helpful tutorial with him. I found connections between our work because of his outward looking , narrator like position on his work and subjects, and often focused on areas of class and with a poetic slant to his commentary or thoughts. As well as the content, I think his position as the artist in his work is also very helpful to me in clarifying my own position, as an artist. His perspective is shown in the words and poetic elements , but still without judgement and more simply telling the characters or places story. He was interested and understanding of my work and gave me some helpful pointers.

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First exhibition plan

This is my initial plan for my degree show. I want to imply the idea of being inside a shed, which is why I want to be in a corner space and use the manifesto canvas and shed door to symbolise the perimeters of the ‘structure’. I've settled on the idea that my film will be projected onto OSB board because I think the material symbolises industrial and masculine shed like environments and mirrors the backing of the man-ifesto canvas, enforcing the idea of interior. I would like to have a seat to view the work from and would like it to link conceptually to the created environment for example a car seat, work bench or stack of tyres

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Man-ifesto

I made a large canvas that would be backed in OSB board and act as a freestanding wall of the ‘shed’ I will build. Even though writing it in oil would take away some of the control through its nature of spreading, I wanted it to have some uniformity and clarity. I chose a text and layout that I thought looked formal and official like it might be carved in stone or written on a type writer, like I imagine a traditional manifesto statement might be. I typed out the text piece and projected it onto the canvas and drew it before painting in oil. For me, this piece is a success as both a stand a lone piece if art and a vital part of m degree show exhibition and think it perfectly says an introduction for the viewers to my work, and summarises what I wanted to say

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Manifesto - Julian Rosefeldt

Working on my own manifesto, reminded me of seeing ‘Manifesto’ by Julian Rosefeldt in Berlin last year. I hadn’t realised before but writing a manifesto is a very ‘artist’ thing to do, and Rosefeldt plays upon this through his collage of famous and un-famous manifestos rearranged to form moving segments of a collective thought process. For the viewer you enter each of these fictional characters life for a moment and get a glimpse of their narratives which also relates to what I want my work to do.

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Experimenting with text

I was considering how I would display the Man-ifesto writing and thought it would be good to combine it into being on one of the shed walls. I began to visualise how my final degree show might look. I wanted the medium I wrote the words in to be meaningful and after filming some of the boys fixing the car and doing an oil change, I noticed how the waste product engine oil , to me look like high quality ink. I began experimenting with engine oil and found some success.

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Writing

I wanted to write a new poem so that the viewer had something visual refer to instead of the transient nature of hearing the poems. I wanted to write about the concept and thought process behind the shed and to overall sum up the project, so I started experimenting with some phrases and using wordplay and double meaning. After I had finalised the piece I realised it wasn’t a poem I was writing after all- it was a manifesto! I also like the wordplay of man-ifesto relating to the themes and thought it was perfect.

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Army Ad

I noticed some of the army recruitment adverts seemingly targeting the type of man I’m studying, perhaps because of the manipulative language used to play upon common hopes and fears of a working class young man. I don’t like these adverts because I see them as quite manipulative and playing upon negative or fragile aspects of men’s mental heath, that I’ve researched through articles, videos and surveys. However I find the adverts to be interesting because of the language and wonder if they are successful and have been thinking about the phrases they use and how that appeals and connects with boys. Trying to write a new text piece that envelopes the pressures, experiences and attitudes of these men, I will bear these adverts in mind.

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Experiments with projection and display

After considering the environment I should show my work in at expositional seminars I began thinking about what would be a male environment, and in particular trying to pin point an environment that these boys in particular would feel comfortable and safe in. I realised that a shed was the perfect space for that, it is somewhere men classically escape to make their own, a ‘man space’ and I think it would the perfect place to show my study of these boys. I experimented projecting onto surfaces in sheds and by chance found that OSB board added a really interesting texture to the projected film, making some of the images almost look like paintings.

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The Weight On His Shoulders - first edit

For my expositional seminar I edited the footage into three short films each presenting a different poem and piece of armour. The first two films had more studio shots of the armour as I experimenting with including documentary footage of other activities. Viewers understood the basic themes of young masculinity and class, and felt that the documentary footage was a successful pairing with the studio armour footage to give the work context and tell the stories of these boys, and so I will try to film more footage in this style in the future. People were intrigued about my view point as the artist being a story teller as the work is not about me, but I think that is a positive thing. I agreed that it was unnecessary to  have the films separate and should be edited into one flowing film. There were some points raised about the possible objectification and way the audience viewed these boys which made me begin to consider the type of environment I will show the work in.

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One Wheel Bad- Spencer Murphy

This is a photography series following a group of street riders in London. the activity is technical illegal in many respects, but these photographs show them as carefree and youthful. Though they are sometimes masked and have these machines, they still look very much like boys to me, and the photographer compared them to modern day cowboys. This outsider looking in, and observation of the subject is very relevant to my film work in both its techniques and subject.

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Editing

As well as shooting the boys in armour in different settings I have also been collecting other types of footage, fly on the wall style recording of what these boys often get up to, although I’ve often hung out with them during these sort of activities once I was observing this through a camera lens and reviewing footage whilst editing I started to see relationships between the different types of footage. I found relationships between the meanings, the movement and structure of the images and that really excited me. Whilst initially I thought I would keep studio shots and outside shots apart I’ve found ways to combine them.

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Fred Eerdekens

This artist uses a mixture of text and sculpture to realise his ambitions and uses light to bring his work to life. When speaking about his process of writing and making he says ‘ I sometimes write down random thoughts, sometimes poetry and sometimes word games. I occasionally use some of these language experiments in a sculpture or installation at a later stage.’  His work is clever and thoughtful and gives me inspiration as to how I could possibly link text and sculpture more closely in the future.

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Alida Sayer

This artist displays poetry and text works on paper but using sculptural methods focusing on forms to present her ideas. Some of the forms she's made has reminded me of the type of forms apparent in my armour and I like these shapes with text on them. This has made me think about how I could use text in a physical way or wander about combining text directly onto my existing sculptures.

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Lost Boys - Liz Calvi

The photography series by Liz Calvi photographed many types of boys in that age-kind of between man and boy, interrupting these portraits are landscape shots that suggest the beginnings of narratives for the subject. The viewpoint seems to be of someone who is an outsider let in.

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Tim Schutsky

I like the work of photographer Tim Schutsky as his work is very varied but often hints at subjects of masculinity. Particularly his photographs of boys and men, often photographed with a background hinting at their character, as well as his artistic way of photographing objects. This has made me reflect on the backgrounds that I shoot my film with