Assignment 3 - Making the Booklet
Above is the final result of the joined photographs and with the blended intersections. Using this continuous photograph, I split them into equal and proportional pages in Adobe Illustrator. I resized the photograph to fit the a4 pages and split it into 12 equal segments to fit next to one another. I also allowed room for a border, as we had planned on adding some text.
For the text, we were initially going to write something, whether it be academic or poetic. But Lachlan found something interesting and relevant poems which would work throughout our photographs. He chose a poem called Feliks Skrzynecki by Peter Skrzynecki.
This work is about the difficulty for foreigners and immigrants to assimilate into society, in which he references to Post war Australia. Some of the issues he highlights include displacement, nostalgia, memories and sometimes racism with the underlying theme of hope throughout his poem.
https://www.lyrikline.org/de/gedichte/feliks-skrzynecki-1700#.We8nkWiCw2w
Lachlan rewrote the poem out and sent me the file. He handwrote it digitally to create a more personal and intimate feeling between the photographs and the text. We wanted it to circle around the whole artwork so that it created that circular, continuous notion and memories, history and connection between family, we well as the cycle of time and the continuous stream of the ‘now’.
Below is the written text that will fit around the border of the joined 12 a4 pages.
Because Lachlan put the writing on the same sized border I had made, it was easier for me to merge the photographs and the text. I had to make sure that the text continuously flowed because in illustrator, there were small gaps between the pages.
This is what the complete artwork would look like if the pages were all connected.
The final work, titled Momentori, in reference to both moment, memento, and memento mori. Moments in time, symbolic objects and reflection on life and death. Just some of the concepts we explore. Along with displaced people, immigration and diaspora, the gap between generations and the changing nature of society and technology, our work is meant to provide many answers to different questions.
I handwrote a poem along the border written by Polish/Australian Peter Skrzynecki. His poem, Feliks Skryznecki, analyses assimilation and post-war Australian culture, while also highlighting the emerging differences he feels between himself and his father. It is highly relevant to the work as it explores the nature of war and memory, how displacement and diaspora can bring people together again and how that sense of nostalgia and happiness can be found in a range of sources. The display of the poem was meant to be a circle, to both encapsulate the final piece but also show the constant flow of time. People pass on, stories are passed down, time passes. Always an endless flow, and although the work seems to have an ‘end’ at University, this is just the beginning of another phase.