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A song whistled across the interstice Project Synopsis

This project is constituted of the images taken during a performative collaboration between me and my subject. Throughout the shoot, we exchanged conversation interspersed with directions and actions. The images are not intended to stand alone or act as portraits but to trace an interaction and movement that unfolds. The photographic form remains as the most significant mapping of the performance, as each session produces a totally different selection of movements and forms. The cooperation is attuned to our friendship but does not stand apart from external circumstances affecting our moods and ability to freely communicate ideas with one another. I could not allow myself to exploit my subject or to force our interaction in an uncomfortable atmosphere. Musicality, notation and structuring of sound has pervaded our collaboration throughout, serving as the vessel and motivation towards a state of mind where movement is a natural response, and the choreography of movement is spontaneous and natural, using bodily mimicry.

Since the beginning of the project, it was apparent to me that I wanted to explore ways of looking and contemplating a subject in a way which is conscious and controlled. Initially splitting images into smaller sections for closer inspection, I became dissatisfied with the subject matter of the images which marked an inability to connect to or know a subject with any interest. I moved away from urban landscapes and briefly into a still life composition, attempting to construct a single image which would create an overlapping and juxtaposition of objects and images. I found that with both of these instances of subject matter, there was no non-arbitrary or coherent way to regulate how I would produce further images of the subject matter, and I could not conceive of a narrative that felt relevant or significant to me in this way. The ideas I was having seemed rigid and overbearing and set aside a lot of the enjoyment of producing images and creativity. Working with readily existing printed matter in magazines allowed me to negotiate ideas about personality and appearance in relation to the stillness and flatness of the photographic object. The images I chose were mostly fashion images, and this introduced to me some conflicting and contradictory ideas about the photographer and their model, how the interaction that takes place between them is a collaboration, but the final output stands alone as the work of the photographer, maintaining some technical coherence but simultaneously presenting contrite facets of a model which are totally in the service of endorsing a brand. The model themselves in most cases is relegated to a container for the ideas of the photographer.

The experimentation with collage allowed me to compare processes of image manipulation and editing, which lead me into the studio to create a set of images which were deliberately negating a strong atmosphere and brand. Instead, I chose to direct my model to perform a series of actions and gestures which could be recombined through collage. Later, in the process of selecting and layering images, I realized that the distinctions I attempted to make between the images were outside of the collaboration, and so they were moving into the realm of the editorial, with the decisive action of the photographer’s selection becoming the definitive exercise of control. Instead, I decided to treat all the images as constituting an entirety / the whole, and my role would be to sequence and edit based on conveying and mapping the performance through these photographs-as-documents.

624 words

Which artists did you consider in order to develop the concept?

How did you approach this idea to begin with, and how did it evolve in response to your outcomes?

What was working well?

What did you do?

[some words I might mention later: rhythm and tempo, song length, mood]

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Project Title Developing a suitable title for display

dividing but keeping the whole musical, tonal, cadence, inflection, modulation, performance, collaboration, split, segment, intersect, isolate, divide,

exchange, verbal direction wax lyrical, wax poetic, wax eloquent wax as in expand or grow waxing and waning as in the growth and diminution of the moon

looking and inspecting perlustrate, peruse

elaborate or split abbreviate metamorphose modulate transmute transpose unfold unravel augment magnify expand progressive

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