Part 3 Project Space Event – 22nd October 2021.
Before I talk about the video, I had wanted to give some thought to ‘promoting’ the event within the college, so produced a series of flyers and postcards which I dotted around the building, along with posts on social media.
I also had a go at writing my artist statement, which for me always feels a little uncomfortable, but I’m hoping practice makes perfect!
During my research, I started reading The Trial by Franz Kafka, not least as dealing with some bureaucratic public bodies is often described as Kafkaesque, a term used for something having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre or illogical quality. I also started re-reading George Orwell’s 1984…how frighteningly current that is. Inspired by some of the language, I included quotes in a short video piece combining redactions and text, such as "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
My original idea was to project this onto a canvas alongside other work created, but when this was tried it was lacking and with some great suggestions from IT (thanks Nick Brown), we ‘mad-mapped’ (projection mapping software…very cool!) 2 versions of the video onto 2 panels simultaneously and this created so much more impact and made me rethink the overall space. The text used in the video utilised the Redaction Font, a typeface inspired by The Redaction by artists Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts https://www.redaction.us/
Where to now?
The Redaction Room, now becomes the Reflection Room as it’s time to determine which bits of work to take forward, and work on the feedback from the event and subsequent tutorials. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend some time last week with visiting artist Carwyn Evans https://carwynevans.com/ discussing my work and got some inspiring feedback and brilliant ideas for artists to look at. Things first up to explore further are looking at self-redaction, the notion of loss of identity, the diminishing and disempowering effect this Kafkaesque situation has on individuals. I want to take the idea of an immersive video further and I’m also exploring use of the redacted photographs in an animation and redactions in 3D...So, watch this space!
Here's how the completed room looked and I’ll be posting some more of the images on my Instagram and Facebook accounts @akdfineart.
In the meantime, I leave you with a quote from 1984, George Orwell (1949)
