artist statement and presentation

Artists I was influenced by have been Kasia Larsen, Mika Nakamura-Mather, Christian Boltanski and Zilvanis Kempinas to name a few. In addition the writings of Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida as well as Theresa Moerman in her thesis The Magic Mirror have played a large role in my musings.

The work started off with the repetition of an image my mother and I from childhood, printed on tea bags. It was an exploration into memory and connecting over a cup of tea as well as loss. The work evolved as I looked into family videos in search of mum’s essence. Zilvanis Kempinas’ work Columns (2006) made up of VHS magnetic videotape reaching to the ceiling of the QAG enlightened my work. It was commenting on the role of technology in society and, as the videotape held images of the past which were now almost obsolete due to changing technology, a suggestion that technology was not the utopian impulse it had perhaps promised.

My work thus evolved into an exploration of how we utilize technology to capture and preserve memories of the past which become very precious particularly in the light of loss. We look to images or film to satisfy our desire to see that person/ people again yet of course their essence cannot be captured instead just fragments of their existence at particular times is what is evident. Repetition is a key element in my work – a sense of searching for this essence as Roland Barthes searched through his family photos for his mother’s essence. I found looking into the family archives highlighted my mum’s absence and her absented presence becomes magnified by the strange disconnection I felt when viewing her in real time here and now yet not being able to reach out and touch or engage with her.

Photographs or film immortalize their subjects yet they are stuck in the past and serve as reminders of what was but also what has been lost. In Transcendence Dr Will Castor (Johnny Depp) seeks immortality through technology and computer programmes. In my work I propose to offer a seed of hope through the material used – the everyday tea bag. Once emptied it is only a shell does the essence of the tea, the leaves, live on and bring life elsewhere ?

The final display

I ended up using the Project gallery with advice from Sebastian which suited the work much better. I experimented with placing the tea bags by themselves in the other room of the project gallery but it seemed strangely empty ? It was a complicated install but I felt happy with the end result. Thankful to Lynette for lending me the  two smaller white tables to complement the larger one and create a feeling of the domestic and home. My fiancé had kindly made some plinths out of wood (see below)  but I had been searching for white stools/tables. I went to the op shops in Paddington as well as the antique shops there but no joy. They gave me a lead to an amazing warehouse of furniture in West End, Vast Interior http://www.vastinterior.com.au but they didn't have quite was I looking for. But it all worked out in the end.

                                                          Wooden plinths made as backup

Experimenting with placing the tea bags on their own

This would potentially work better in a different space than the project gallery with its somewhat akward walls in the first room

View as you enter the room

                                        First projection you see that guides you on a journey around
                                        as I placed it to block off walking straight into the middle.
                                        The idea of the placement was to create a journey like movement that wasn't                           strictly linear as I feel like grief is not linear as in the '5 stages of grief' by Kubhler Ross but instead its complex and connected and one can revisit the stages or skip certain ones even years later.

                                                     
                                                                Final setup

close up of tea bags

                                                tea bags on the wall - I wish the lighting could have
                                                                          been better

Material can be viewed from either side

minimum overlap

Musings about technology, transcendence and Bill Viola

Bill Viola

Pioneer of video art and master of the high tech slow mo. His work is connected to ideas of the sublime and transcendence as he often references spiritual iconography in his work. My work last semester in VIAM utilized delicate materials, the sense of veiling and looking through. My research for this led me to the concept of the contemporary sublime. This work for Sculpture also has connections to it and I can see links with ideas of using video technology to create a transcendent scene by slowing everything down. Bill Viola has an interesting concept of the camera being ‘ a keeper of souls’ (see below). This hints at the immortality promised in a sense by technology, which I will talk about in greater detail below.

Bill Viola - Cameras are soul keepers

Interview about his near death experience in the lake when he was a child and how he realised that 'There s more than just the surface of life - the real things are under the surface'. He discovered video in 1969 and the blue light from the camera enthralled him and reminded him of the water from that NDE. He also says how we exist in the 'space between the physical things. We see them but we exist in the space between'. Viola also talks about the loss of his mother and his experience of being in the room with her when she died and coming to terms with someone being there and then all of a sudden not being there. He adds that for him that is why video and camera technology to him is a keeper of souls as he sees them as having a life and holding a life as they hold the feelings and memories.

Sourced from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uenrts2YHdI

Theresa Moerman in her thesis The Magic Mirror (Ch 3, p.34 2012) agrees with Barthes’ idea ‘ that the camera captures a moment in time which instantly is irrevocably lost, that is both dead and going to die’ (Camera Lucida p.96) however she suggests that it ‘also imbues the subject of the photograph with immortality’. Rather profoundly she states, ‘The photograph lives on when the subject cannot’. Further on in the chapter she suggests that photographs represent more ‘than just images and in fact constitute an invaluable link to the past and ourselves ’. She quotes John Stotesbury’s view of photographs as holding a ‘belief in immortality which denies the power of death’. I would agree with this from my journey and work on this project and suggest that the moving image does this perhaps to a greater extent as you can see the person breathing, moving and being in real time here and now in the recognizable settings of our world which make the event seem like its just happening now even if the memory about it has faded. In addition as the viewer you potentially hold the control over how often you want to playback the video and freeze it in certain places. Moerman elaborates on the photograph’s ability to transcend death saying it becomes a mediator between ‘preservation and reanimation of the original, a kind of time traveller’ where the people in them live ‘indefinitely in temporal loops, existing decades beyond their natural lives embalmed in a permanent state which affects neither their looks nor their age. They become immortal’. This sense of temporal looping was important in my videos where they were literally looping over and over again, highlighting this state and it was quite eerie to see them repeated over and over whilst I was setting up and yet there s this sense of emptiness that accompanies the viewing as they speak only of the past and was has been lost. In the digital age the computer becomes a mediator between past and the present, the tactile viewing experience of holding photographs exchanged for a more intangible viewing on a screen. As an 80 s child I don’t have video footage of my childhood or mum so its an interesting thought of how technology and the recording of moments has progressed in the last 30 years and how this interface affects how we view our pasts and ourselves.

Johnny Depp in the movie ‘Transcendence’ plays Dr Will Castor a brilliant scientist working on Artificial Intelligence, ‘working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions. His highly controversial experiments have made him famous, but they have also made him the prime target of anti-technology extremists who will do whatever it takes to stop him. However, in their attempt to destroy Will, they inadvertently become the catalyst for him to succeed-to be a participant in his own transcendence. For his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and best friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany), both fellow researchers, the question is not if they can...but if they should. Their worst fears are realized as Will's thirst for knowledge evolves into a seemingly omnipresent quest for power, to what end is unknown. The only thing that is becoming terrifyingly clear is there may be no way to stop him’.(Warner Bros 2014, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2209764/) . ‘Transcendence’ gives a slightly different spin to the whole idea of immortality through technology as when Will dies he lives on in the computer programme he created. However he becomes very driven to take control over the world. It was an interesting side reference to view.

Questioning this whole idea of technology and how it has benefitted mankind is another artist influence, Zilvinis Kempinas whose work ‘Columns’ (2006) is on at the QAG in the exhibition ‘The Sublime’. This work plays with ideas of the monumental and unmonumental as well as permanence and impermanence. It is made up of magnetic VHS tape reaching to the roof which I found as a source of influence as to how to hang some of the tea bag material giving a sense of desire for in my work, memories through technology to provide a transcendent vision which they ultimately cannot seen in the ephemereal materials. This failure is also a part of Kempinas’ work as it states in the didactic, the nearly obsolete VHS tape holds ‘images of the past but these will soon no longer be viewable. Rather than its promise of progress, technology often reveals instead dead-ends and monumental failures’.

                                      Zilvanis Kempinas 
                                             Columns
                                                2006

After this process and journey of this semester I reflect am I closer to closure or has it stirred up more questions ? I m not sure I have the answer yet. I think going back is going to be challenging and wonderful and healing and heartbreaking. 

Tea bag material

Initially in September  I had ordered through my dad some tea bag material ffrom the Tanganda tea company which was the tea we mainly grew up drinking and reminded me of camping holidays especially and wood smoke. I was going to use it print larger scale images in carrying on the search for essence through photography and had thought to use the old TV s at Griffith to display the videos but it struck me that I m working with ephemeral ideas I need to use ephemeral materials. I decided that using the tea bag material to project onto would make more sense conceptually. Thankfully the tea bag material came !!!! Just in the nick of time. I had had my back ups prepared of thinking to use some Kozo paper glued together to make large sheets. Indebted to KC from Tanganda – what a pleasure it was to correspond with him. He donated all the tea bag material for my project – AMAZING generosity from Zimbabwe – thankyou .

The awesome email from KC at tanganda: * so touched*

Dear Cielle

Thank you for this kind note. The pleasure is Tanganda’s. And I must thank Mr. Scott our director who got us in touch.

As a company we know that brands can only grow as they relate and commune with consumers. To have someone in Australia choosing to remember and probably cherish Tanganda is no mean feat. As management for Tanganda we only take the opportunity to show that the brand(s) belong to people like you. The growth of these brands can only be in line with the growth and the message/story around it as carried and told by you, the people who know and relate to it.

We thank you truly for this show of commitment, trust and cherishing of what we believe is an iconic brand whose great, true story has not yet been told. Your works of art is going to be but one among the songs, stories and folklore that must be told of this icon.

We wish you all the best and look forward to meeting you in December.

Kindest regards

Kwirirai Chigerwe (KC)

Next step was to test the dyeing of the material in tea – I did some testers – left the material in the tea brew for 2 hours then spaced each tester half an hour apart but as can be seen from the results it didn’t make a significant difference as to which one was darker.

Dyeing the large rolls of material was next. I boiled up the tea in my aluminium Salvos pot then folded the material and covered it with the brew and left it. Results were great – faintly dyed material.