I had a lot of critiques, and almost as many epiphanies this residency. Now I’m sitting here and trying to organize everything into some sort of cohesion, and cursing myself for not taking more legible notes.
I came into Group 2 not fully understanding all that I had done over the course of the semester, and my second residency served largely as a period in which I was able to begin to digest some of the things I had spent the semester internalizing. I knew that I had started in a certain place, and ended somewhere completely different, but wasn’t really sure how that progress was charted. I spent a lot of the semester just churning out photographs, trying to figure out just what it was that I was trying to say in my work.
In my first critique, which was with Oscar, I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go. I started to run down where I had started the semester, where I ended, and, suddenly, I realized that patterns were already beginning to emerge. I also realized that my semester had not been about producing a body of work that in and of itself said something cohesive and specific, but rather was about the process of grinding through a lot of ideas until I could get to a place where I was able to find the one or two ideas I felt were really worth pursuing.
I had done this, maybe without really even realizing it, and showed pieces that focused mainly themes related to these ideas. The two sets of images, dubbed the “backyard” set and “TV” images, had the most power behind them, and also the greatest possibility for growth. Most people advised me to continue to follow both to see where they led, but some felt, rather, that I should reel it in even tighter and choose just one to be able to delve down deeper. I still feel the television images have something to say and will eventually lead somewhere, however the power of my work resides largely in the images of my backyard.
The themes that I started to see emerging in my work through critique and discussion were intertwined between the two series, but only came across in my backyard images for the most part. In these it was more evident that there was a sense of loss and mourning, decay and change. I had to explain to people that these were images of the area immediately around my house (or any house really), and when people realized that, I often saw a shift happen in their perception of what they were viewing. They no longer simply saw pretty images of an ostensibly ugly place, but rather a broader commentary was opened up.
Tackling this aspect of my work in the upcoming semester is going to be one of the most challenging, I know. It is already proving difficult to find a way to include more information about what and where I am shooting, which in turn will help to reveal why it is that I am shooting what I’ve chosen to. I plan on venturing further from my own home, and exploring more of the community I live in, showing images that reflect ideas similar to those in my Backyard images.
To include more information to give the viewer context of what they were really seeing, it was suggested that I could find paper documentation from the town itself, and integrate those somehow. It was also said that perhaps I could not just explore my community, but other places that I felt were in someway connected, and by doing so establish a broader dialogue that would help reveal my true intentions.
As my images stand, I realize that there is not enough information included for the average viewer to understand exactly what it is they are seeing. It was suggested that I try working in diptychs or series where each image informed or leaned on another, but I don’t think that that is the course of action I will be taking. Rather, I think that the best approach is to try and include more visual information in each individual image, almost making each one a series unto itself. I would like to make each image capable of standing on its own by conveying a clear sense/message of its own, but also fit into a larger, over-arching dialogue.
Through the course of my critiques, many people gravitated to my Backyard series, but there were also some who were drawn to my television images as well. The multi-layered mediation inherent in those images is part of what was interesting to me at first, as well as the seductive quality of the visuals that was created by the screen itself. Some encouraged me to pursue them to see what would come of it, and a few thought they should be left entirely so I could focus on just one body of work. If I do pursue this work, it will be with caution, and with a slightly different perspective.
During one of my last critiques, with Hannah Barrett, she directed me to think more about the actual mediation of the television itself, and how that was meaningful to me. I realized that part of the interest for me came from the degradation of my screen, that is, the particular way in which my set is breaking down. As a consumer product that was originally mass-produced to be one of many that were the same, the progress of digital technology is slowly rendering these tube televisions obsolete. I’m not sure if any major companies even still produce them any more.
My point is, these objects, once a mass-produced commodity, are becoming scarce, and many are starting to breakdown. If I continue this portion of my work, it will most likely focus on different sets, and the ways in which they are individually breaking, highlighting the particular abnormalities that show how each mass-produced set has become unique. The dots in each screen start to burn out differently on every set, each TV might have a different rolling effect etc.
This residency was one that was truly uncanny in many ways, with strange crystallizing moments all coinciding, and the reading syncing up very nicely with many of the themes in my work. Some of the ideas of loss and mourning that we read about in Freud were certainly present in much of what I was doing, as were the concepts of line, mark and trace. It was interesting to see how the concepts from the reading, the ideas from my work and the various topics we discussed in Michaels class really started to gel as the residency went on.
Many people commented on a sense of loss or sadness they thought they saw in many of my images, both in my backyard and TV series. I spent a lot of time discussing how the two disparate ideas could somehow merge, or at least come closer to doing so. I definitely felt that there were common threads that could/should be exploited and explored. Some of the suggestions I received on this matter ranged from re-photographing images of my community as presented on screen to actually taking physical television sets out into the spaces I shoot to meld the two ideas.
A surprising amount of people, however, felt that the two bodies were not quite as separate as I seemed to think they were, and encouraged a continued exploration of both. As the residency went, I became more aware that I was interested in ideas of transience and loss, change and decay. After all of the critiques and advice, I think that these concepts are where the connection between the two series exists, and it will just be a matter of following them through to their ultimate point of completion.
At the end of my second residency, I have a much better feel for the program than I did just six months ago. I no longer feel overwhelmed, and believe that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I would like to spend this semester hashing out the concepts I became aware of during my residency, and seeing how the project goes. I feel like I’m in a good place now, and by the end of next residency will be right in line to begin work on my third semester and thesis show.
This second residency was totally different than my first. I didn’t feel the same, and it did not play out the same, but those are both very good things. It was a period where I really started to understand all of what I had been doing over the previous semester in a much deeper way. My approach to this semester will be more deliberate, with a few hundred less images being shot, but in the end, I know that it will be even more fruitful.
