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As planned, I am now home in Iowa after completing my last exam and sitting here ready to review the semester in my blog.

This semester has felt like a marathon and I can't tell if it is more relieving or more disheartening that I am not sure if it happened at all. I feel as though I've gone through this drawn out journey and now that it's over I have no idea what to do but just sit. Despite the culmination of major stress (the most I believe I have felt up to this point) and more meltdowns I thought possible, I don't feel like the work went as far as I traveled psychologically. To attempt to track specific thoughts and their correlating emotions through the months may be the way for me to see the path for myself.

When I made the transition from home to school in August, I had been resting myself, post-dirt. Over the summer I had been doing a lot of reading on environmental issues, activism, growing my own victory garden and working on the farm. I had began to find more peace in art through direct action in the way I lived and tried to put the problem of how I could transfer that to video (and to my apartment in KC) out of my mind. I started to become more bitter about the difficulty of the place we are in now and the ease of inaction. I focused this frustration on my fascination with bones and furniture and made a somewhat dark peace about what corn meant to me at the time and how things were starting to feel backwards at home on the farm.

After Acidosis for Economics the bitterness had found a pessimist stasis. Not inspired to make a video yet, I felt I needed to dive more personally into this frustration of mine. When I looked at books of high design in furniture I started to feel disdain towards the value being put on trivial objects like a stream lined desk chair when all I could see was the ugliness "those kind of people" enjoy the ignorance of. (I was on a very high and judgmental horse for awhile) Just, angry. Then I would ask myself how my "art" was any more relevant or valuable than a desk chair. Down and down I plummet into the most basic questions, "what is art?" and "what am I doing with my life?"

So I then decided to express in a project, explicitly or implicitly, a rather painful experience I had watching a steer merely exist in a sling until he died. This experience would then be related to a more global issue that was directly related to my experience. After our mid-term review I came to agree with my teacher very emotionally that it is about the quality of life of the animal.

Without writing an extremely lengthy post (I guess it already is) I move to my ideas for my final piece. By the end of October many sources of anxiety were starting to have a physical toll; roommate issues, safety issues, beginnings of familiar unrest. I started to get really upset about misunderstandings and a divide growing between my family and thought I had a pretty clear picture and plan for my final project.

This idea was to project on 4 sides of a bulk feed bag cube. Each side would have a personal confession addressing my recent work and their opinions about it. After a succession of calamities, the installation felt all wrong. I felt that now I had come full circle back to video. At this point the clarity was all but nonexistent in my thoughts other than basic survival by making a video. I decided to try and externalize all the confusion and bitterness in the days I had left before my final crit. I had been watching so many videos about corn, and way to many animal abuse videos captured by animal rights groups. It was awful. It was pain that I felt about everything and guilt for failing at accomplishing the piece I had set out to do. I hoped that the viewing in crit would be away for me to release that bad energy and find again the good place I had found in the summer with my family.

Turns out, I feel the video was more successful than the realized installation would have been but it wasn't any less painful to watch. I wanted this semester to be over, I needed it to be. Watching the video let me see a little bit of myself from the outside. I don't think I'm over it yet and I'm dreading when my family sits down to watch it this weekend.

All I can say right now is that I'm glad that it happened, and I feel that I'm ready to move onto narrative pieces again. Not so much ready as feeling it's okay for me to do something fictional next semester. After our documentary unit last spring all I wanted was to focus on real things. I saw so many problems that I wanted to take to the world and let other people tell made up stories. I felt I had a duty to, I guess. Now I think I will try and draw narrative from real life, but try and take literal action in response to my frustration of problems versus inserting it directly into my work. For example, volunteering with Badseed in downtown KC and learning how I can bring organic and sustainable practices back home. I need to also remember to not worry about everything, but I refuse to take a step back into apathy in any aspect of my life. I don't care if I can't do anything about secret dolphin poaching in Japan for the sake of false nationalism. I will not default to apathy for the sake of a struggle-free life.

I don't know about you, but I think Angel Redinger is also struggling with some of the same issues I am.

Maybe I'll have more wise to say in a week or so.

Production 3 concept idea

This will be presenting a documentary type video piece, edited similarly to the movie Timecode:

where the viewer is guided to pay attention is manipulated by the volumes of all four channels being mixed. This is how the story is told. With different combination of mixing, a slightly different narrative occurs.


I'm not sure whether the subject of this life after corn piece will be with just specifically cattle, or more areas of livestock production. I am in contact with our local Locker and might be dealing with the subject of slaughter.

Production 3 Ideas

In continuation of the Life after Corn series

I want to use the surface of the seed bag (intact) and project from the inside onto all four walls. Using it as a multichannel documentary installation.

I will construct a frame for the bag so the inside will be hollow, room enough for the players and projectors, as well as room for me to set it up. The bottom of the bag will be cut out so it can just be lifted up and enter from underneath.

"Sling"

"Sling"

Reaction to Eero Aanio's Bubble Chair, and the chronically parallel rise of the mass commercial feedlot.

Bulk seed bags material, corn

Life after Corn series, 2010

Production 2 Sketch

Production 2

I thought I'd post some of the images I had been working with in the early stages of my current project. This is the Bubble Chair by Eero Aarnio. Seeing it function hanging from the ceiling reminded me of an experience we had on our farm with one our our holsteins.


An example of a commercial sling for cattle, used to move them or to pick up injured animals, called "downers". My dad constructed one of these using large seed bags and nylon straps in our barn.

I plan to reconstruct this, as well as the bubble chair using this material.


Until more strict regulations and laws were put in place, downer cattle still went to sale. I think there's also a PETA video that came out a few years ago that showed some workers pushing a downed cow with a skid-loader. It's heartbreaking.

By Design response

After another assigned reading, I learn yet again that my newly "enlightened" self has overlooked something in the movies I thought I could fully analyze.

Titles and graphics were things I thought about briefly last year while watching Psycho and other Hitchcock movie titles. But every other time in my life up until this reading I hadn't thought about title sequences at all. A lot of work and conception goes into this work and it "remains essentially invisible to many contemporary viewers". Yep, that's me, young and ignorant of another form of art.

I wonder if I'd had a lengthy title sequence to work with in the past in my work, I'd have put more thought into it. Even in my documentary I wanted something low key.

Anyway, title sequences will be something I'm interested in researching further.

I'm glad this reading takes time to defend music videos also. I agree that whether they mean to or not, music videos mirror exactly what a large group of our youth want, fear, imagine, or covet. But on another scale they work to experiment and push the borders of the medium. I find those videos more enjoyable like Hardest Button to Button, than the recent videos I've seen on mtv 2 like Justin Bieber.

I'm excited to watch as many of the videos referenced in this article as I can find.

Acidosis for economics

Some documentation for my first piece this semester.

Rinder wirtschaftlichen missbrauch (Cornucopia)
Acidosis for economics
Gramen sperma meretricis

translations-
(Economic cattle abuse, grass seed prostitution)

Future of the Feature Response

I found this article to be a summation and very thorough message similar to what we discussed a lot in class last semester in digital filmmaking. It was also very nice to read an article like this and have seen a good majority of the films mentioned or have a good idea of who many of the names are.
Even though my generation is in this amazing time where anyone can make a movie and we have access to all the tools. These tools are now smaller, more portable, and cheaper, I still feel too swept up in it. I'm not sure how to explain it, but I feel like I don't have the best frame of reference to appreciate these facts and how culturally significant digital has become. I wish I had the point of view and experience Coppola and Godard had when they dreamt of these things.
I do like that since the technology is out there for everyone on a certain plain the movie making process isn't so much about money. Descent cameras aren't too expensive and iMovie isn't a bad program. But on the Hollywood defensive they make it even more about money because that's what we don't have. Maybe this could be similar to the painters' reaction to photography. They tried to emphasize what photography couldn't do and impressionism was born.

I really enjoy the passages to the Dogme 95 movement because I had some existing knowledge about it, I just added many more other movies to my netflix queue though. This article also made me re-think a few movies I really didn't like. For example, The Pillow Book. I'm glad that TimeCode and Russian Ark were mentioned, they were both clearly significant steps for DV.

It's an interesting moral quandary I have between film and video. Even though in idea DV is so much better because of it's democracy and relevance in current culture and technology, I still want that look film has. Technology and virtuality are fascinating but there's something about organic processes I can't help but go back to. The physical object of each frame is something special and denied to many today because of cost. I've never shot film but I admire it.

Day 2 of construction

Things started moving along pretty quickly after the first day of work. In addition a cushion has been made, all the dowels have been put in place and holes drilled. Now to cart it off to school and put it all together. Pretty nervous.

Another related artist

To my mother's dismay I've always been a little interested in dead things and now my work might be drifting in the way of the decay.

Searching "animal carcass sculpture" I came up with John Morton. I am extremely interested in his work and am currently reading more about him.

Day 1 of constructions

research is fun

Here is one story I found to be interesting as the living chair. It took him over 20 years to sculpt a tree...

Above is from an exhibition by Roxanne Jackson, she seems to be similar to Simen Johan and I find her work to also be inspiring.


These are two pieces by Nick Ervinck and the closest stylistically to the pictures I have in my head of what I'd like my installation piece to look like. I'm going to try to manipulate bone in these ways as much as possible.



Another, and my favorite, sulking skeleton.


Another Roxanne Jackson, very appropriate.


Kris Kuksi is an American artist born in Missouri and raised in Kansas. His distaste for typical American life and pop culture show in his grotesque sculptures.



This underwater sculpture by Jason de Caires is another example of a relation to "life" and some sort of connection to what is natural. Frankly, it's amusing.


I also admire this spunky piece by Roxanne Jackson.


I drifted into the world of grotesque art and was drawn to Olivier de Sagazan's work. I also watched a few of his performance videos. I feel like he is trying to speak and express the agony of those who cannot. Some of his performances are fairly disturbing and gut wrenching.

More research

Here are more sulking skeletons. A taste of what's yet to come.


I found these images whild continuing to search slightly disturbing sculpture and hyperrealism of artists like Patricia Piccini and her piece The Embrace (below).
Above is the piece Unbearable Lightness by Tomas Gabzdil. It reminds me of a take on Piss Christ, and is an installation that features a sculpture of Jesus and about 40,000 honey bees.

Each cell was filled with honey before the public viewing, over time the bees cleaned the honey out of the cells and took it back to their hive. It is a comment on the human condition and the manipulation of living creatures. I love this relationship of a sculptural work and living things.



This work, The Sulking Skeletons of Marc Da Cunha Lopes, is as close as I could get to finding any skeleton sculpture. Still, I want to do something different.



I am in love with this piece by Simon Johan. Mocking the domestication and possible joke of toy dogs? I'll keep thinking about it.

Research continued

Here are two pictures from "Head On" by Cai Guo-Qiang, and also 3 pictures from Simen Johan's exhibition entitled Until the Kingdom Comes . Both of these artist are working with "natural" subjects and is experimenting and seeming to comment on possible domestication of animals and our twisted views of the wild.

I am inspired by both of these artist's work in sculpture as well as still image in the same show. I too want to work similar to this style.

Re-assemblage of the bovine and what it eats: research

Here is the first little post between my production construction of the train of thought leading up to this project. Doing an image search to find some work similar to what I'm interested in I found no specific bone sculpture artists, but I was continually drawn to photography or furniture.

One of the first searches I made was "disturbing furniture". I found Charlotte Kingsnorth's piece, "at One". A functional piece commenting on the media coverage of obesity and inspired by the works of painter Jenny Saville.