[SEM2] Site Week 2 01/24/2022

For this semester, I will continue to explore my obsession with constructed realty and fabricated narrative across various media, with a main focus on analogue color films using 35mm and medium format cameras (Olympus OM1, Olympus OM2n, Mamiya). I’m planning on further explore the intersections between digital and analogue technologies while producing works that demonstrate my understanding of perspective and perceived reality. As I continue to exam the works of Jeff Wall and Andreas Gursky since last semester, I’m getting increasing interested in the work of Edward Hopper and how he creates subdued drama out of commonplace subjects ‘layered with a poetic meaning’, inviting narrative interpretations, often unintended.

While I’m doing more research on Edward Hopper, I also plan to watch Gustav Deutsch’s “Shirley: Visions of Reality,” a live action film which recreates 13 of Edward Hopper’s paintings. The movie charts over three decades of American history through the unfolding life of its protagonist, Shirley, a fictional red-haired actress who tackles the socio-political changes happening around her with the same fervor she handles her own personal affairs. Filtering history though the double lens of a contemporary painter’s viewpoint and a filmmaker’s re-interpretation of that viewpoint, in essence, Deutsch’s creation is a unique interdisciplinary art project presented as a feature film. In its faithful three-dimensional reconstruction of Hopper’s paintings, the film visually shares the hallmarks of the painter’s work: the vibrant colors, the strong diagonals, the bright lighting and the large empty windows that hint at the larger world outside and all the possibilities it hides. To me, Deutsch’s film seems like a study on the staging of constructed reality. By re-staging Hopper’s fictional reality and filtering it through the protagonist, the film invites the viewer to consider reality as a conceptual conundrum, which is something I have always been aiming to do while creating my work. Thus, both Edward Hopper and Gustav Deutsch’s would be good inspiration for me this semester.

Currently, I’m still walking around the city trying to find some suitable places to start my project. I’m also preparing and experimenting with some “new” analogue cameras and film stocks to be more conformable with them technically. Since I’m only using analogue technologies, it will take more time to shoot, develop and scan the photos.