Animated Projections

Animated Projections?

Performance #2 Clip

Performance #1 Clip

More New Photos 12/6/09

New Photos 12/6/09

New Stuff I'm Looking At Part 2

Another pretty important aspect of Endi and Danielle's critique was the way I was portraying myself in my photographs. Although the subject matter was pretty revealing (and by that I mean I revealed quite a bit of my body), however, the photographs were not overtly sexual or really sexual at all.

I'm intrigued by the way sexuality is changed and shrouded in a lot of the German expressionist works. If you look at the works of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the naked women featured in his prints are not remotely sexual or sexy. Their harshly rendered bodies are contorted and posed in incredibly "unflattering" poses. I guess I had been so stuck in figuring out exactly "what I was trying to say with this void" that I didn't think much about the effects I was employing to change the reading of my ordinarily sexualized body.

I was checking out some photos on a friends facebook page, He's in Paris and I guess he went to some show (he didn't say who the artist was)and took a few pictures of the work. This one really struck me and seemed to be employing the same kinds of visual elements to chance the reading of the female body:

I love how much the animal head throws off the reading of this woman's naked body.

New Stuff I'm Looking At

Okay, so, I've switched gears a bit. The big switch was initiated by a conversation with Endi and Danielle a few weeks ago. I'd been really suck on "the void" and figuring out what it meant and how it was working in the images that I had made. Well, during our critique, Endi and Danielle suggested I drop "the void" and focus on some other conceptual considerations including the idea of my projection as a wearable. Endi also suggested I look at the work of a few German expressionists, saying my aesthetic was very reminiscent of the harsh, brooding style that coined the genre of prints.

o here are a few I was looking at by Kathe Kollwiz:

And Ernst Ludwig Kirchner:

And Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

I was really struck and inspired by the intense line quality and heavy feeling all of the pieces exude. I could definitely see where Endi was coming from when he told me to check out their work. I did another plate (an etching on plastic this time) and tried to push this heavy handed/weathered/harsh aesthetic a little further.