Video Studies

Video for me as a medium is a culmination of ideas and techniques that often start with drawings and storyboards. The videos shown here illustrate the exploration of techniques, such as desaturation, image inversion, and slow-motion; these form a distinct correlation to my concepts of perception, which in turn inform how I conceive of myself (Koestler, A. The Act of Creation, 1964).

This one is a sequence from Cycle of Ruins, a video study for the collaboration. The turning of the imagery is executed in cinematography (I turned and turned). This is one of the techniques that is becoming quite important to me: the movement of the self expressed in cinematography. The overlay of the people is another technique that puts my imagery into a visual context, perhaps as a way to express the idea of the paradox of identity- we can only conceive of ourselves in the context of others (Foucault, The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Volume 3. 1986).

This is a experiment of the cinematographic movement as self-expression. I shot it in the context of my photographic self-portraits, and I wanted to develop certain techniques and concepts I found in the process of making the photos. This was executed in two takes, and the editing rhythm is informed by the concept of found footage (the gaps) and the concept of silence by John Cage (it being as a illusion, only a metaphor for a particular state of self-awareness).

After reviewing the experiment, I noticed that the ending had particular qualities that teeter on the edge of reality and imagery. I decided to focus on that and adjusted the speed and the time-points in the contrast timeline to reveal the light and shadow changes on my body. The video now looks more like a endless turning, an unravelling of self.

Related blogpost:

*Please click on the images