My work explores personal connections and communication between individuals against a backdrop of contemporary politics, processes of globalisation and colonial histories.
I am interested in expressions of discomfort, confusion, failure, uncertainty, futility and irrelevance as sources of transformation, rather than feelings to be avoided. Contemporary implications of colonialism and globalisation are very complex and I can’t get my head around them; and so most of my work ends up being about questioning, searching, having trouble seeing, and failing to find answers. Often people who are not performers perform in my projects, in situations where both them and me are outside of our comfort zones. These collaborations are attempts at finding sincere human connection and trust in the face of all this noise. All of this can be very serious but I try being funny occasionally. I am not sure with how much success.
It is influenced by the work of Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Renzo Martens, Andrew Kötting and Ben Rivers among others.
Can you tell us about your final year project?
My final project is a reaction to a reluctance to say anything or add more images to the ever growing archive of images we already have, and so tries to instead speak through and learn from others. Based on a personal experience of getting lost in the English countryside, the film presents the journey of a speechless and faceless character that gets lost, and plays the ancient game of Go against strangers met on the road. These strangers are both real and fictional, and through the non-fictional stories they tell the film tries (and fails) to make sense of a Western individual’s place and role in a globalised contemporary society that increasingly rejects the Western gaze and its binary worldview.
It is representing a cyclical and failed process of funnelling in an attempt to conclude on a single image that is an answer or an accurate expression, making use of digital HD, analogue 16mm and pixel animation.
How have you found studying at Brighton?
The course has helped me understand and define what I am interested in and has allowed me to experiment with different concepts, processes and practical techniques. The work I am making now is very different from my first year pieces. Tutors have made me feel understood and supported, and helped me understand how an audience reads a moving image work, so I can now communicate my ideas more confidently and accurately. Ultimately the course has given me the confidence to continue my practice outside of university.
Brighton can be a bit of a bubble of a specific kind of people; but it is a very unique, interesting and creative bubble to be in for a while!
What are your plans after graduating?
I am planning to stay in Brighton for a while and work outside of the creative industry while hopefully preparing to do a degree in Physics in Germany, continuing my practice on a personal level and expanding into different mediums such as performance, sound and game design. I don’t feel ready to go into professional art yet, I feel like I will benefit from learning and experiencing different things first, and I am excited to see how physics and moving image will inform each other.
Find out more about Moving Image at Brighton
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