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working towards a product/interrogating process/difficulties of form and method

rayj's picture

I’m working to develop and create a storyboard for the video piece I want to produce for my final project, but I am wondering if the directive and narrative-reflective form of the storyboard. That is, this happens, then this, then this. And that is not the kind of video I want to make, nor does it reflect the way I do my work, so I’m not sure if I should try to conform to the process, that it might make my work better, or if I should just do as I typically do, which is to be a bit more organic in my process, although perhaps less deliberate?

               

The grammar of our world, and of film, video, and visual arts, is of interest to me. How do I produce and reproduce a syntax that allows for understanding in my audience? Inherent to such inquiries, is whether adhering to such norms of syntax and grammar is what I even want to translate into image. I’m not happy with the storyboard I uploaded here, but I think it is an important start to thinking about how I will realize this piece, even if it doesn’t represent, image-by-image, what it will be.

                And that is okay. I want this to be a video of possibilities, of play, because I am trying to explore global feminism and how geographic boundaries impact how we look at what it means to be a feminist, and doing so in a micro-sense. Is that even possible or productive? I’m not sure. I think it might be, in interrogating the synthetic nature of such labels and how they impact the kind of self we present. 

Comments

Anne Dalke's picture

A video of possibilities?

rayj--

 (While I can't wait, of course, to see what product emerges!), I am as interested as you are here in your process, querying norms of syntax and grammar, interrogating the synthetic nature of labels, visualizing the problematics of...

making visual.

My favorite question is "can an ant be a feminist"? (Did you see the Michael Marder's NYTimes opinionater piece this weekend, If Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them?)

Don't know if this is too little too late, but there's been some wonderful classic/still relevant theorizing done about the practices you're wrestling w/. See (for example) Alexandra Juhasz 's “They Said We Were Trying to Show Reality—All I Want to Show Is My Video: The Politics of the Realist Feminist Documentary.” Collecting Visible Evidence. Ed. Jane M. Gaines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1999. 190-215; & Julia Lesage's "Political Aesthetics of the Feminist Documentary Film." Films for Women. Ed. Charlotte Brunsdon. London: British Film Institute, 1986. 14-23.

Anyhow: let's talk.

Soon.