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'Gerry' by Gus Van Sant

The film Gerry has been an underlying inspiration to my degree show filmwork. Written by Casey Affleck, Matt Damon and Gus Van Sant, directed by Gus Van Sant and staring Affleck and Damon as the two Gerrys, this film, consisting of precisely 100 shots(!), involves the simple storyline of a walk. The two Gerrys set out across a sparse wilderness somewhere near the Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA. Their walking pace and decisions in direction across the mundane landscape have always been a curiosity to me - they seem so involved in their conversation that they lose they way and forget which direction they had travelled from. I shall leave the end of this film for you to view but it certainly suprised me - it's initial shots create the sense that the Gerrys are aware of where they are going as if they have an aim but their indecisiveness and unclear bickerings confuse their actions and ultimatley ends in what can only be a shock revelation. Based on a true story, I am sure there are those who will guess the final actions/decisions of the characters but I am sure that, even by knowing/guessing the plot, the tension created from a lack of speech and a sombre soundtrack builds the final scenes into the climax of the overall film.

Not only has the plot, soundtrack and characters had an effect on my own filmwork but the camera work and setting has been of most significance. The wide angle shots of the surrounding landscape, panning around the characters and still shots following the actors decisions and actions inspire my imagination evry time I watch any scene from this film. Abover are stills from specific shots that I find most exciting - one scene of when one Gerry (Affleck) is stuck for five minutes on top a large boulder and must jump down and one of the two Gerrys shuffling along, one behind the other, across the white sand just as dawn is breaking on their final day of being dehydrated, hungry ad lost. The other still is one which, on watching the film since making my degree show work, has become a favourite as its composition is like that of one of the still camera real-time shots from my Tommy Jones final piece (stills below.) This was done completely by accident and I feel it is only fitting that I can make such a direct connection with my work and that of Gerry, a film that will stay with my thoughts for many years to come.

  

Tommy Jones is more famous than I thought...

Searching across the internet for as much info on Tommy as possible, I came across this hilarious youtube video, uploaded just over a year ago by a group of men who had clearly been on a quest to find the memorial (in the name of TJ!)

The Lord of the Rings types soundtrack and (amazing!) acting shows the light hearted feel to their climb of the mountain, but their quest shows a great deal of respect for the young boys lost soul.

Respect!

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I am a Psychogeographer and Flâneur wandering though the banalities of everyday life, looking through the camera lens that revives their existence with understated wonder. My video work is an attempt to record and transform how we experience the simple moments of our lives and eradicate the blasé passiveness that dominates this society of the spectacle.

“We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom,” The Situationist International, 1968.

B4524

B4524 from Lucy Thompson on Vimeo.

Filmed and edited in the Autumn of 2009 this was the first film in which I took the lead role. Constantly reshooting scenes, directing the cameraman and configuring my body in terms pf the position of the camera gave me the opportunity to understand in greater depth the awareness and precision needed in the construction of fictional filmwork. Although the notion of trying to act as normal as possible in front of the camera was my initial thought, the actual filming process revealed the impossibility of truth in my actions for the lens. The attempt to act relaxed and 'normal' clearly produced a staged look to the scenes, with certain small hints from my facial expressions as well as some camera shots suggesting the lies that can always be linked to any moving image that films people who are aware of the camera. The awareness of the lens will always produce a certain quality of acting in any persons actions, whether they are trying to be as 'normal' as if the camera were not there.

Another critical point that arose when this film was critiqued in one of the Media Art and Performance area's Tuesday afternoon shows was the open ended finish to the film. The drive of the main section of the piece was felt to be in some way compelling, with the ending of decision made upon my behalf - unrealised or a suprise. My reason for this was that this trip, although planned, was not scouted out before hand. I did not know of what to fully expect when I reached the destination of my walk/drive. It was a case of when I get to that bridge - I'll cross it... or in this case - not cross! It was also mentioned in the crit that the pace of the film, along with some of the unclear decisions I made of say, leaving university without a bag, were suggestively sinister. The glances in the car mirrors (intentional as it's a part of driving!) were also suggestive for some people. The idea of swiftly leaving the busy city streets and driving out into the countryside in search of a place of tranquility was, for me, the main concept of the piece - to escape the boredom of everyday life, drop everything and leave the constraints of life behind for a moment of lonely peace. The decision to not cross was purely on the sinister flow and depth of the water after the heavy rainfall we had previously experienced. Even in this chosen secluded spot I was still held at arms reach from where I apparently wished to go - a return to the banality of the everyday actions in city life was inevitable afterall!

The Situationist International

Our ideas are in everybody's heads and one day they will come out.

The Situationist International was an artistic and political movement active in France from 1957 through 1972. The Situationists were those post-war bohemians we imagine living in Continental cafes who, like the Surrealists before them and Baudelaire's Flaneur, wandered through the Parisian streets and stumbled upon spontaneous, continuous, ever changing experiences. Concerned with the increasing commercialisation of the art world, the commodification of goods and the apathy of modern urban life, the Situationists placed their faith in youthful revolt and agitation.

We will not lead we will only detonate.

Formed in 1957 in a small town in Northern Italy, the Situationists combined the remaining members of avant-garde groups. The principal members were artists and writers; the french theorist and film maker Guy Debord who had lead the Lettrist International, the former COBRA artists Asger Jorn (Denmark), Constant Nieuwenhuys (Holland) and the Italian Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio had been part of the movement for an imaginist Bauhaus.

Perceiving that alienation in society was a result of the domination of the individual by the mass media and consumerism, the Situationist International did not proclaim itself as a political movement but was interested in the construction of moments in life and in replacing passivity and doubt with playful affirmation. The name Situationist denoted activity that aimed at making situations. What could be transformed into a situation? It could be an epic or a moment in an individual's life. From 1957 through 1972 they published journals and books, held exhibitions, made films, sprawled grafity on city walls, subverted and created comics and helped detonate the student revolts of May 1968 in Paris. The members of the Situationists were aesthetic in political renegades who wanted nothing less than to change the world.

If we do not want to participate in the spectacle of the end of the world we will have to work towards the end of the world of spectacle.

The Situationists had two techniques that they believed were keys to changing the world.

1. 
   
   Dérive - the drift.
   
   
   The people wandering through cities being simply pulled by the attractions that you could find in the city and are repulsed by things that are ugly and hateful. Simply letting the city itself, its streets, its buildings, its ambience, its mini-climates, guide you, draw you down, making you see the city that you live in in an utterly new way. This was a way of discovering Utopia, of discovering what you hated and what you loved.
2. Detournement - the cut-up, collaged, juxtapositioned and refusal of original creation. It was the belief that everything that needed to be said was already there waiting to be picked up. It only had to be put together in new ways to let the people see the world in new ways.

In 1957 Asger Jorn and Guy Debord collaborated on a collage book called Memoirs, which brought together the two techniques of dérive and detournement. The book is made of fragments teken from books, newspapers, magazines, photographs, adverts, cartoons, comics and more. Sine the Situationists were heirs of the Lettrist their mood is encapsulated within the book. It is a remarkably powerful book as you can feel people drifting through their city, you can feel them seeing the city in a new way.

The Situationists developed other concepts of which the most significant were Unitary Urbanism (that is integrated city creation of an interest in games played on urban sites) and Psychogeography (play is free and creative activity). Believing the political had become lost in the repetitive gestures of every day that lived experience had been transformed into spectacle, desire and consumption, the Situationists constructed situations in order to actively recapture and transform everyday life. Through art making and thorizing they aimed at the subversion of what Guy Debord called The Society of the Spectacle. In this book Debord described how capitalist societies complemented the increasing freagmentation of everyday life, including labour, with a nightmarishly false unity of the spectacle passively consumed by the alienated workers. Debord has said that "the spectacle is capital accumulated to such a degree that it becomes an image" and that in societies where modern conditions of production prevail all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacle.

Initially the Situationists focussed on art making. In 1959 three artists held major exhibitions of their work, including Asger Jorn whose modifications or altered paintings were shown in Paris. These were second hand or kitsch paintings by unknown artists, which were then painted over by Jorn as a way of calling the activity of painting into question and the fulfillment of the self as expressed in painting. In an essay entitled Detourned Painting he wrote

Be modern. Collectors, museums - if you have old paintings do not despair. Retain your memories but detourn them so that they correspond with you era. Why reject the old if one can modernise it with a few strokes of the brush? This casts a bit of temporality on your old culture. Be upto date and distinguish at the same time. Painting is over. You might as well finish it off. Detourn. Long live painting!

(Image: COBRA Modification 1949 (with Constant, Appel, and Corneille, based on Richard Mortensen)

Whereas Jorn's response to the commodification of art resulted in modifications, Pinot-Gallizio's response was to create work that could be sold only by the metre. His industrial paintings, rolls of canvas upto 145 metres in length produced mainly by hand, could be draped along the walls of a gallery or stored in rolls. Theoretically these industrial paintings could engulf entire cities (thought they were subversive to the gallery system).

In the same year Constant exhibited a number of his utopian models. Inspired by unitary urbanism, in whish the city is seen as a point of departure for new activities such as free play, these models were a plan for a new way of life in the automated world. Constant's work attempted to make connections between a creative urban lifestyle and the environment. Virtually all of his art making activities were models for thought and recreation of the future.

1962 - the second phase of the Situationists with a shift towards film making, books and journal writing. The journals composed of articles that were often written collectively and anonymously, it was a critique on capitalist culture and urban life, enlivened with images inherited from the mass media. Guy Debord directed six films from 1957 to 1978. These films were mostly unknown to the public and have rarely been seen outside France. Debord's films comprise of mainly audio citations primarily of phrases taken from a variety of sources - everything from Marx, Nietzsche, Heigel to commercials, law codes, newspaper articles etc. Combined with images that are also citations from films, newspapers, books and the history of cinema. (Debord's films were strikingly like that of Jean-Luc Goddard, which suggests Goddard learnt a lot of what is in his l'oeuvre from the Situationist, although I find no evidence that this has ever been admitted by the french director.)

The late 60s were politically unsociably volatile times in Europe and the United States. Dissatisfaction with the Vietnam war, societal values and political structures were building, particularly in the universities. May 1968 was kicked off by demonstrations, protests, denunciations of outrages behaviour at the campus of the University of Paris at Nanterre. The people who kicked this off named themselves Les Enragés who were followers of the Situationist International. They were trying to put the Situationist's critique, which excited them, into practice and people began, as the Situationists had fantasized and called for for years, to stand up and talk. They occupied their factories, schools, theatres, offices and began to talk in groups. It was a month of noise. The slogans that covered Paris, that spread across France and over the next twenty years have spread all across the world, were mostly Situationist slogans either copied out of their tracts or put up by them themselves.

Humanity won't be happy till the last bureaucrat is hung with the guts of the last capitalist.

Boredom is counterrevolutionary.

We don't want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.

Warning: ambitious careerists may now be disguised as 'progressives.'

Under the paving stones, the beach.

I love you!!! Oh, say it with paving stones!!!

Be cruel.

Be realistic, demand the impossible.

Stalinists, your children are among us!

Abolish class society.

Down with the spectacle-commodity society.

End of the university.

Abolish alienation.

No matter how long some of their essays, no matter how serious their tracts were, they always believed that good critique was being able to boil down to a single slogan, to a single new caption, a new single speech balloon stuck on an old comic strip that ought to be comprehensible immediately to anyone. This isn't to suggest that the Situationist International were who started May 1968 or that they governed it but had there never been a Situationist International there never would have been a May 1968. However, splits followed and in 1972 the Situationist International was dissolved. 1968 was a bitter victory for the Situationists.

When it became time in the mid 1970s to change pop music, when pop fans were bored to death with the deadness of poplife, Situationist notions of change, of outrage, of excess were part of what drove them to try and create groups such as The Sex Pistols. One of the central images of Anarchy in the UK, the Sex Pistols first record, is the idea of all of the UK as a single ugly, lifeless, empty block of public housing.

Right! now

ha ha ha ha ha...

I am an antichrist

I am an anarchist

Don't know what I want

But I know how to get it

I wanna destroy passerby

'Cause I wanna be Anarchy

No dogsbody

Anarchy for the UK

It's coming sometime and maybe

I give a wrong time stop at traffic line

Your future dream is a sharpie's scheme

'Cause I wanna be Anarchy

In the city

How many ways to get what you want

I use the best

I use the rest

I use the N.M.E

I use Anarchy

'Cause I wanna be Anarchy

It's the only way to be

Is this the M.P.L.A or

Is this the U.D.A or

Is this the I.R.A

I thought it was the UK

Or just another country

Another council tenancy

I wanna be Anarchy

And I wanna be Anarchy

(Oh what a name)

And I wanna be anarchist

I get pissed, destroy!

'Anarchy in the UK' by The Sex Pistols

('Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols' album, 1977)

This is the Situationists critique of architecture as the critique of society boiled down to a couple of lines in a song. British artist Jamie Reid, who created many designs for the Sex Pistols, has created a large collage that he constantly alters depending on the history of the band. This collage vividly incorporates the Situationist's theory of detournement.

(Image: God Save the Queen, Jamie Reid, 1977 - cover to The Sex Pistols song of the same name)

In the past three decadesthere has been widespread diffusion of the Situationist's ideas about society, art and the relation between the two. The link between the social and political was one that is considered contraversial but is now increasingly accepted. Contemporary art directed towards social, cultural and political change can be seen in active collaborative groups such as Group Material who detourn works of art, found objects and everyday advertising to create exhibitions, which address relevant themes such as democracy, education and cultural representation. American artists such as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince and Barbara Kruger deal with issues related to the spectacle - the media, social myths, cultural stereotypes and strategies of appropriation, though many artists have absorbed Situationist ideas into their art practices without being aware of Situationist texts and artworks. The Situationist International's project was always a project of communication, an attempt of trying to find forms of free speech and then to use them.

Previously Unseen Videos of Randomonion

In The Strobe from Lucy Thompson on Vimeo.
Filmed in the second year of my degree - this playful short film was taken in the installation room in the M.A.P area. Using a strobe light my fellow mapsters and I were able to let off some steam and have some fun whilst working towards our second year assessment. It's clear to say that the area we shared in the M.A.P part of the Howard Gardens Art School, UWIC, will be greatly missed by a group who were devoted to the dying area (dead as of our degree show in June!) The times we shared in the installation room range from silly times of frustrate anger to the experiences of students performance or timebased work.

LONG LIVE M.A.P

Glasgow 2009 from Lucy Thompson on Vimeo.
A trip to NRLA in Glasgow 2009 was an event of surreal enjoyment - from the drunken experiences of wandering the city's streets in the evenings, to the eye-opening performances that took place in the derelict and otherworldly setting of The Arches (converted factory building of some sort? HUGE!)
http://thearches.co.uk <
A must for the future with a collection of emerging time based artists showing work there, as well as some classics such as Franko B and Trace.

Antony Gormley's 'Event Horizon' 2010, New York

 From March 26 to August 15 2010, Antony Gormley's Event Horizon can be seen amongst the bustling streets of Manhattan. The Madison Square Park Conservancy presents the installations on the streets and on top of buildings, much like Gormley's 2007 installation of the figures in London. The thirty-one life size iron 'blokes' gaze at passes by from above and at eye level. Their outlined shapes ask the public to look up from their everyday comings and goings on the street level and question their existence amongst the ever flowing crowd of humans that bombard the city's streets every day. Just as with Doug Aitken's Sleepwalkers, it is the flaneuristic viewpoint that is explored (although I have found no evidence of Gormley using this connection to Psychogeography), suggesting an awakened awareness of self in relation to everyday surroundings and actions. Gormley's perception of this piece has greatly intrigued me, (quotes below), with his unspoken (maybe unaware?) connection to the psychogeographical viewpoint of looking at the relation between a "visually overburdened world" and oneself.

"The whole installation is about making a connection between that which is palpable, that which is perceivable, and that which is imaginable. So on the floor, as an interruption of the flow of daily life on the street, we have four 650 kilo iron blokes that are gunna stand naked on the pavement and people will stop and say "What the ___ is that thing doing here?" And that transfer of awareness then might lead to looking around and then that's the point at which, "Oh my God, there's not just one there are more - what's happening here?"

I'm just feeling the magnificance of this extraordinary built environment. It's an awesome sight. I think Manhatten remains a living laboratory of possibility of how human beings can live together.

And then I'm very interested in what happens up there and the question is "Where are they gunna look? How are they gunna orientate themselves, in some sense, their position in this field of visible, of gazing and being gazed, and become enhanced?" 

Antony Gormley, February 25 2010, Mad. Sq. Park Conservancy 

 "The art of our time is absolutely and fundamentally different that everything that went before. It's not about the known; it's about the unknown. It's not about reinforcing all of those things that give comfort and certainty; it's about identifying the things that make us uncomfortable, uncertain. It's about, I think, trying to find a space in a very visually overburdened world in which the subject can find him or her self.

The condition of sculpture is it's still silent or mute and has no meaning, it's just a thing, it's completely useless, it's just an object in a space and it waits for all the things it doesn't have: consciousness, feeling and freedom - and that's what you've got.

Places for reflection, it's the most important experience, I mean, the most important thing - a place within life that is, in a way, removed from life, from which we can loom out but also look in. I would say that you are the subject in a field that is created by art and you, in some sense, make the picture because the picture is not given - it hasn't been done for you, it's an open work that you give form to. 

And where is the artwork?

Is the artwork in the moment of its origination?

Is it in the moment of its reception?

It's everywhere.

I would say the artwork exists most potently in the memory of the viewer or the one who has experienced it."

Antony Gormley, June 19 2009, The Art Fund UK

Oh, Peter Greenaway, how I adore thee...

Peter Greenaway, painter, film maker, performer, installationist and welsh. His influence has become apparent in my filmwork since watching a collection of his early short films in the second year of my course. His use of lists, narration and everyday themes/scenes (although some maybe closer to his theatrical fascination - 'The Draughtman's Contract,' 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,' etc.) examplify his transition from painting to moving image. There is no doubt that as an art student I have been brought along the parameters of education to follow the 2D form of art and, having given the chance and option on my university course, applied my painting/drawing knowledge to the moving image in my transition from 2D work to the medium of new media. Greenaway has continued to work with painting and drawing, even incorporating his images into his early film work (e.g. 'A Walk Through H,' 1978) There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction we are going There's no knowing where we're rowing Or which way the river's flowing Not a speck of light is showing So the danger must be growing Are the fires of Hell a–glowing Is the grisly reaper mowing Yes, the danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing. 'The Rowing Song' by Roald Dahl Inspired by Peter Greenaway's Water Wrackets this short film was an editing experiment to see if I could create a sense of building water swirling across the screen. Water has been a recurring theme to all my previous film work, with the opening quote that flashes onto the screen a previously used Roald Dahl poem in Robinson in Cardiff. The forever flowing and never ending qualities of the course of water in this world pose endless possibilities that are constant and yet completely changeable. The many paths water can take and its power to surge through anything that stands in its way are qualities that I believe some of us have and apply to our lives. I am not an Aquarius (although I'm sometimes on the cusp of Capricorn and this water sign) but I would like to think I can apply these virtues to my film work as well as my life. The constant and the endless; the banal and the beautiful.

Flow from Lucy Thompson on Vimeo.

'Sleepwalkers' by Doug Aitken

An installation feature that has inspired me over the past few years of my university degree - Sleepwalkers by Dog Aitken, 2007.

I first read about this installation in my first year of uni. It has cropped up in every sketch book I have written since 2007. The installation took place in New York at the Museum of Modern Art. Seven screens comprised the piece, each shown on the exterior walls of the MOMA building. For passes by on the busy New York sidewalks the art work was made available to those who may not have even been visiting the museum or exhibition. Times Square bombards the pedestrians of New York with advertisements that are displayed in the way Sleepwalkers was presented, offering a view of life through new media. The moving images Aitken presented on the screens involved seven different lives that, through his editing, shared everyday actions that were similar. From waking in the morning and turning on lights to the universal rise and set of the sun, Aitken presents the idea that although each of us are isolated in our everyday actions, we are still part of a larger crowd, whose decisions and actions are what define us as individuals. To view these seven screens through the flaneuristic view of how the camera has presented them we are each able to make connections to the everyday actions that are usually overlooked in their reality. The simplicity of what has been filmed clearly helps us to relate to the actors presented to us but it is the experience of the passes by (who perhaps originally had no intention of viewing Aitken's installation) that, I believe, this piece was intentionally presented for. For the passes by who can be seen in Karl Kels Sidewalk (see Sidewalk by Karl Kels blog), to put their lives on hold for even a second to look up at the images presented on the side of the MOMA and realise they are not just advertisements of an artists work but that they are the highlights of actions of their own lives. To look at their own simple actions brings psychogeography to the streets of New York in a subtle yet understated way that gives the pedestrian the chance to realise (if just for that moment) the wonderment of their actions as less banal everyday occurrences.

We have a world of pleasurs to win and nothing to lose but boredom.

 Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life

Installation views;

The piece featured actors Tilda Swinton, Donald Sutherland, Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Seu Jorge, and Ryan Donowho.

Longer video of the installation;

'Sidewalk' by Karl Kels

The following extract from my Film Review notebook concerns the short film by Karl Kels, Sidewalk, which I saw at the European Media Arts and Film Festival in Osnabrueck, Germany in 2009. Coinciding with the Urban Drift section of the festival, I was able to make links with this 'cinematographic painting' to my own work that involved the moving image to understand a sense of place.

(Still from Sidewalk, 2008)

The simple composition of the shot highlights the movements of the human beings across the screen and asks the viewer to question the everyday actions each of us perform; from parking our cars to walking our dogs. It is the actions of those around us that transform our decisions and movements, ultimately shaping our perception of our surroundings and of those we share it with. We are all lone pedestrians, wandering the endless sidewalks and experiencing the everyday with a blasé attitude. Psychogeography touches upon the idea of experiencing the everyday with precious wonder, experiencing all that is found banal as a chance to savour the wonders of man's creations.

On public transport, which throws them against one another with statistical indifference, people assume an unbearable expression of mixed disillusion, pride and contempt - an expression much like the natural effect of death on a toothless mouth. The atmosphere of false communication makes everyone the policeman of his own encounters. The instincts of flight and aggression trail the knights of wage-labour, who must now rely on subways and suburban trains for their pitiful wanderings. If men are transformed into scorpions who sting themselves and one another, isn't it really because nothing has happened, and human beings with empty eyes and flabby brains have 'mysteriously' become mere shadows of men, ghosts of men, and in some ways are no longer men except in name?

We have nothing in common except the illusion of being together.

Extract from The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem

(Page 30, Chapter 3, 'Isolation')

The following video was made in 2008. It was supposed to be a shot that was to be used in Robinson in Cardiff (see The Shadow of Robinson blog) but, having dropped the camera over the side of a bridge in Bute Park, it became a 'cinematographic painting,' with the constant shot of reeds slightly waving in the wind giving an image that highlights their overlooked existence. The movement of a small bug across some of the leaves suggests the level of open minded acceptance to the sometimes banal acceptance of nature's beauty. As an accidental piece of film work, this was never shown as a piece to fellow students. However, using it to back my understanding of Karl Kels attempts to unknowingly relate film work with psychogeography, I am able to apply and formulate this acknowledgment into my own production of films.

Four Minutes of Stress from Lucy Thompson on Vimeo.

Obelisk

The obelisk for the exact spot where Tommy Jones' body was found on the side of Corn Du was not where I had remembered it...

This obelisk marks the spot where the body of Tommy Jones aged 5 was found. He lost his way between Cwmllwch Farm and the Login on the night of August 4th 1900. After an anxious search of 29 days his body was found on September 2nd.

Crew

Monday 15th March 2010
The day of filming with a full crew. The sun in Cardiff was bright in a clear blue sky. Setting off from my flat around 11 o'clock, we reached the Brecon Beacons by about 11:45.

The crew consisted of a group of people whom I know and trust, especially when it came to reliability and open mindedness for the directions I gave them (all in the Media Arts and Performance third year group);

Glenn Muggleton

Glenn's role was to climb the path on the right side of Corn Du along with a partner, Owen lawrence, whilst filming their progress with a handheld camera. Glenn's own artwork involves a lot of camera work, resulting in his broad knowledge and transferable skills available to me for this part of a crew.

3D moving imagery is Glenn's current investigation, with the technical aspect of the work showing his true potential as a technical camera guru!



Owen Lawrence

Partnered with Glenn for the climb, Owen's role was also to record his progress up the mountain. Owen and Glenn are a physically fit pair and were able to climb at a matched pace. Having asked for their conversation to be natural whilst filming, I was aware of both these guy's playfullness in front of the camera. Part of this filming had to have an elusive openness that I accepted before filming began - possibly when I was contemplating who to cast. Owen, along with Glenn, enjoys such outings as this. I therefore knew it would be an easy decision for him to help me with this piece of film work.

Owen is a performance artist. His current art practice involves baking bread in his handmade cob oven.

Matthew Last
Another lover of the great outdoors, Matthew Last is a country bumpkin at heart. His previous knowledge of the particular path I set him out to climb gave me the one directional twist this piece needs in weaving it with the original basis: Tommy Jones. Matt was first on my list to be cast and, knowing our reliable friendship and inquisitiveness of others art production, his role is most crucial. By involving the memorial for Tommy Jones I gave Matt the role of explaining part of Corn Du's sinister past. Directing the camera over to the memorial took Matt (and Shane) off course to the summit. I was unaware just how far the memorial stood, as I was led to beleive the memorial had dissappeared! Matt, however, took the initiative to find it and let the natural story telling manner of his disposition explain the loss of Tommy Jones.

Matt is a tramp.
He explores performance art through the term existential homelessness.
matthew-last.blogspot.com

Shane Davies

Paired with Matt, Shane was aware of the Tommy Jones twist previously. However, to let the natural flow of Matt's tale sound more fresh and interesting, Shane played dumb and viewed the memorial with acted interest. My decision to pair Shane with Matt is due to my knowledge of how they act with each other. Friends for their full three years at university, there is a free flowing naturalness to their conversation. Their constant chatter makes the climb more interesting, as well as pass as an activity taken by mates. Shane's camera work, as I have seen in Scout #2, can be steady and clear, proving his potential as a master of many trades!

Shane is a man.
He explores what it means to be a man through manly actions in performance art.
shanecdavies.blogspot.com

Lucy Wright
Lucy is a fellow film maker with confident camera skills, as well as a reliable friend. Having worked with Lucy previously on a film I was already decided on using her to help me with the filming of the two groups of guys as they climbed Corn Du. Standing together, each with a Canon XM2, at the bottom of the mountain, we were able to view each others camera screens and I could oversee her filming of Matt and Shane. Due to her film making knowledge and previous working relationship, the help and advice she gave to me was much appreciated.

Lucy's current film work involves the themes of picnolepsia, manipulation and intimacy.
lewright.wordpress.com


Location photos of the XM2s' set up;

View of the mountain from where Lucy and I were stood with the XM2s;

Lunch break after a hard walk up and down, and a cold session of filming for Lucy and I!

With many thanks to Lucy Wright, Owen Lawrence, Matthew Last, Glenn Muggleton and Shane Davies.