Robinson in Cardiff from Lucy Thompson on Vimeo.
The shadow of Robinson creeps into every frame I film, every scene I edit, and every pixel that forms a narrative. His fictional apperance has become the spirit of the space I inhabit. He symbolises the city that my art work is inspired by.
Robinson is Cardiff.
Towns above all have a personality, a spirit of their own, an almost externalised character, which corresponds to joy, new love, renunciation, widowhood. Every town is a state of mind, a mood which, after only a short stay, communicates itself, spreads to us in an effluvium which impregnates us, which we absorb with the very air.Bruges la Morte, Georges Rodenbach, Pg 93. (First published in 1892)
The film above, Robinson In Cardiff, was made in my second year of study at the Cardiff School of Art and Design (November 2008). It's production, in it's simplicity, consists of a poor narrative sound quality, seemingly random shots, and a 'n00b's' camera (for want of a better word!) However, having only made a few short films previously, my first outing into the city of Cardiff with my first handheld video camera (the battery eating Flip Camcorder) reminded me of a film shown to me by my foundation tutor, the mighty Tony Williams. Robinson in Space by Patrick Keiller (1997) became an informative structure for a film that delved into the history, topography and character of a city. By combining my memories of the city with small historical facts and a fictional narrative of a trip taken by the narrator and Robinson, I was able to view the city (in which I had inhabited for just a year) in a way that was personal through an interpretation of my understanding of an urban life. Having only ever lived in a remote village in the english countryside before an urban life has ultimately changed how I live, with my decisions and actions less dependant on an automobile. Although I experience periods of a sense of suffocated enclosure, living in a city has ultimately given me freedom; freedom from the nest, freedom to explore, and freedom to follow my preferred media - film. To capture my surroundings and the everyday, however banal, is to bring new light to the experience of their happenings.
The films made in the period I have spent as part of the Media Arts and Performance crew have explored the idea of a spirit of place in Cardiff. Although I have not always directly addressed Robinson in each film, (and sometimes bad mouthed his overall existence within my work), his presence has ultimatley become the resemblance of the spirit of Cardiff. I have never before wished to refer to Robinson as a him/he/his, thinking that it was I who possessed the character within myself. A realisation came when comtemplating the appearance of Robinson - a male of sixty years with greying black hair, a wrinkled yet cheeky face, and a fashion sense stuck in the same gear (biker boots covered by worn jogger bottoms, occasionaly swapped for jeans and cowboy boots, jumpers of block colours with logos hinting at the wearers nostalgic fashion sense, and a cap to sit on top the whispy hair.) His figure had not only come to resemble (symbolically) the spirit of Cardiff, but his materialised form had curiously come to look accuratly like a former art tutor of M.A.P. My understanding of this realisation is that, having lost the communication with this tutor within the art school due to his retirement, Robinson stepped forward in my final year on this self analyzing art course to represent what Cardiff has come to mean to my art work. His figure symbolises these past three years as a culmination of elements that have brought me to my final few months of freedom to explore and indulge with the medium of film before I am set free from the arms of education (and into a life I am sure I shall direct towards the release from the Devil of Debt!)
Therefore, indulge I shall.
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