Final Collaborative Piece

This quarter, we have been working with notions of text, the creation of a page that hopes to offer an experience of an experience of perception. We have used a series of basic tools, from concepts of creaturely life and the crypt, to prompts related to memory, absence, tracing and sound. We considered the translation of our blog-pieces into a unified visual and audio video presentation of our thoughts on the relationship of the here-and-now and writing. We decided to incorporate ideas from various ETP’s and findings triggered by the prompts used in class for the final presentation.
Our final piece is an amalgamation of the course ideas and ETP’s including memory, sound, sight, text, and imagery. It works heavily with the idea of audio and visual manipulation. The basic premise for our video presentation is confusion with the attempt to have control of the viewers and/or listeners.
Our presentation will require class participation, within the allotted time of twenty minutes. The video presentation is approximately four minutes long taken from hours of footage that has been edited to fit our assigned constraints. We are presenting a video performance created from ideas in our blog, my sparks of creativity and the assigned course readings. Through images and written text, we compiled the visual and audio for the film. The entire presentation will include the viewing and listening of the film along with post film instructions, in which the participants must follow. These include, a collaborative piece making process, reading and listening to spoken observations, and sitting in silence.
All four members of our team will act as controllers of the class participation. We have divided the class into four different groups. Each group has specific restraints that have been typed up and placed in front of each individual member of the group.
One group, for example, consists of a non-blindfolded student facing towards the windows. The student will be instructed to listen to the film in silence and can only write and/or draw observations from the beginning of the film until the end. He/she cannot write once the film has ended.
Another student will be instructed to also face towards the window and will not be blindfolded. He/she must also listen to the file in silence, but can only write and/or draw their observations once the film has ended. This student will be given one minute to record their thoughts on paper.
Each student has his or her own specific instructions. The controllers will not answer questions during the presentation. The common constraints for all participants are: 1. Do not write your name at the top of your work, 2. Do not ask questions, 3. Do not ask for answers, their will be no disclaimer, 4. Do as you are told, 5. Sit and watch the whole film in silence, 6. Write and/or draw your observations, and 7. When instructed complete the post film instructions.
The presentation will end with the participants carrying out the post film instructions. One group will start to create their collaborative piece, which will be stuck to the wall as a visual for all participants, while the other two groups listen to the poet or watch the collaboration process. Each group will switch tasks after about five minutes until every group completed each task. The poet reader is the only group that reads out loud.
Our final piece works with memory and false memory, which subverts conventional messages of communication used through techniques that we read within the course readings. For example, in Wittgenstein’s Mistress, we gathered the idea of accidents and mistakes in terms of language and representation. The heart of our video is a traumatic event that we consistently distract from. We did this in order to create a sense of suspense; the story is told, but never revealed. This relates to the Cleaning House reading in which we try to work prose into verse.
In our video presentation we create a piece of work in which meaning is ambiguous. We do not given a narrative form of work with an easily digestible beginning, middle, and end with well developed characters. In respect to Pedro Paramo, we utilize a narrative form in which the characters are multi-voiced since there are many characters with many speakers. In our video, we utilize representations of representations, which has an aesthetic of the undead in relation to Juan Rulfo’s work.
Overall, our presentation gives a sense of melancholy and anxiety which relates to the notion of the Creaturely Life. Because of the way in which we translated our blog into this film, the film acts as a transcription of the blog, connecting back to Ettinger. Our presentation also incorporates aspects of both the Monkey’s Mask (the use of poetry and verse) and Dictee (combining images and text). We frequently make mistakes that subvert the natural way to free associate text and verse and switch it around in order to challenge conventional modes of representation on language.
In regards to the performance piece that takes place post film production, we are instigating an environment in which we intend to challenge our fellow students to rebel against the conventional structures of language and communication. By means of exaggeration (exaggerating restrictions of tradition) we force the participants into an uncomfortable place, in which the norm is challenged. By providing constraints, including the way each student may watch the actual film, we attempt to control how they sit, hear, write, and essentially exist within the space of the room. If this process does not succeed in the students revolting against our imposed constraints, this will only further demonstrate the extent to which normalization permeates our society and the creative process. We create structures of overt oppressive power, to the point that it is almost comical. The students have the choice to follow or rebel against the instructions without penalty, but will not be informed of this freedom.