thinking about our theme - initial ideas

Elizabeth Chandler - International Contexts and Markets - Initial research and thoughts for proposed group theme (The Endless Cycle)

“The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”
quote from T.S. Eliot





Some initial ideas of things that are cyclical jotted down:
 
endless cycles:
poverty

money

abuse

love

life

death

education

nature

decay

time

debate

violence




Some ideas I liked and potential titles put together.

never ending cycle of love and betrayal

never ending cycle of love, loss, lust and betrayal

never ending cycle of humans unique ability to self destruct


Cycle of advertising and thinking about ways to base my six images for the theme on the never ending bombardment with imagery and adverts.

"Advertising uses visual and audio images in an attempt to appeal to the consumer creating the usage of a particular product or service. These stimuli vary however the ultimate goal of any advertisement is to have your product or service consumed, therefore advertising is created for that very purpose.
Many elements are used to create the desire, want, and need. This can vary from social acceptance, sexual appeal, to an actual benefit."

Thinking about the cycle of education/abuse and general life development and growth from childhood to adult life.

"A child's mind is easily inspired, violence fuels the fire
Video games and chaotic scenes, are what they see, act out violently
Absorbing what they view, repeating words we say
In a culture of profanity, ignorance starts at a young age
Throughout history, bloodshed would always be
No way to stop the conflicts fought, we have destructive genes
Entrenched in our anatomy, from genetically enhanced apes
Planted by beings from space, a loathing hate we can't delete
In this endless cycle of violence, we can't escape
From the big bang to street gangs, we live it everyday
When this endless cycle of violence, reinvigorates
Give us our lives, give us strength
TV shows the mind to kill, images of murder every night
Triggers their brains, to be adult like in every way
A baby sitter for lazy parents, we can't control it
The corporate sponsors, flood them with gluttons
Absorbing what they view, repeating words we say
In a culture of profanity, ignorance starts at a young age
Throughout history, bloodshed would always be
No way to stop the conflicts fought
We have destructive genes
In this endless cycle of violence, we can't escape
From the big bang to street gangs, we live it everyday
When this endless cycle of violence, invigorates
Give us our lives, give us strength"

Looking at artists work who could represent cycles. for example with the following two projects by Natasha Caruana - she is looking at cycles of love, family life and betrayal. One of my interests noted for the theme when initially brainstorming.
natasha caruana

Fairytale For Sale

In the new series 'Fairytale for Sale' Natasha Caruana befriends brides posting their wedding dresses for sale online.
The work uncovers a strange ritual of newlyweds masking out their own faces. What remains are bizarre theaters of marriage; white-faced performers have taken to the stage and act out emblematic scenes.

"Fairytale for Sale explores wedding customs in the UK, revealing the fantasy, performance and trophy moments of the traditional big day. The series consists of online adverts of brides wearing redundant wedding dresses.

The smiling faces of the bride, groom and their entourages’ are blocked out in white, cloned over, smothered in blue tac or scratched off in a bid to disguise and make anonymous their private day now in the public arena. What remains are bizarre theatres of marriage; white-faced performers have taken to the stage and act out emblematic scenes.

The artist is posing as someone on the quest for the perfect dress and by opening a dialogue with the brides, she befriends them in order to gain higher resolution images than those used in the adverts. The brides reveal that the artefacts of the big day are being discarded; sold for money to de-clutter the wardrobe, make space for births or in some cases because the dresses are now tainted with divorce. Their words punctuate the images.

The original wedding album represents the trophy, the validation of a ceremony, a ritual performed, a tradition upheld as a record of the perfect day.
"

Cyclical photography - idea of repetition. same thing over and over

“Eadweard Muybridge's famous 'Motion Studies' was the product of the wealth and the whim of the railroad baron, Leland Stanford. Stanford came to Muybridge because he had a rich man's problem. A passionate race horse breeder, he wanted to prove that a horse lifted all four feet off the ground when it trotted - something that had evaded human perception for millennia.
 

On a specially whited out section of track, Muybridge placed a row of 24 cameras with electric shutters, which would be triggered in sequence, four every second, as the horse passed by. By this means, Muybridge did more than freeze the moment; he took a scalpel to time itself.
"Muybridge's photographs were the first source of accurate information about the gait of a horse, and it's the beginning of this change where suddenly the camera allows human beings to see faster than our own eyes, to break down the world and dissect motion. It's part of that intrusion into the flow of time. For Stanford, the project was always about horses, whereas Muybridge understood that this was potentially about everything he could possibly find and really create an encyclopaedia of zoological motion." Rebecca Solnit (writer)”

The life cycle of a frog, This project presents the idea of growth from the point of reproduction and documents each stage.

Susan Derges - Frog Vessel (A jam jar of frog-spawn becomes a three-dimensional transparency within an adapted enlarger in the darkroom. Flashlight illuminates the jar and its contents and a lens below it projects an enlarged image onto the printing board.)

Jem Southam - Exploring the cycle of the ever evolving landscape. How it changes and replenishes over time. Could also be linked to exploration of the humans impact on the natural environment.

 

"Jem Southam

 Jem Southam's careful studies of the effects of time.
 This work is closely linked with ideas surrounding ones mentioned in my proposal for this brief,
 as i too am hoping to explore the effects of time on our environment.

 Geologic change is best articulated in pairs of photographs, taken several months apart at the same locations.
 The mossy pebbles at the water's edge in "Senneville-sur-Fécamp," captured in February and April of 2006,               
 seem to have receded in the later photograph."