Rachel to Marnie email June 2008
some reciprocal thoughts ...i love the images- so much softer that anything i imagined ...here's my immedite thoughts on the body-land composition: thinking about body topographies and rock as skin surface, also an exchange of properties,
rather than a symbiosis.i spent a day up on dartmoor last week with Diana - remember from our CCANW project- she is really keen to take some film footage. there's no particular agenda other than to play and talk and walk. we found a new route up from norsworhty bridge (which, incidentally, is exactly 25 mins from my house....so wierd to spend a day in wilderness and be home before i've even brushed the moss off!!) it was really interesting to approach the landscape from a more visual perspective- think it might be a good challenge for us to use the scope of the (camera) frame to really interrogate what the rock/body/topography could be. not sure where this ties into tthe cartographic idea, as the relation of rock properties and skin/bone etc seems to be mostly a question of composition. i learnt a lot on friday from engaging my visual senses. like a palatte of movement textures and qualities which for me can then be translated into movement form. its a different way of interacting with the landscape- maybe less immersive/reactive and more to do with exchange/translation. within this dialogue there is more space for decision making and compositional strategies which i think just has to do with working in a slightly different time structure...either way it feels like a new direction!
you have got me thinking with the floating image. i've been looking back at some of the lumi properties of light and factal/dissipated textures. i would ike to create a lumi type character using lot of white refracting light and using the clay/red sandstone that you find on pixieville to make a full bodypaint. lkind of similar to the orange stuff i use for anonanon creatures.
I want to try and work with paper - the felt handmade stuff you find in posh stationary shops. will dig around for some ideas on form...
ok- that's just something to chew on before we talk tomorrow.
mark has started a cross continiental project with an artist in baltimore- its cale psychic tides and he just knocked up a blog really quickly. check it out...i think this is our way forward...
http://psychictides.blogspot.com/
ok- loveyou truly...
will speak properly very soon indeed- really hopethere's been some more take up for nav-lab. its so clear what you are offering...i just wonder if its a case of local artists not sharing this language around body/landscape...??? i dont know- just seems such a massive culture gap - maybe there is a completely differenet approach there and one which needs time to permeate. i forget sometimes how evolved our language has become - it is positive, but maybe it does need to open out again in order to facilitate at the widest level...
one thing i really want to do is to stay in the visual this year- maybe that does mean getting prodiuction heavy, its just an intuition that i'm having with all my work at the moment- writing through our ideas doesnt quite seem to give them justice . i think we are always dealing with the visual through language- its more sophisticated than image/sensation/movement, there is an articulation of space and texture and quality working in these differeent environs which i think we need to find ways to represent visually- through photography/animation/film...the blog seems like agood way to start to shift our register...and to stay accountable over the old geo-divide!
ok- over and out for the moment- xx
Body Land composition
Posted by
Marnie Orr
Labels:
body land composition,
camera,
scope of the frame,
visual perspective