10C2D: Dialogue Between Works

On Monday the 28th of April the entire class came into the James Hockey Gallery to set up for 10C2D. The majority of the morning was spent with Grant trying to set up which pieces created the best dialogue with the other, whilst Vanisha and I were trying to take out our TV screens to set up.

It wasn't until much later did I realise the significance of some of the pieces and the dialogue it creates between them. One example was M. Dodd's "You're a Cold Hearted Bitch," alongside my "Steel Butterfly" piece. It was rather strange that my work didn't relate as much to Patel's, even though we both worked with the idea of cultural hybridity. The ironic factor comes into play when I used to tell Melissa that "I didn't know how to collaborate with her because I'm not sure how our works relate."

Within the works I have created I have found that my "Priorities" pieces would work best alongside Imelda Marco's portrait, because of the biographical connotations. Where ever "Steel Butterfly" was location, I wanted to see "Priorities I & II" next to it. 

Lastly, V. Patel and my works were best combined in a massive installation. The first question was a matter of how we were going to present our screen, in comparison to all the other TV screens being used by the other Arts & Media students. Based on this we decided to break up the space by presenting the screen on the floor. By doing this we are putting the TV screen on the same surface where the plates broke in "The Dinner Party Part II." It helps that we shot on a grey background. 

Afterwards, Grant decided it would be wise to cover the surroundings of our screen with our flags to take away from the straight edges. That way less focus and attention would be drawn to the fact that we are using a TV screen, whilst more focus goes towards the performance piece. From this point we scattered the broken plates to present the results of the performance piece. 

By combining approximately six pieces of works together, Patel and I were able to create a massive sculptural piece that represents the general ideas behind cultural hybridity. It was quite interesting to see works create connections with each other under careful curation. 

Rice Shoes: Priorities 2

I decided to create a second pair of rice shoes called "Priorities 2" because I wanted to continue with the idea of redundant and slave labour, especially from Filipinos. Though it is technically ambitious I would ideally have a massive collection of shoes created with a rice coating. This is technically ambitious because an individual shoe takes me approximately 10 hours to create, considering that I handle it with individual grains of rice and tweezers.

What came out of this project was an accidental discovery for a new texture. It seems as though the rice coating seems like a strange form of reptilian skin, when glued together with PVA.

"Priorities" focused on the priorities of Imelda Marcos: shoes - and the agricultural priorities of the Philippines: rice. The first pair of shoes were school girl shoes because it combined the "lack of priorities" my grandmother had for my mother's education as she asked my mother to drop out of school to work in the rice fields. These flip-flops are now the next pair in the production line because they are now the types of shoes she would have worn out in the rice fields. By presenting these types of shoes besides each other I hope to create a narrative about my mother's childhood, hopefully the use of the rice would make the relationship between the two shoes more apparent.

The Dinner Party: Part I & II

The performance piece with V. Patel was inspired by our shared fascination for cultural fusion. During our pop-up exhibition "Traditional Hybrid," we thought that the idea of serving tea at our exhibition was rather stereotypical. It is almost expected of domesticated women in both our European and Asian cultures to be attentive hosts. Whether or not this is a bad or good thing, we are unsure of, which is why I wanted to bring forth Derrida's idea of questioning the Western way of thinking.

According to Derrida, Western thinkers like to perceive life through its polarities (i.e: good vs. evil, black and white, etc). To continue the dialogue found in Derrida's idea, Patel and I wanted to create a performance piece that displays the in-between of these polarities because it can be seen as a metaphor for cultural fusion. Please see the following screenplay:

 THE DINNER PARTY - PART ONE

          TWO EUROPEAN-ASIAN WOMEN with black clothing walk in to a
          gray background.

          The TWO WOMEN sit cross-legged as they prepare the layout of
          the plates on the floor.

          ONE WOMAN pours rice in the middle of their workspace.

          TWO WOMEN then align rice along the design of the plate.
          This continues until each of the plates are finished. The
          TWO WOMEN have to finish at the same time.

          When both plates are finished, the TWO WOMEN move the
          finished plates off frame. 

THE DINNER PARTY - PART TWO

          Plates are being dropped (with the rice) and broken.

          Alternatively, plates are being dropped (without the rice)
          and broken.

In Part I of our script, Patel and I will be performing on screen as neither the host or guest, in a situation that is neither enjoyable like a dinner party or laborious like a sweatshop. These actions will hopefully act as an allegory for the cultural betweenness we both live through, on an everyday basis. In order to avoid culturally-influenced visuals, Patel and I had worn all-black costumes with our hair tied back. The actions in which we performed shows that "The Dinner Party" is neither something to be enjoyed like a social gathering, or dreaded like a workplace for the performers.

In Part II of our script, Patel and I are smashing the plates which we worked with in order to reinforce the idea that the plates were not the priority. Instead, we want to make sure that it is the act behind the performance piece that upholds the attention of the viewers, especially when our performance artists are placed in a situation full of in-betweeness.

I decided to ask A. Lamlum and J. Dixon from second year BA (Hons) Digital Film and Screen Arts to be our camera operators; that way Patel and I could focus entirely on the performance piece. Filming took place in B27 on the 9th of April, where we could set up a grey backdrop. Grey was an appropriate colour as there are so many shades of it between the black/white tonal spectrum, which is just a visual demonstration of not belonging to any polarity that Derrida talks about. Technically speaking it was also visually appropriate to use grey as the plates were white while our costumes were black.

We used two Canon EOS DSLRs to record the visual aspects, whilst using the H4N Zoom to record our audio for Part II. We were able to collect a good amount of footage and cutaways during our two takes. In total we wrapped up after 1.5 hours of set up and 30 minutes of shooting.

In post-process, I edited everything together using Final Cut Pro 7. You can view "The Dinner Party: Part I & II" here: