Master Project

Master Proposal Synopsis

So far, within my last pieces I have being investigating in the concept of being, the fact of existing on a personal and social level and the way to occupy a specific position in the world, using the type of experience where the idea or the concept and the viewer’s involvement is not just the most important aspect of the work, but is what makes the work by creating a poetical conversation between the piece and the audience and producing therefore that necessary involvement for the piece in order to exists.

Approaching a confrontational attitude where I am challenging the meaning of art, I have been working with low quality videos, in order to keep a non-beautiful aesthetic of the piece and setting the paramethers in order to create a situation that is more intellectually challenging rather than visually.

By keeping that same approach, I feel the need to investigate further in the menthal and moral state that I am in while producing and showing my work. By doing this I want to analyse my body, my face and body gesture, in order to enchase what I am to others and what I am to myself, defining the constant desire of being exposed for what I am and undressed of that social pressure of being something that could be not what I really am. I also want to keep that same ambiguity that was in my last piece of work and that gave to the work a further dimension for the viewer to work upon in order to establish the connection between him or her self and the piece.

One of the aspects that I have been considering and that I want to evaluate furthermore, is the being immobile and silent in front of the camera as to portray a form of ultimate truth, the only possible way to being able not to lie to others or to myself, accentuated even more by my being naked and therefore disclosed of any possible ground of distortion of that “real truth” that I want to picture.

I want to studying myself through other people’s eyes or through other people’s perception or view of me, speculating on the fact that the entire portray that the viewer is building, could be an ambiguous fictional interpretation of the reality and questioning therefore the possibility of facing the me as a different, foreigner being from the one that I know, enquiring the real existence of my own self as I know it.

One approach to this type of challenge, could be to take my life and split it into different visual aspects or characters and therefore sections, having some of these events not necessarily with any relevant meaning to the persona that I want partially disclose, but there in order to represent aspects of my life as I perceive it or how others perceive it, considering my passions or my belief or that of different things that in some ways have inspired me and build me.

By telling or portraying the stories or the situations, I want to build a picture or guide the viewer to build a collage of myself maintaining that same delusive feeling that I have put into my previous project and which highlights that possibility of lying and setting, therefore the parameters for something to happen.

Maintaining the same type of format that I have used in my previous work, which I believe gives a feel of identity-less due to the fact that my face is covered by the mobile phone that I am using to film, I will consider some social and political aspects of my life and therefore I will need to use some kind of political references, as I believe this was a strong factor within my previous work.

The art will become the tool that I will use in order to generate a representation of a personal perception of reality, this being mine or that of the viewer, in a way that will portray what we know or we think we know about what we see and that will go therefore beyond a mere depiction of the truth.

By making this type of work, I am hoping to stimulate the viewer with a series of personal debates, possibly even questioning the meaning of the gallery as a structure and therefore the concept of art as a structure.

Presenting that same uncomfortable personal challenge that was created in my last project by displaying an almost naked myself in the video, and projecting upon the viewers the interaction that derives from the way he or she can relate to that uneasy defenceless feeling, I want the piece to self-create a sort of dialog between the lines.

In a similar way as Hanna Wilke used to use herself as a model of her own work, as a deconstruction of cultural trends of feminine vanity and beauty and the way she uses the audience to interact and to become a fundamental part in some of her pieces, I am planning to keep the same conceptual and minimalistic approach that I have used so far and that I have research into, looking at practitioners such as Hans Haacke, Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, George Maciunas, Jonas Mekas, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari and the way they have used to develop their ideas.

I am using my body to reflect and portray that personal experience that generated todays me, involving a feeling of behing in some ways on my own and depicting different reactions to certain events but also stimulating an awareness of the overlooked, investigating in the relation between faith, belonging and being within myself by analising the various aspects of my life but also the opportunities that have arised during my journey of living up to this point. Making this piece in a form of more sensory and emotive challenge, rather than an autobiographical product I am going to keep that reflection upon myself, but I also want to consider the physical as well as the more platonic side of the me being depicted in the work in a form of meditation within myself and the outside, in similar ways as Roger Ackling’s work drives a fresh acquaintance to meaningless objects by considering a spiritual being of these.

By insitgating a conversation between the audience and the work dictated by such questions as why am I here, how do I know the people that I know and why I don’t know the people that I don’t know, I want to reach a personal level of spiritual awareness that uses the body as a narrative tool for poetical conversation between the work itself and whoever is if front of it.

By using my body in the piece and therefore reinforcing that personal challenging and confrontational feeling that I developed within my last work, I am interested in researching in the idea of personal vulnerability as an artistic expression. In the same way that I have used my body in order to challenge my own frustration, I am intending to research furthermore in the putting oneself in the middle of controversial or debatable situations in the same way as Chris Burden used to perform on his body, creating a challenging environment for the viewer as well as in some cases an extremely personal danger in order to portray artistic expression.

Moreover, through my work I want to come across the notion of time and especially the notion of persona within the time in the way Jerome Basserode investigate the present, the past and the future in his work.