Photography/Filming - Exchanges - Week 2 @ Winkhill Mill - 9.2.18

Week 2 - Photography/ Filming - Exchnages
9.2.18




 This week, essential filming and photographing has taken place in order for me to prepare my work for the exhibition. I've decided to present some films/projections which look at the workers relationships to their tools and machinery.
The films will take an essence of these moments, offering an aestheticised version of their daily events. In offering an altered or unfamiliar version of events to an audience; I hope that the images will peak an interest in the events unfolding in the video, encouraging an indirect engagement with their skilled methods of working. The abstracted videos can also challenge the value in abstract art when situated in a a very structured, methodical working environment.

Richard, the primary worker in the factory allowed us access to his production processes. He talked us through the technicalities of his machinery and how they come up with an end product. What was interesting was how much control the workers had over the machine. In his tile press it appeared that the labour going into the tile is shared. The machine provided pressure to create a mass of perfectly shaped and sized tiles. However, Richard himself has to laboriously load the slips and clay powders into the machine in order for the machine to produce them.
This balance between the physical importance of Richard, the worker and the role of the machine in the process seems important to detail in my 'documentary' style video work.

For my film; focusing in on the fleeting moment where the machine turns on to press the tiles will help me translate the presence of the machine in the process.
While the presence of the onlooker in-front of the video could 'activate' the meaning of the press. This will offer the human/ physical presence essential in Richard's process of producing tiles.

What's interesting about this is how the end product and others' experience of my work becomes more important than the original and my own method of production. My work always centers around an observational experience of a situation. Which is important when I consider the nature of residencies. So far the experience is revealing to me how closely associated my work is to the site-responsive and site-specific in general.











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