THESEcrazywomen

La Fura Del Baus

2009-06-10T19:14:00.005+01:00

One of my references for this project ....

I saw them in Nantes in the 90s and it was completely new and amazing : performers in the middle of the audience, things happening everywhere, naked people being born from watery transparent sacks then transported by crazy fast running little cars ... and loud music, and lights and darkness ....

These images were found on Internet. What I like is the use of projection but in others just the composition foreground/background, the shapes and the colours and the fact that the scene is telling a story.

BACK to Crazywomen ... with some writings ...

2009-01-10T17:35:00.003Z

I've just finished to write an essay for my BA. It's pretty academical and very limited in length, which I've found very hard. I could be more happy with the result but the topic is very much linked to the questions I've had since the beginning of Maria's story. It is also linked to my current practice.

It's on my other blog :
http://celinesianidjiakoua.blogspot.com/2009/01/fleshy-corporeality-essay-works-of.html

Well, I hope we're all going to be back to the Maria's story project very soon as I have missed it !

Closed contacts - Jenny Saville and Glenn Luchford

2008-10-10T16:26:00.004+01:00

Burden

2008-09-29T10:35:00.009+01:00

I've found lots of ideas and done lots of things for this project so far ... but realised I didn't have "stories" for it .... Well, I could say creating atmospheres and images can be telling stories ... but I didn't recognise myself in Susan's stories, I was finding them far from me ...

Susan :
"I think about the extreme situations- women who send their sons and daughters away to foreign countries so that their children have better lives, women who have lost husbands, children and parents in wars they did not choose to be part of, and yet were, women who live half lives enslaved in the sex trade, women who cannot feed their families because they have no resources to do so. I also think about the situations I experience which are more decadent, less extreme perhaps- the ebbing away of time, the loss of my friends, mourning for life experiences I will never have now, the corrosive aging of the ones I love. In some ways all of these experiences are marginalised- put to one side as not really the matter for serious debate or study- not real politics/ power- not the BIG questions."

I've started boycotting TV a couple of years ago (and that's the same for any news actually)... for many different reasons, one being that seing or hearing about any kind of violence affects me too deeply and I've got other things to do : I can't cry and recover from the pain every time I hear something bad about the world, it takes me too much time and energy ! I feel I already know it all ... nothing can surprise me in that area.
At the beginning, I would feel guilty and selfish of cutting myself from the News, but now I think there's no time for self-blaming neither : I should just accept these facts about myself, that it is the way I am.
And I am an artist.
The pain is there in me. I don't try to hide from it.
I use it in my work. This is my job. This is the way I carry my part of burden.
The pain is in me, accessible at any time.
I cannot just possibly keep crying all day long.

That's the way I deal with all that.

Lisa's ideas ...

2008-09-19T18:30:00.014+01:00

Lisa wants to work with the texts coming from her "fetish boxes".

Lisa wants to talk about how we keep our most unraged feelings behind a nice sociable face.

Lisa wants to project images onto glass. It turned into putting a woman into a fish tank ... Snow white, a Mermaid, Alice's body too big for the room ...

But she also would like very much to film a body, skin and flesh, pressed onto the surface of a glass piece ...

What about a fish tank with a woman in it, at the top of a large box ? ... and maybe you could see her from underneath, from inside the box ... This is becoming really erotic ... but how would she not be turned into a "sexual object" ... how not to turn it into some kind of cabaret show ? ...Or shall we ?

Lisa suggested that we could go to a man strip tease show to observe women' reactions because apparently they don't behave themselves and men would be apprehended for having such a behavior.

Men ... where are they in this work ?

But what are the stories in your boxes, Lisa ???

(images found on Internet)

Yeah, the work is being born !!!

2008-09-15T10:29:00.005+01:00

FULL STILLNESS - RAGE AND DIGNITY - MEDUSA AND BUDDHA

This refers to http://nswomenartists.blogspot.com/2008/08/calling-for-rain-rather-than-waiting.html

Betty Buffer said...
Yes, I'm interested in that tension between the rage described in the poem about Medusa- the avenging anger- the murderous physical tearing that comes from pain and loss but the fact that in everyday life we conduct ourselves- carry ourselves with those impulses supressed or controlled.The actions unseen and buried or contained perhaps and the relationship this has to objects around us (I just mistyped that as "realationship"- interesting) Thinking there about Lisa's secret gestures...The question is how do we get there- to the simplicity without it being just empty- how do we make the stillness full?
01 September 2008 02:24
Lisa Wetton said...
(...) So, when I see an image I want to run away with the essence of its motion. The motion that it inspires in me from its details. . .The place between rage and dignity is extremely interesting. Rage, pain, loss, despair, grief....coupled with a smile and a nod and the brave acceptance of life happening to us on a daily basis. Quietly absorbing the experience and breathing through it, when inside the energy is frantic and chaotic. How bloody marvellous we all are! Of all the people I know, I am one who does allow my impulses to be expressed, but even I am controlled in certain circumstances... we have to be... of course!!! Our souls carry a great burden by keeping quiet and then on the other side of the coin, as there are always two sides, I can literally feel the growth in my spirit because of the experience...so perhaps it's just the way it's meant to be!!??SECRET GESTURES.... the things contained within our interior boxes... Thank you for your wonderful notes, writings, poems from my boxes...I will find a space to share them (once I have sussed exactly how to blog correctly). I will also post the photographs of you doing your secret gestures, I even have a short video :))) SO..to the question - How do we make the stillness full?? How beautiful...!! I think the stillness is full already, massively so, but how to translate that through imagery and arts...my first thoughts are of Still Physical Bodies surrounded by moving image....projected around, so the movement is virtual, the stillness is real and the images are secrets. . . . . there is so much to do! How exciting :-)
01 September 2008 08:55
Lisa Wetton said...
The outline of your secret gestures could be translated somehow, painted, sketched, traced in light.... and seen in another way. I am intrigued now to create some movement that is all about stillness. Stillness and I have not really gone together before . . . but I feel now... it may be time.I am working with tracing dancers movement with infra red light tomorrow in Birminham, perhaps then I will have more of a rounded idea concerning making the stillness full! I just love that!!
01 September 2008 09:08
Celine Siani Djiakoua said...
Ladies, your exchanges are very rich and inspiring ... When and how do we get started then ?!!!Lisa you said you wanted to try : projections onto : silk, glass, bodies .... "The body as screen with the notion of dual identity in mind. Coming back to the idea of Rage and dignity and how they can co-exist within a person."... and also try to illustrate a "full stillness" . ... create movements about stillness ... and you did : tracing dancers' movements with infra red light ...This is a lot already !:) ... and it is giving me some more ideas, of course ...So how do we do that ?Lisa+me+maybe Eleonor may meet for some workshop before the 1st ... anyone else ? I need ACTION !:)
11 September 2008 13:14

Ideas for an interactive installation (workshop 2nd part)

2008-08-16T19:30:00.013+01:00

I made a hole in the 1st screen.

The video I was using as a projection came out to be perfect for that hole. It was filmed from above.

From there, I thought of an installation I'de like to try :

Projections workshop 14.08.2008

2008-08-16T17:44:00.018+01:00

On thursday I tried some of my ideas with Eleanor at the Barracks (B-Arts) where Susan and Hilary had generously :) offered me to use their space and resources. Marewan and Ashue also gave us a hand.

We covered all the windows with Eleanor's huge pile of black plastic sheets and then we had a go at playing around. We used a tiny projector (1/4 of a shoe box) to project either videos or still images (Eleanor's pinhole photos). I expected this session to be magical but not to that point : it's amazing what you can do ! I moved the projected images all around the room+floor+ceiling+people+furniture. Of course I "knew" that the projection could become tiny (fitting in my hand !:) ) and gigantic but it's another thing to actually "see" it.

With such a tiny projector, you could even think of a choreography : dancing while directing projected moving images everywhere including on your body. There is the story within the video + the story you create by dancing with the light ...

The only technical problem we had was with the colours : we didn't manage to obtain the reds. It seems that the colours treated by the projector have to be adjusted in order to match the ones of your actual work but it didn't work well.

Eleanor took lots of pictures of this part of our experiments so you'll be able to see that.

I also made 2 screens out of tissue paper (I would need to find very large sheets : about 1m50/2meters by 1/1.50m : anyone any idea ?). I was disappointed to see that projected images and shadows cannot go further than 1 layer of screen. But I really liked the results.

Here, Ashue was moving the screen which was attached by a string.

2008-08-12T22:28:00.008+01:00

Ideas are going their way ...

My own work http://celinesianidjiakoua.blogspot.com/ and the "Maria's story" 's project http://nswomenartists.blogspot.com/2008/07/hi-everyone.html are going in some common directions ... dark, light, projections, interaction with the audience ...

Screens, camera obscura ... Lots of things to try ...

I made some drawings to figure them out.

I like the idea of a very simple basic paper screen that separates one part of the room from the other while offering moving images, the audience being audience and performers ...

I'm not sure about having a camera obscura in a room, because of the lack of light ... but Eleanor and Hilary certainly know a lot about that ... :)

Don't be afraid of your own contradictions ... (talking to herself)

2008-07-19T21:13:00.011+01:00

Images of some sexualized sculptures

Series of drawings as a reaction about "hairy or not hairy ?"

A matter of balance ...

2008-07-17T23:08:00.029+01:00

"THESE crazy women"

The title I choose for this blog is for me an ambiguous and provocative one. It comes as following our first meeting and exchanges of comments http://nswomenartists.blogspot.com/2008/05/we-started.html
For me "women+burlesque+sex" was leading to some of Cindy Sherman's works and I found it scary, even though it is actually something I have been working about.

When Susan offered us to take part in this project, I also thought : "why women ONLY ?" ... and after our first meeting, I added "why THESE women ?" ... And as every time I am part of a group, I wondered what my place was in it and why I wanted or didn't want to be part of it ...

I don't quite know at what stage the Feminism is in 2008.
I grew up with my mother talking to me about "feminine liberation" and about "sexes equality" ... but still doing the same tasks at home that my grand mother used to do, even if my father was helping around. As a child, I took the meaning of "sexes equality" quite literally : I was a bit of a Tom boy and would want to be as good and as brave as boys ... till my body changed and I realised, with great rage, that I couldn't follow them anymore ... Then, despite my mother's teachings, I married a man who didn't quite put the "sexes equality" into practice. In the meantime, I have also had a little boy and to my great and naive amazement, I can see how boys and girls are very different, from the very beginning.
Now, I have grown up a bit and I am ready to see and accept the differences between men and women and even though I want of course to be treated fairly and equally (to men), I appreciate the complementarity of the two.
So why a "women group" then ? ... we cannot be women without men ... where are the men here then ? Our audience will be made of men and women ... who are we talking to ? what do you want to say, as a women group ?
I see us as a group of "strong" women who can stand on their own. But I don't want to go to the extreme of forgetting the men or even going against them. At the same time, I think that despite all the feminist fights, there are still some subjects that may be taboo and could be worth discussing. Sexuality is certainly one of those... But do I really want to ?

Well, I think that I needed to address these questions as a starting point for this project, as an attempt to clarify my own position.
I don't want to work in Cyndi Sherman's way. I would prefer a much more subtle style as in a previous work I did ("Dark Continent") :
http://celinesianidjiakoua.blogspot.com/2008/07/photos-used-in-veiled-messages-were.html

At the same time, I am still very fascinated by the Medusa character and the ambiguities that are around her. I do not agree with Freud's interpretation and would rather try to show how she, and the world in general, is never only one-sided and how we have to deal with ambiguity and complexity, everywhere. A matter of balance ....

MEDUSA :

"In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek: Μέδουσα (Médousa), "guardian, protectress, queen"[1]), a sea nymph, was one of three gorgon sisters, and the most beautiful. She was courted by Poseidon, and made love to him in a temple of Athena. Furious, Athena transformed Medusa into a monstrous chthonic beast with snakes instead of hair, whose frightening face could turn onlookers to stone. She was beheaded while sleeping by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon[2] until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield."

"In 1940, Sigmund Freud's Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head) was published posthumously. This article laid the framework for his significant contribution to a body of criticism surrounding the monster. Medusa is presented as “the supreme talisman who provides the image of castration -- associated in the child's mind with the discovery of maternal sexuality -- and its rejection. The snakes are multiple phalluses and petrifaction represents the comforting erection.”[4][5][6]"

"In the 20th century, feminists reassessed Medusa's appearances in literature and in modern culture (...) .[7][8][9] The attack on Medusa is discussed as a potential example of violence against women or rape."

"(...) despite her origins as a beauty, the name in common usage "came to mean monster."[10]"

"The book Female Rage: Unlocking Its Secrets, Claiming Its Power by Mary Valentis and Anne Devane notes that "When we asked women what female rage looks like to them, it was always Medusa, the snake-haired monster of myth, who came to mind ... In one interview after another we were told that Medusa is 'the most horrific woman in the world' ... [though] none of the women we interviewed could remember the details of the myth."[11]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa

Cindy Sherman's work

"Medusaspeak" in "Connecting Medium" - Dorothea Smartt -

2008-07-17T22:37:00.000+01:00

Trying to save the life
that is one's own,
white foaming at her
mouth, Medusa screams for
you to hear her.

Her granite lips crash
across teeth, sharper
cries roar foaming,
cross her meaning
lost on the wind.

You turn
run afraid.
You refuse to be alone
with her
Your terror leaves
Medusa standing, molten
tears across her rockface.
How can she speak to you
gently of hard things ?

Every monster has her place.
A simple truth
she comes to tell,
this shadow from
the beacon,
the source, the god-send, the dark,
the truth.
Who's "she" ?
Honey,
sweet honey,
you are.

Here she is
standing ready
to rip to claw to beat
you to your monster self.
Narrow the focus
block the light.
In your own tall shadow
crouch quiver whimper.
Let your hair grow long. Rage
down to skin and bone. Rage
red-hot-blue-cold
tearing you. Solitary in the dark.

Dorothea Smartt