Artist Research -- the Brothers Quay "Street of Crocodiles"

  

The Brothers Quay are twin American filmmakers who currently reside in England.  According to wikipedia they typically work with dolls that are in some form of degeneration and their work is often dark and brooding.  When I first started watching Street of Crocodiles, I wasn't really sure what to expect.  Sure the visuals were stunning, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to get out of it. The opening sequence especially threw me for a loop. My guess is that it was to kind of set the story up as a fairy tale and romanticize the real problems that were being discussed. With that said...

I deduced that there was a deep longing coming from the doll characters for the life that was evident in the main character.  He was alive and his motions were fluid where their motions were jerky and they were empty.  They wanted the life that a man could bear, they tried creating their own kind (the light bulb man) but it merely fizzled out.  There was a scene in particular where all the doll characters were caressing objects that visually simulated sexual organs (the meat, the cloth with hair, the glove) that they wished they possessed but simply did not.  At the very end the simply begin to fall apart as everything becomes unscrewed, including their arms which began to jerk mechanically around.

It was interesting to see that what I'd thought was more or less correct when the narration came on in the end as there was no dialogue at all.  The mis en scene was absolutely stunning and entirely encompassing.  The symbolism was also very strong and I think that's something I really need to work on. I need to find out what all of my materials mean to me and what their function is within my work. I think that will help strengthen my images, but I am a little worried about going over board because I don't want something strange happening in every image. I do want a sense of normalcy to be apparent in some but... I guess we'll see how that works out!

Film Stills courtesy of Google Images

Idea Post -- More on the Altars

 

At this point I'm pretty confident that I'll be using altars in each of my images.  I'm actually struggling with calling them altars because I think that's a pretty loaded word but I don't know that there's really anything else to call them.  I want them to represent some kind of loss for the sitter, not necessarily a loss from the reality of the model but one that I am projecting onto them. I also want to toy with having the altar on its own in the space but with room around it so that a person could inhabit that space. I think that might have some interesting implications.  I'm also still toying with the idea of shooting outdoors but maybe scrapping the idea I had before about the tree in the field (although like I think I said before as well, I may just make the image to get it out of my system).  As far as the outdoors goes I was thinking again with domestic spaces such as front and backyards.  I don't want to stray too far from the home because I think that's where the mourning/honoring process mostly takes place (with the exception of public ceremonies that occur at places like cemeteries but as much as I love cemeteries I think it would be wise to stay away from them).

I've been doing a lot of looking around for the pieces that I want to use within the altars and have been looking back at the list that I made.  I found a couple artists that I will be doing blog posts on who work with assemblages, kind of in the vein of Rauschenberg.  I think that would be the best way to go about the altars but I'm concerned with making them the main focus because I really like having people in my pictures.  I want the assemblage to reflect the sitter in some way. I've got a lot to think about still.

Images courtesy of Google Image Search

Idea Post -- Altars/Locations

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I could include within my pictures and I'm thinking some kind of altars or shrines in each image. Maybe not all of them, but some, and not necessarily religious altars.  I plan on researching altars a little more, but I think that maybe in one or two images having an altar of absurd objects might be interesting.  I also had the random thought of having a vase of cat tails in an image. Not the plant but actually cat tails.  I'm not sure how I'd pull that off, but I think it may be something worth pursuing.

I was also thinking of maybe shooting some non-domestic scenarios as well.  I was thinking of a picture (and I think this maybe is what I'm not supposed to do but here's the idea anyway) where I have a model in a field and in the distance there is a tree but there is something/someone lurking around/in the tree while the model is somewhat unassuming of the presence behind them.  I think this might be straying from what I'm going to end up doing, but I think I may make this image to get it out of my system. I don't know I feel so reinvigorated and apparently it shows as Ashleigh told me the very same thing today.

Both images found through Google Search.