CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT & RESEARCH
The project is part of my dissertation research, examining the spatial aspect of the human thinking and behaviour, focusing on gender, race and class based discrimination in the capitalist consumer society.
It was mainly inspired by the rooms of one’s own, written by Virignia Woolf, discussing the idea of financial freedom to pursue knowledge and creativity particularly focusing on gender based discrimination.
The desired outcome would be a multidimensional experience: a stand alone film in the traditional sense and moving image focused installation to break the limitations of the screen.
I always find it interesting how much change happens during an art process, and a single concept how many interpretations hides in itself.
In the following I’d like to give a moderately detailed description about the different stages and the change in interpretation to give a more clear picture about how the project developed through the previous months.
FIRST INTERPRETATION
music visualisation for a theatre play
(fail)
During my last semester I had a chance to work on a music visualisation for a music composition of one of my old classmates from conservatory. (ooh those good old musician years when I had no life but to practice piano pieces all day)
The main reason why we started to work together is because a fortunate coincidence happened:she was asked to compose music for a theatre play, based on Rooms of One’s Own. I found it to be the perfect opportunity to collaborate on a project since we’ve discussed it years ago how wonderful it would be to work together sometime.
Since the play had an already existing script , the whole project had a solid structure which didn’t give as much artistic freedom as I’ve needed - but was a great opportunity to experiment with my creative abilities and test them how they work with these boundaries.
We had many long meetings about which would be the perfect visual interpretation of the script and how we balance the storytelling of the music and the lyrics. Instead of repeating the same which was already told with words and music we agreed on the use of a metaphoric visual and combine the classic literature text with cartoonish elements.
The play is one and half hour long so my job was to create visuals for only a few parts of the piece. Due to my university tasks I didn’t have enough time to complete the initially discussed visuals so we chose only one part eventually.
The part was kind of the turning point of the play when the main character, who was Virginia Woolf herself , philosophised on why those professors in the academic realm are so angry with women and why they are so sure about, rejecting them is a good idea and a kind of safety proof to save their position. Why are they afraid? What are they afraid of?
My idea was to visualise the transformation of the mentioned professor figure into what he really looks like. The idea was to show one of the antagonists of the play, the professor character as a bug-man fusion , whoes look reflects on his rage and frustration against women.
Since all of us who worked on this project are hungarian, our country is in a political situation which is increasingly turning into a dictatorship while liquidating every form of free speech and democracy under the name of “good propaganda”, we agreed on the reflect on this sorrow we feel about our beloved home country with the visuals and combine the professor-bug character with the image of the long-time evil prime minister of Hungary.
Unfortunately the short amount of time I’ve got to complete the animation wasn’t enough, moreover my university duties, a health problem (which made work to be more difficult and time consuming) made and that I couldn’t finish it in time so the version linked below is the last stage of the production.
SECOND INTERPRETATION
Animation short film focusing on the female body in space
The second idea was a natural development of the first project (the play). I’ve always been interested in theatre, loved going to watch plays and operas and because of my musician background I could visit the backstage area as well when we performed at the city’s national theatre with the school’s chorus or orchestra.
Hence the interest was given but I’ve found always limiting the physical limits of classical theatre.
Fortunately animation is a perfect tool to create alternative realities so the idea I came up with was an “easily” accessible one. Or at least easier than creating it with life sized props and CGI.
The first scene I imagined was the following: the place is a crowded theatre, the audience is waiting for the play to start. The curtains start to open …and open and open (there are at least 10 differently styled stage curtains, each reflecting different time periods) , eventually revealing an ENORMOUS woman on stage.
The woman fills every inch of the stage, and tries to keep her body inside the frame of curtains. The audience is shocked,someone screams and they are frozen for a long moment when a man from one of the elite lodge starts to analyse (in a true mansplainer style) what is this phenomenon on stage.
A woman from a lower lodge replies to him, claiming that how he thinks he defined this phenomenon in the right way
THIRD INTERPRETATION
Animation short film & installation focusing on the natural female body and its essential nature in society
After dumping the previous idea (and my boyfriend - not in the same order), I've realised I have a few important points I wasn't making clear before. They are the following:
- I like drawing super detailed and huge backgrounds
- Same goes with buildings - bigger and more surreal are the better
- I must have to highlight the fact how nature is being removed when a civilisation is taking up space - which is obviously not good, people should build TOGETHER with nature not removing it to be able to take up more space.
- the female body is literally a social building block - without its presence in the way as it is present now, society would collapse. It's an icon, an eternal symbol.
- the way as people remove nature from the "body" of the cities has a quite clear parallel with the way as society encourages (haha, it's actually a really big pressure) women to remove their body hair and change their natural body in any way to fit the current (and hectically changing) ideal look. This ideal look is a phantasmagory,