This month our theme is on Beginnings and Endings, be that in life or in art, we asked you to writer about this and send it in, we also asked for other new pieces, and as usual our writers didn’t disappoint with a good m ix of texts on theme and on other subjects…
“Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words”. ~Terry Pratchett
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Artist name - Indianna Solnick
Social media links - https://www.instagram.com/indsolnick/
Bio
Indianna Solnick graduated with an MFA in Painting from the Slade in 2023 and a BA in Painting from Wimbledon in 2017. Indianna Solnick graduated with an MFA in Painting from the Slade in 2023 and a BA in Painting from Wimbledon in 2017. She was a recipient of the Haworth Scholarship for Painting 2021-2023 and the Retreat Prize 2017, and was shortlisted for the Adrian Carruthers Award 2023.
Indianna’s practice is concerned with the storytelling of land and lived spaces, tracking patterns in the structuring and infrastructure of our environments. These stories are told partly through material choices and partly through form, diagram, and narrative. Surfaces are built from composites of paper, continually dismantled and rebuilt. Paintings expand from the wall, wrapping and spiraling to form interior voids, enclosures, and passageways. Simultaneously sincere, fragile, awkward, funny, and bold, they prod at the construction of our lived spaces, questioning the human relationship to a more-than-human world, and probing at the alienation of bureaucratic and unsympathetic architectures. Working also through text, Indianna uses writing as a notation of her walking practice and a site in which to draw out a language of landscape.
Abstract
Here Indianna makes a case for the spatial plane of a line and its potential in painting, exploring along the way the boundaries and enclosed spaces of an anthropocentric landscape. Set across four chapters (Lines, Grids, Circles, and Spirals) this is a textual contemplation of four forms and their symbology in her own practice.
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Artist name - Lucas Rebelo
Website - Linktr.ee/lucasrebelo
Social media links - Instagram: @luqalbuq YouTube: @luqalbuq
Bio
Lucas Rebelo (b. 1991) is an experimental audiovisual artist from Brazilian Amazonia. His art career started in 2018, when he helped with the producing of some art dance videos. He works with video, music, photography, digital art, and writing, all of it with greater focus on experimentalism and improvisation.
Article/Essay Title
DISfilm Manifest - Cinema at its minimum
Abstract
This essay deals with a different way of making films and art in general. In this case, more importance was given to films and audiovisual works, but the idea is to inspire artista of any style and any medium.
DISFILM MANIFEST – CINEMA AT ITS MINIMUM
What?
i) Disfilms give the impression of being inadvertently poorly made films, when they are not, there are a series of production choices that support their apparent amateurism.
ii) They are made with little financing and resources.
iii) They’re spontaneous, without a fixed script, and preferably unrehearsed.
iv) Contains long scenes, requiring little editing.
v) Fourth wall break (it can be said that there is no fourth wall in this case).
vi) Very little to no post-production.
vii)Disfilms can, however, have a slightly more elaborate production, as long as the 'unintentionally-on-purpose' atmosphere is maintained.
How?
1º Comparing it to a living being, a disfilm would be like a transparent frog discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon: you see what’s inside, but that doesn't mean that it’s really incomplete or poorly made.
2º It can be recorded with a cell phone and that’s just enough. Of course, it can be done with professional cameras and microphones, but there's no need. Requiring few resources is ideal. The entire disfilm can be made by a single person.
3º You can record stealthily, without the people around you knowing, as long as you ask for image permission before publishing or disfigure faces and voices in post-production so as not to identify them.
4º The film should approximate real life, which has no editing. In traditional cinema, for example, an uncut scene lasting two minutes is already considered long.
5º Include behind-the-scenes in the final edit; even if the movie does not turn out as intended, it would be not lost. Give preference to first-person shooting.
6º The almost non-existent of post-production only makes sense if everything went as planned in production and according to the desired aesthetic. In fact, if principal photography isn't already a big production, it's nearly impossible to reverse that in post-production.
7º And finally the glaringly obvious: the more incomplete you want to appear, the less elaborate the disfilm must be.
Why?
Many films end up being postponed indefinitely (the famous Development Hell) and therefore a lot of money is spent with no return, often the entire project is shelved. To prevent this from happening, one way out would be to film the entire process from the beginning. In this way the story or the idea of the film does not die, just like Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), which wasn’t released in the 1970’s as intended, but was released as a documentary about the never-released film.
The inspiration for the disfilm idea comes from productions that talk about making cinema, the difference is that disfilms are films that talk about themselves, not about other works. An example of a conceptual precursor is the perfectly titled “This is not a film” by Jafar Panahi (2011), where he films his daily life and narrates a film he would like to make, but which was not approved by the Iranian government. Another inspiration is Fellini's, 8½ (1963), which was only made as a response to the director's own creative block.
A work even closer to the disfilm concept is brought by Charlie Kauffman’s feature “Synecdoche, New York” (2008), where a theater director tries to make a play about his life, which includes the play itself and the representation of it as play within a play within a play... ad infinitum! In this case, the conceptual difference lies in the level of production, in “Synecdoche” the play within the play is much more elaborate than the films within disfilms. The disfilms are more similar to the aforementioned work by Panahi than the examples by Fellini and Kauffman because of its raw aesthetic.
And speaking of rawness, another obvious inspiration is Dogma 95, a Danish cinematographic movement created by Von Trier and Vinterberg, in which the production was very simple, without a musical soundtrack or artificial lighting, and all efforts were focused solely on telling the story without getting too attached to genres.
There’s a difference between disfilms and low-budget found footage productions such as “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), because, in these films, there is a separation between the actors and their characters: the actors know that it’s fiction, something that their character does not know. Disfilms are aware of their existence as audiovisual products and show themselves as such all the time, the gap between actor and character does not exist. If the “Blair Witch Project” included images of the actors out of character, that part could be considered a disfilm (but it would ruin the film experience).
A film that approaches metalanguage in a self-referential way is “Closed Curtain” (2013), by Panahi, which starts out as a regular film, but little by little during the course of the plot the director himself appears on the screen and ends up leaving the film incomplete due to lack of creativity and money. In a notable scene, the film's characters appear one last time to say that Panahi is no longer thinking of them. It's good to see how this blurs the line between a film and a disfilm, because the characters realize their fictional nature, but the actors who played them never really left the role, showing that there is a lot of possibility in doing this type of work and that any delimitation between film and disfilm is not insurmountable.
Disfilm is a cinematographic genre, as well as drama, comedy, horror, etc. A film can use a “disfilmic” scene without necessarily being considered one. For example, In Jodorowsky's “The Holy Mountain” (1973), the characters' quest for immortality culminates in a violent breaking of the fourth wall: at the top of the sacred mountain of the title, the guru tells the camera to zoom out and show the production, saying that everything that happened was just a film, and as the film will exist after the death of everyone there, so that was the only attainable immortality. As the break occurred only in the last scene, the film is a fiction that broke the fourth wall in a disfilmic way.
In Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1975), some characters are aware of their existence within the film, which makes them disfilmic characters in a traditional film, as well as comic-relief characters in non-comedy films. Remembering that there are no fictional characters in a “classic” disfilm because there is no acting, this applies to all films in which certain characters interact with the camera and others do not. If someone makes a fiction film and puts backstage footage in the final cut, there will be fiction with some elements of disfilm in it, since self-awareness and self-reference make the disfilm. For example: Jackie Chan’s films that have bloopers inserted in the final credits aren’t disfilms, just action films with some disfilmic elements in the end.
The series The Office (2005-2013) is not a disfilm (or disseries in this case) because it is still fiction, the company does not exist and there are fictional characters. If the character also has the same name as the actor, which happens with some frequency in that series, it would still not constitute a deconstruction of the concept, because the actors are not being themselves, they’re being someone else.
Now, a pressing question for every disfilm: After all, can we differentiate the art from the artist? My answer is that it varies from work to work and artist to artist. In the case of disfilms, the involvement between the director and the film is designed so that the boundary between both is indistinguishable. In fact, this is the main characteristic of disfilms, the indistinctness between producer and product.
There is actually a more personal and less logical reason behind the creation of disfilms: I can't finish anything I start properly, and for this doesn't happen anymore, I had to create a crutch, which in this case means to film what normally wouldn't be filmed and put in the final cut scenes that would be readily discarded in regular production. Therefore, the same principle can be used in other places, such as disbooks and dismusic. I only cited these cases for the simple reason that I have no idea what a distance or dis-sculpture would be like since I don't know enough about these arts to set up a method of 'dis-construction'. This mean that disfilm is part of something bigger: disart, the art that talks about itself.
The frustration of trying to make a film that doesn't end, a book that I can't complete led to the creation of 'disart', a desperate attempt to try to finish pending projects. It could be argued that this is either too lazy or self-indulgent – well, that is just as right as it’s wrong. Right to say that the precariousness of production can be used as a smokescreen for laziness, but wrong because that's not the focus, films are a very expensive art form and I think it's totally justifiable to try to do something new and not very expensive, even if the result can be seen as a cheap appeal. Furthermore, making a work about a film that was never completed is a good opportunity to problematize production bottlenecks and at least teach how not to make a film (making a disfilm).
As for self-indulgence, it should be avoided, the lack of a fourth wall and the non-differentiation between author and work is an exercise in metalanguage. There are several forms of art talking about their own production, like the manga “Opus” which talks about a manga creator struggling to finish his work. Quite unexpectedly, “Opus” stopped being published before the end, as the manga publisher closed its doors and creator Satoshi Kon focused on other projects and never completed his work, just like his character! After Satoshi's death, “Opus” was published in full, but with the artwork for the last chapter still to be done, which unintentionally fulfilled the initial proposal.
The idea of making a disfilm proves a point that many people ignore, which is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to create something completely new, as there is always something a little older to serve as reference and inspiration. People in this case either forget that there is an inspiring source and find the novelty more original than it really is, or they stick to the fact that something similar already exists and start to complain about the “lack of originality” of the creation; as if 100% originality is easy to conquer.
In time: the prefix “dis-” means separation, negation, diminution, disturbance, difficulty and duplicity. Analyzing what was said/written here, the disfilm can be considered all of these, given the difficulty in making a film; disturbances during the creative process; the inherent duplicity due to constant self-reference; the diminution of an ordinary film, given the limited resources; the negation of traditional cinema, in which behind-the-scenes footage is relegated to DVD bonuses or YouTube videos, never to the final cut; and the separation between what someone would expect from a normal film and what is seem in a disfilm. And this is still valid for the aforementioned disart (disbook, dismusic, etc.)
In short, disfilms were born out of disappointment, difficulty and the will to do something – and mainly boredom. It can be translated into a single phrase: A film is a film is a film.
Which?
There are basically two ways to conceptually divide disfilms: in terms of redundancy and in terms of subjectivity. Redundancy differentiates “naked” from “stratified” disfilms and subjectivity separates “common” from “cathartic” disfilms.
The “Naked” is so called because it does not have as many self-reference devices, being the most basic version possible. For example, “This is not a film” by Jafar Panahi can be considered a Naked disfilm, as it only shows the director in his day-to-day life under house arrest and trying to explain one of the films he would like to make and which he did not allow to produce because it was “too subversive” by Iranian government standards. The very title of the work shows the internal conflict between being or not being a film.
“Stratified” is the disfilm that is referenced all the time, it is the one that most breaks the fourth wall, to the point of being able to say that there isn't even one. This type of screening is built in layers and may never really look finished, differing from the Naked disfilm since there’s always one more layer to be seen. An example of what this could be is Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York", where his extremely unorthodox and subjective approach shows the production of a work that is never ready for decades and that could last forever if the main character was not a mortal human being. The Stratified disfilm is a film that folds over itself like a fractal origami.
The “Common” disfilm is so called because it shows the production of the film as honestly as possible, in a more objective way. Fellini's 8½ can be used as an example, which was made just to show how the director had no idea what to do.
“Cathartic” disfilm has a narration of thoughts and impressions, becoming more subjective. When a film comes with the director's comments on how the scenes were made, the film approaches the concept of a Common Disfilm, when the director starts to give an opinion and evaluate his work, the result tends to the concept of a Cathartic disfilm.
It can be argued that “This is not a film” is Common and Cathartic because it shows the perspective of a director who couldn't make a movie and decided to just narrate it, and in that he is actually quite objective. So it will depend on how you see the dysfilmic work, it's a matter of point of view. Still taking “This is not a film” as a basis if we analyze on the one hand that the film is more than just a narration (the Common part), on the other hand, much of Panahi's life at house arrest is shown (the Cathartic part). This proves again that disfilms are capable of opening up a wide range of possibilities despite their minimalist conceptual approach.
The idea, from now on, is to make four disfilms, one of each type. Common Naked will be called “It wasn't supposed to happen now”, where the production of a film that was never finished the way it should be will be shown. Cathartic Naked will be called “Waldo”, which shows the worldview of someone who can't really finish something he starts, showing unfinished snippets of videos that he tried to make. The Common Stratified will be called “Metacritic” and the critique of the disfilm will be included, increasing and changing the content of the work, which will be shown in its new version for a new audience, whose impressions and criticisms will also be included in a future version and so on for an indefinite period, as it is not known what will be said about it, it is not possible to pinpoint when the work will be complete (or when the originality becomes dull, putting an end to the iterations). The Cathartic Stratified will be called “Cow”, which shows an idea that has changed so much over time that it ended up becoming something else, in addition to showing the author's perspective on his mutant creation.
P.S.: The names of the disfilms can change.
Who and When?
l René Magritte, “The Treachery of Images” (1929), a (dis)painting about a pipe with the famous phrase “Ceci n'est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe), that breaks the 4th wall, making everybody realize that this is a painting, not something else.
l Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova and Mikhail Kaufman, “Kinoks” (1929), film manifesto by Soviet producers about filming real life, as opposed to big productions.
l Federico Fellini, “8½” (1963), a film about a director with creative block.
l Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, “Dogma 95” (1995), a film manifesto by Danish directors about making films without worrying about techniques.
l Satoshi Kon, “Opus” (1995-1996), a manga about an unfinished manga work of a man that, ironically, remained unfinished in real life.
l Charlie Kaufman, “Synecdoche, New York” (2008), a film about a play writer who never finishes his play and the almost infinite self-reference of that play.
l Rouzbeh Rashidi, “Closure of Catharsis” (2011), an unrehearsed film about nothing special, just a man sitting on a bench in the park.
l Jafar Panahi, “This is not a movie” (2011), a film about a film that wasn’t released and the opinions of the director about his situation in home prison. And “Closed Curtain” (2013), is about an unfinished film that remains so.
l Frank Pavich, “Jodorowsky’s Dune” (2013), a film about a never-finished film from the 1970s.
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Artist name - BOUGE Alexandra
Website - http://alexandrabouge.tumblr.com/textes
Social media links - https://www.instagram.com/bougealexandra/
Bio
I’m a filmmaker, poet, and visual artist. In 2023, I was selected for the Bio Film Festival, in Italy, the La Sur Real Film Festival, in Berlin, the ONED art/experimental film festival, in France, the Cefalù Film Festival, in Italy, to the World Vegan Film Festival Asia, Indonesia and to the Animal International Film Festival, Italy. One of my poems has been published in the Mood Muse Collective, HOPE catalogue.
In 2022, I have been selected to the International Short Film Festival accordi @ DISACCORDI, Italy, to the Black Cat Award International Film Festival, Bolivia, to the FIIN, International Nature Image Festival, Portugal, to the Festival of Electronic Music and Video, www.accompositors.com, Barcelona, to the FIVC, International Screendance Festival of Chile, to the Megacities, Festival du Film Documentaire Court, France, to the festival “Silence ça touille” - Movie and Food Festival, France, to the Neum underwater film festival, Herzegovina, to the Gaia International Film festival – Stories of Lands and Food, Italy, to the Wildlife Vaasa Festival International du film sur la Nature, Finland, to the One Earth Awards Festival in India, to the Festival del Cinema di Cefalù, Italy, to the Women’s International Film Festival Nigeria WIFFEN, and got the Honorable Mention for my film « Modern Agriculture », to the Independent Video Film festival of Youtube Art Club Pavlos Paraschakis, in Greece, to the Clapperboard Golden Festival, in Brazil and to the Rotary Short Film Festival, Rofife in Turkey. My track « Twin Vogue » composed by Vicente Saraiva (feat Bouge Alexandra) has been selected to the Rounded Radio for Going Incognito, (roundedradio.com)
The book of poetry and drawings entitled “La Peau” published by Urtica editions was republished. My poems have been published in the reviews « Dans les Brumes », « Haus a Rest », n° 30, theme « Boundaries » and POJAR, n° 19.
In 2021, I have been selected to the 34th edition of « Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques, » Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, to the 4th Multicultural Film Festival, Toronto, to the Athens Digital Arts Festival / Hybrid Edition, to the International Short Film Festival DETMOLD, Germany, to the International Ecological Film Festival TO SAVE AND PRESERVE, Russia, to the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, to the Dog Film festival, Italy.
My drawings were selected in the journal Mass, on the theme of « The Skin » and my poems were published in the journal AreoPoézi, « Wam », n ° 1.
Article/Essay Title
poem
Abstract
I wrote this poem after mom death.
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Artist name - Maggie Bowyer
Website - www.maggiebowyer.com
Social media links - https://www.instagram.com/maggie.writes/?hl=en
Bio
Maggie Bowyer (they/he) is a poet, cat parent, and the author of various poetry collections including Homecoming (2023) and When I Bleed (2021). They are a co-host of the podcast Baked and Bookish. They have been featured in The Abbey Review, Chapter House Journal, The Elevation Review, The South Dakota Review, Wishbone Words, and more. They were the Editor-in-Chief of The Lariat Newspaper, a quarter-finalist in Brave New Voices 2016, and a Marilyn Miller Poet Laureate. You can find their work on Instagram and TikTok @maggie.writes.
Article/Essay Title
For When I Die
Abstract
This poem is a letter to my loved ones (for when I die).
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Artist name - Hannah Turlington
Website - www.hannahturlington.co.uk
Social media links - Instagram: @hannahturlingtonart
Bio
Hannah is an artist whose work is raw, sharing her own vulnerability through her thoughtful and sensitive work.
Her work is informed by her research and writing, and transferring them into mixed media pieces. Hannah’s work focuses on holding the space in which to be authentic.
Article/Essay Title
Letter to my teenage son
Abstract
This a raw, vulnerable and authentic portrayal of parenting a teenage boy and the emotion it evokes.
A Letter to my Teenage Son.
Dear You,
The words we speak are so cruel, yet neither of us recoils when they are spat. The sounds that emerge from within us are demonic – full of hatred.
We used to look at each other with such adoration and amusement. You were my baby boy. I was your mummy. You are a young man and I your nemesis.
You scream fuck off. You scream you don’t need me. You scream you hate it here. You scream you hate me. Your words tear me about. Your words are so raw – so definite- so full of emotion – they reveal your vulnerability – they reveal your fear.
Your fear of the world changing for you. My fear of reaching my expiration date- no longer wanted on voyage. Your time of listening and reflecting at a pause, while your hormones race around your body and rewire your brain. Your brain so delicate causing you so much anxiety and worry. Your ungoverned mind destroys all the things that it has learned in the past.
The words I speak to you are irrelevant – you reject them- you reject me. I know it is part of the process – I didn’t think it would come on so suddenly.
Your amygdala is raging and my heart is breaking.
My opinions no longer sway you, I am a spectator.
I see you in your pain – I watch – I see you in your pain – I sit with you in your discomfort.
I watch you as your world crumbles around you. I want to reach out – to rescue you- but you can’t find the words to ask for help- that part of the brain has not been connected yet.
You are free falling and I cannot catch you – you don’t want me to. I stand and watch – I secretly prepare the ground for your landing – just enough for you not to notice – but enough.
I watch and hope that you will find the parachute that I have taught you to use ever since you have been with us.
I photograph you – without you knowing – I see you – I see your sadness in your eyes – the confusion, anxiety, despair. I study your face, the face that I used to stroke – the little boy I sang to – the little boy I held so tight, I was afraid you would pop.
Tears roll down my face and my pencil drags across the page – my hand as heavy as my heart.
All I have taught you appears gone. The tools I equipped you with are lost. And all I can do is watch.
I am here and I will stay – watching you – sitting with you – still loving you – always loving you.
All my love, me xx
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Artist name - Alice Kin
Social media links - www.instagram.com/aliceinwoolands
Bio
Kin lives alone in the woods. Alert to snap of twigs, any light breaking through the canopy. The trees river mud and bird sounds are deep in her sense of what feels like home, and her art.
Primarily a sculptor, with digitally manipulated photography and written verse amongst her loves.
Article/Essay Title
What Can A Pen Do?
Abstract
This verse begins with an exploration of silence, being silenced. Digging into the yearnings to have a voice. In a world of noise and power inequalities, will another voice make any difference?
The verse makes references to Woody Guthrie, the toppling of Colston in Bristol, and Grenfell Tower.
What Can The Pen Do?
Ink, etch, dribble
A pen scratches the dried pulp of a tree
It leaves a trail
A writer steadies
Lonely with the danger of a blank page
What can a pen do?
Kill fascists, topple statues?
This verse will not stage an intervention,
Or feed nations that hunger
Leaders will still fail us
Make guns not joy
The writer dismisses the limits
A need to commit a verse
Humble to the flow of mystical somethings
With permit to course through her curious corpse
Twitching of hand and fidget of digit
All because the lady has hope
Hope you will hear
Not alone with tears
Her voice, a reminder we are human not machines
Her voice in life misses the beat
Her voice inscribes more like a beast
Her voice in verse natural
As an ancient tree in the woods,
Majestic
A right to be there, break bow shed leaf
Grow
She calls for the dispossessed
To receive balm
For the furious to breathe
But for the wounded.. she says our tower is already on fire