Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers find it hard to do the same thing over and over again. So I often teach myself new techniques or take workshops to add to my process. For example, the most recent embroidery painting series started from a very short workshop I took at ACRE, an artist residency in Chicago and Wisconsin. That being said, I have some go to processes for certain things. Because it is very time consuming, video is something I go back to mostly in the summer when I have time off thanks to my full-time work in academia. I use these to tell more detailed stories, make commentary on topics important to me, and use humor. Video work allows me to be specific and playful at the same time, I feel like it is the closest I get to relay my voice in full. In my 2D work, collage is the basis of everything. The rest of the mediums are dependant on the themes I work with. For the portrait series, I wanted to go really big to be able to show a mosaic of a large selection of collective photos. The embroidery series is very personal and thus uses techniques from women’s work to emphasize that personal connection to my heritage and family. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Almanci Bride, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/218166764. What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into Turkish traditional ceremony of “asking permission to marry” is the way it addresses the viewers to such unconventional and multilayered experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of Almanci Bride, could you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? A lot of my video work touch on traditions and rituals that when seen from outside seem absurd. I focus on such a interview
Women Cinemakers interview tradition in each video, add my own twist to it, and push it to a level of bizarreness that I hope reflects the complex human condition. Almanci Bride was created at an artist residency, MOMENTUM, in Berlin. I actually wrote the story, filmed, and edited the whole thing while I was in Berlin. When I arrived there, I knew I wanted to do something about the large Turkish immigrant population. I started to write about all the stereotypes that I knew and researched about them and the immigrants that I knew myself. The neighbor character is actually someone I knew growing up that would come visit his sister and mom who lived across from us. As I said earlier, I always have a main action/ritual that things revolve around. The sister brother relationship made me think of the ceremony of “asking permission to marry”. The neighbor girl did not have a father, so the immigrant brother would be the person to lead the ceremony. So I started to explore what this scene would be like and the rest came from my imagination. Almanci Bride is centered on exploration of the stereotypes of Turkish immigrant identity as seen from both Turkish and foreign perspectives. How does the relationship betwen your cultural heritage due to your Turkish roots and your current alien status living in the US direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Theorist Homi Bhabha describes the condition “inbetweenness” as the focus of art about displacement on the journey itself, the condition of being in transit between places with different languages, customs, material culture and ideas. My work utilizes the experience of “inbetweenness” in order to create a new hybrid identity that
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers draws on the physical surroundings and cultural climate of the new place. So when I look at a Turkish tradition that I grew up with, I no longer see it as an accepted “normal”; my vision is muddied with the Western gaze and I start to see it differently: more absurd, more nostalgic, more creative. I approach these rituals as almost a creative cultural anthropologist as well as someone that participated in them. So I am both the owner and the observer of the practice. Besides the experiential access I have to these traditions, I do research into their origins and also am inadvertently embedding an outsider’s perspective as I refer to them in my work. I often mention that if I was making work in Turkey, it would probably be exploring the American culture based on my experiences here and being away from it. Almanci Bride has drawn heavily from the specifics of the surrounding, incorporating both realistic abstract environment as background and and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful resonance between space and movement: how did you select the locations and how did they affect your video? That was a very DIY project. I actually set up my green screen in the apartment where I stayed at the MOMENTUM residency and all the actors were either my friends that lived in Berlin or the other artist residents. Some of the scenes were filmed outside in Berlin where there was a heavy Turkish population. In other words, I had to make do with what I had access to, which I believe is a good challenge to have; creative limitations usually result in more refined outcomes. A lot of the images were found imagery or drawn from things that I had. I don’t usually represent scenes as they are, I believe that things are much more multifaceted interview
Women Cinemakers and complex than they appear. I try to reflect this using layers of imagery in each scene. Therefore the green screen actors sometimes becomes silhouettes that reveal the scenery. So the scenes that I filmed in real life Berlin got obscured with the layering of silhouettes and multiple blended videos. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under": as an artist particularly interested in social issues, cultural stereotypes, and political unrest, how do you consider the role of artists in our unstable and globalised contemporary age? In particular, does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? I am very glad that you brought up this quote from Gabriel Orozco. I absolutely agree with him. As I briefly mentioned, the reason why I am focusing on my Turkish heritage is because I live away from it and if I went back to living in Turkey, I would probably look at the American culture that I have been living in for over a decade now. My work used to be more about traditions and memory, but in recent years it has become more and more political due to the particular cultural moment as you said it. 2013 Gezi Park protests was the beginning of my inclusion of politics into my work, partially because I was so frustrated being away from it and reading about it and hearing from friends there. Besides being angry at Turkish politics, I realized, as a “global” citizen, I was also frustrated with the approach of the outside world toward it, how shallow interview
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers the coverage was and how devoid of the intricacies of the situation the explanations were. Putting myself in the “inbetween” position again, I started to embed the protests in my work in different ways. This resulted in discussion of Turkish politics whenever I presented my work. I do not intend to be a Turkish ambassador or the representative of Turkish politics, but I believe as a global artist that I have an advantaged position of being able to deepen the conversation to point out diverse perspectives of the moment at hand and problematize our understandings of global issues to be more vigilant about our approach as informed individuals. We like that way through your work you invite the viewers to question the way women’s identity is constructed through the perception of others, in our globalized still patriarchal and male-oriented age. Not to mention that these days almost everything, from Maurizio Cattelan's 'The Ninth Hour' to MartaMinujín's 'Reading the News', could be considered political: do you think that your artistic practice could be considered political, in a certain sense? In particular, do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value? This actually came up at a panel I participated in at Kolaj Festival in New Orleans last week and someone mentioned that in this day and age, the mere act of making art is a political stance. I find this a charming idea. That being said, I think making art especially as a woman, especially as a migrant in the US, especially as someone from the Middle East region makes it even more political. By simply putting my name in exhibition lists, I am adding something that interview
Women Cinemakers would otherwise be unrepresented to the discourse. Considering how the world is still so patriarchal and maleoriented as you mentioned, I don’t know if being a woman provides “special value”, if anything, it probably makes it undervalued. However, personally, I find it valuable to be the “minority” in the field; it makes me work harder, strive for more, and share my successes as not only a personal benefit, but a positive for all women in arts. It’s almost like besides your personality, you have an identity that is beyond you. To emphasize the ubiquitous bond between everyday life's experience and creative process British visual artist Chris Ofili once remarked that "creativity's to do with improvisation - what's happening around you". How does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? Whenever something makes me laugh, especially if it’s a cultural habit, I always stop and think if I could use it in my work. I often take notes at random places throughout the day, take photos of cultural patterns, and write down
Women Cinemakers anything that could one day inform my work - like a quote or someone’s behaviour. So conceptually, I am constantly observing my surroundings to excavate potential material for art. Physically, my process is very influenced by domestic labor, women’s work (especially crafts), and mundane tasks. All of these are overlooked and undervalued, presumably because they are practiced by women in a patriarchal society. My work often uses these undervalued practices either literally like in my use of embroidery or crochet or conceptually like in my videos. My most recent videos Making of an Amulet http://haleekinci.org/making-of-an-amulet/ and The Gün (a.k.a. Gold Day) http://haleekinci.org/gold-day/ revolve around these chores associated with women and giving them more worth. An interesting aspect of your practice is the fact that you are concerned in making the viewers aware of your process: we find this decision particularly interesting since it seems to reveal that you do not want to limit yourself to trigger the audience perceptual parameters, but that you aim to address
the viewers to evolve from a condition of mere spectatoship. Are you particularly interested in structuring your work in order to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? I often worry that I am revealing too much and not letting the viewer have enough agency to have their own interpretations. I do not want my work to be didactic or spoon-feed them everything. The feedback I receive seems to reveal that this is luckily not the case, especially since some of my topics are so familiar to me but not to my American audience. I want the audience to interpret my work based on their own context and life. That being said, I of course have certain hopes for what I achieve in my audience. I hope they see that we are all so connected in our humanity no matter where we are from. That we all live similar traumas, excitements, and experiences even if they manifest in different ways. I hope that they get fascinated with a culture that they are unfamiliar with and feel intrigued to explore. Finally, I hope that they laugh and feel warm inside, because at the end of the day laughing is the best individual act that we can all do against this life that can be harsh and out of our control sometimes (not to mention that I laugh a lot myself and enjoy doing so!). We have appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in the contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been Women Cinemakers interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades women are finding their voices in art: how would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? As an unconventional artist, I often find myself confused about where my practice belongs. We don’t notice this, but a lot of the artistic venues still use traditional disciplines as they represent art. I rarely find art calls that disregard the discipline. It is too common that exhibitions revolve around painting, photography, or sculpture, and too often my work is never one or the other. So oftentimes, I feel like I miss out on opportunities merely because I don’t know where I belong, but sometimes it becomes an advantage, especially when the approach is more on the concept rather than the medium. If the call is about the concepts that revolve around identity, culture, politics, globalization, then I find that I belong. On the broader topic of women artists in general, I hope that one day soon people “put their money where their mouth is”. It is great that the art world has been more reflective of its sexist and racist tendencies, that there is more awareness of inequality of representation, that there is more emphasis on women artists and artists of color and decolonization. However, in practice, it is still nowhere near the level it needs to be. Major exhibitions and film industry still heavily rely on white males. I hope that one day the trend will be reflected in the numbers. Unfortunately, I think a future like this is not very near. Women Cinemakers interview
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Hale. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I just got back from another artist residency where I created fiber based participatory installation http://haleekinci.org/your-haint-blue-is-my-evil-eye/ and a video inspired by the process of making them http://haleekinci.org/making-of-an-amulet/ as an exploration of adding “value” to domestic labor. It is still very new, but I am interested in continuing to explore this by adding different iterations where I physically make objects using traditional women’s work and expand the work by turning the process into a magical realist video. I plan to push the presentation of these into projection mappings of videos onto the sculptural fiber works. I am also playing with the idea of incorporating American culture into my cultural heritage exploration. I recently got married and my husband is from Indiana. Being personally involved in the traditions of my new family located in the “crossroads of America” (this is the motto of the State of Indiana), I think I am starting to feel comfortable in playing with the representation of American culture as an element in my “hybrid” cultural identity and exploration of traditions. Women Cinemakers interview An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Women Cinemakers
Alone is an intimate portrayal of one woman's healing journey from unnerving isolation to total acceptance of life as it is: through a sapient narrative style, London based artist Spela Francic has created an experimental allegorical film capable of An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] drawing the viewers to question the relationship between memory and experience. Unveiling the resonance between gestures and environment, this brilliant film draws the viewers to a multilayered and heightened visual experience, to encapsulate the notion of self identity: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Francic's captivating and multifaceted artistic production. Spela Francic Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Bristol, United Kingdom People often ask me what my religion is and my answer always leads to their confusion. I believe in Truth. I swear by honest communication and authentic expression of my inner self. I tend to paint, draw and capture all that resembles the depths of my mind, which enables me to connect to the world around me on a deeper level. "As within, so without" is the most accurate representation of my artistic creations. I experience the process as a spiritual practice and use it as a necessary tool which helps me achieve mental balance and happiness. I also like to offer myself up as an open book and shamelessly lay out my dreams, views and insecurities in the hopes of encouraging others to feel safe to do the same - my purpose is to seek out brave souls with whom I can enjoy the mesmerizing beauty of human imperfections. Unleashing creativity helps me heal negative perceptions I hold of myself and enables me to abandon all the boxes that society has placed me in so eagerly over the years. My art is a reflection of life lessons disguised as a tea party with Madness and Individuality as the guests of honour. This occurrence is where light, love and life are celebrated in the most quiet manner, with occasional sparks of powerful rave-like excitement. And, of course, everyone's invited to join in.
Women Cinemakers Hello Spela and welcome to : we would like to invite our readers to visit http://spelafrancicart.com and we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and after having gained experience at the local amateur theatre group in your native country, you moved to the United Kingdom to nurture your education at the Contemporary Theatre and Performance at UCLan in Preston: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your Slovenian roots direct the trajectory of your artistic research? As a child I would always find a reason to perform anything I could think of to my friends and family, and I was the one that knew all the movies, actors and directors. What really gripped me from an early age were the bloopers and behind the scenes excerpts, from which I got that exciting glimpse into the world of film production. I was fascinated by actors breaking out of their characters and seeing all the cameras and equipment. It envoked a strong longing in me to be a part of the filmmaking process, I just wasn't quite sure in which way. As a teenager I wanted to study acting at AGRFT in Ljubljana, but something didn't feel right… I wanted to approach performance in a different manner to classical acting. I was looking for something that would sweep me off my feet and ignite my artistic passion. My dad's an artist, so I tried fine art. My mum's a Slovene language teacher, so I tried poetry. I became a teenager predominantly occupied with the arts (ignoring everything else, including school and all the boys that came with the package), but couldn't find my thing. Good thing about life is that most of the inspirational quotes we so passively scroll past on Facebook actually make sense. In my case, good things came to those who waited. I must've been around 15 years old when I stumbled across an open rehersal in Koper's town square while on holidays with my family. Seeing Tomaž Pandur in action as this amazingly passionate and visionary theatre director brought along that gush of fresh air that I've been waiting for. Since then, I became slightly obsessed with Pandur's Theatre of Dreams. It gave me the same excitement as all those bloopers that I used to watch over and over again by (sometimes interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers manually) rewinding the video tape. This was no ordinary theatre, I never saw anything like it, and I desperately wanted to be right in the middle of it! Pandur was responsible for triggering my great love of theatre and was the reason I joined my local amateur theatre group in renšovci to gain as much stage experience as possible. It just so happened that my sister was studying at UCLan in Preston at the time, and after a quick flick through university's course catalogue, I had found the right course for me that definitely didn't exist in my country; Contemporary Theatre and Performance! As I started my studies I was immediately able to draw many parallels between Robert Wilson and Tomaž Pandur and concluded my course with a dissertation on surrealism in visual theatre. I have also developed a strong interest in circus arts and physical theatre, with DV8's performance films high on the top of my favourites list. As an only foreign student on my course I faced a lot of inner shame concerning my Eastern European accent, seeing it as something that would compromise my performance. That shifted my attention to expressing myself with my body rather than words, and pushed me to start experimenting with theatre directing. The great part about my course was the devising process, which enabled me to try myself out as both a director and a performer. I found myself finally being able to express my creative ideas and bring them to life on stage. As years passed I became more accepting of my origin and started incorporating aspects of it in my performance art, such as folklore dancing and poetry. I originate from the Eastern region of Slovenia called Prekmurje, that used to be separated from the rest of the country by river Mura, and that fog of separateness still hovers over us to this day. It's a farmer's region with a peculiar dialect that the rest of Slovenians find extremely hard to understand. I've always felt quite different from my environment the same way Prekmurje feels different from the rest of the country. Slovenia broke off from Yugoslavia a few months after my birth, and I feel like we grew up simultaneously, both of us looking fiercly for our identities. Complete acceptance of my Slovenian roots came with my emotional maturity, and only now I am able to see it as a part of me. I see my region Prekmurje as my basis for everything I do, as a place where my strong foundations were laid down in the past. I find it essential to be connected to my roots to be able to live a happy and balanced life in other parts of the world. People of Prekmurje are deeply connected to interview
nature, and this appreciation is always going to be a huge part of me. I feel completely at home in nature and a few places around the world, especially Bristol. At the end of the day I cherish the fact that I borrowed my body from Earth and that one day I will have to return it. I strive to portray this appreciation on film and in my photography. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting experimental film that our readers have already started tog et to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://youtu.be/auYvvNYld4s. What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into the relationship between memory and experience is the way the results of your artists research provides the viewers with such an intense visual and at the same time multilayered visual experience. While walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? I believe that the most mesmerizing pieces of art are born from intense pain or a memory of it. Everyone can relate to this emotion, as we've all experienced mental anguish at some point in our lives. Mine came from a deep heartbreak at the end of summer of 2017. To contradict myself slightly, I experienced a surprisingly positive break-up, everything about it was very respectful and loving. It felt like two people that really loved
eachother came to an agreement to part ways, as there was too much compromise that had to take place, resulting in unhappiness. The whole situation might have been amicable, but it felt like a huge piece of me has been ripped out of my chest and I couldn't even scream. Sounds like a cliche, but people say that for a reason (and they're really not over-reacting)! Despite the pride inducing fact that me and my ex were so alarmingly grown up about the break-up, someone still had to get dumped. I guess I pulled the shorter straw, which destroyed my ego. I wore the title of ‘Never Been Dumped Before’ with my head held as high as possible before it got taken away from me so unexpectedly. I remember being constantly sad and crying for a good few months. I hit rock bottom and left London to live with my parents in Slovenia. “26, dumped and broke” could've been written on my gravestone for all I cared, but there was one highlight that I had to look forward to: a meditation retreat in Thailand. I spent seven days sitting in meditation (I slept as well) with the most unusual creatures crawling over my motionless body in Dipabhavan Meditation Centre deep in the jungle of Koh Samui. I experienced a great amount of healing, which lifted my creative block that lasted for nearly a decade. After the retreat I was expressing myself creatively in any way I could think of. I didn't need anyone to keep me company and ate purely for survival reasons. My creative outpour and the need for emotional healing had turned me into an ultimate hermit! Alone was born as a vision when walking my dog in the stillness of the woods
Women Cinemakers close to my home. I started seeing individual scenes play out in my mind while going over my most painful memories. I first tried to paint and draw what I was seeing before realising I could simply make a short film with my DSLR camera. The process was the most enjoyable (but definitely not the simplest) thing I've ever experienced, which pushed me even further into my self-imposed isolation. The visions kept on coming, and I started getting to know the deepest parts of myself, which shifted my own perception of self. I came to see myself as a powerful independent woman that could thrive beautifully without being in a co-dependent relationship with a man. Alone was laid out to be an ode to female empowerment, but gained a lot of depth throughout the filming process by uncovering old emotional wounds that I never knew existed. This film pushed me to embark on a self-healing journey, with a sole purpose of accepting everything as it was. It showed me I wasn't as powerful as I thought I was. I was lonelier and more fragile than I was badass, and that was perfectly fine. Positivity and hope helped me emerge on the bright side of the process. When I finished editing the film I felt a tonne lighter, ready to conclude my isolation and experience life with all its mistakes all over again. Elegantly shot, features minimalistic still effective landscape cinematography marked out with keen eye for details, capable of orchestrating realism with intimate visionary: influence your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, how did you structure your editing process in order to achieve such brilliant results? First and foremost, I wanted to portray the meditative stilness that comes with complete solace and its power to simplify over-bearing thoughts. As I stood amongst the trees silently and completely present in the moment by focussing on a single spot in the woods during filming, I wanted to share that experience with the viewer. My aim was to bring them to my own personal sanctuary, a place where noone can see them, hear them or judge them. Just them, exactly as they are, stripped of all the masks that make them fit in with the rest of the world. Complete acceptance. I used handheld camera interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers technique to bring them right in the middle of the woods without trying to make it look too much like the Blair Witch Project, which was a hard thing to do with an eerie abandoned house as the main focal point. The house itself, although intriguing, was used as a reminder that even though the isolation has been self-imposed it's still perceived as extremely uncomfortable. The shaky camera technique was also used to film the close ups of the bodies, especially the eyes, which have been my main motive in both photography and fine art. I try and look people deep in the eye when communicating with them, because I feel I can get to know their true selves better that way. I'm infatuated with honesty and eyes are that beautiful organ that are too pure to carry lies. I added a grainy effect to close-ups in post-production to achieve a resemblance to a hazy memory, extracted deep from the mind, yet still clear enough to notice those quirky little details on a person's body. I find it amusing how many people view them as imperfections and attach a lot of shame to them. I strive to highlight these details and portray them as what they actually are: beautiful! Female form has been making an appearance since the very beginning of my experimentation with art and has helped me appreciate my gender as incredibly strong, sacred and inspirational. My sister and my mother both appear in this film, and if my grandmother was alive, I'd include her too! Filming their bodies (and mine) deepened our connection and shed a light on the bond that links two generations of women. We come together and support eachother in the battle against all the shame that the society has been imposing on us concerning our position, sexuality and our bodies. To touch on the production side of the film, it started by transferring my visual ideas into storyboards, but I ensured a lot of space for improvisation during the filming process. I have never edited a film before, so I decided to trust my sense of aesthetics. I had a general idea of what kind of shots I wanted: short close-up inserts (memories) that resembled straccato in music with the power of focussing the viewer's attention to a single motive and then cut abruptly back into the Now. I played for days with various combinations to achieve the most striking effect. Soundtrack was interview
Women Cinemakers one of the most important components in the process. I've edited the scenes according to the beat and the flow of music, similarly to the way my ideas were born; by hearing a piece of music and playing out the entire scene in my head. The dance (dream) scene was left extremely dark on purpose to resemble one's inner mind when facing isolation; it's dark, full of void, yet inhabited by hope. By keeping the scenes dark and blurry at times I wanted to create an intimate and extremely vulnerable space, to which the spectator has access, but only to a certain degree. White underwear provided a contrast to the dark surroundings and brought innocence into the equation, building parralles with symbolism so often present in visual theatre. leaps off the screen for its essential still effective mise-enscéne and its hypnotic suspension of time: we have particularly appreciated the way it creates unparalleled visions on : what do you hope will trigger in the audience? In particular, how much importance does play for you the chance of inviting the viewers to elaborate personal associations? As mentioned before, my aim was to make Alone as intimate as possible. It was initially made for a private showing to a close circle of family and friends, but instead became an opportunity to overcome my shame and fear of criticism by submitting it to the bienniale. That's the most vulnerable I've felt, but knowing that I laid my authenticity and honesty into the film kept me strong and believing in myself. I'd like that to be my message to the viewers. I'm hoping Alone can trigger that vulnerability in people and encourage them to open up about their insecurities. It horrifies me to think how many people wear masks and are too scared of showing their true selves because they fear criticism and want to please others. I was one of them not even a year ago! This is the way we've been brought up in this society and it does not suprise me at all that so many of us find ourselves truly alone even when surrounded by people. How can we feel connected to others if we're too afraid to show our true selves? This is a growing problem, especially in the younger population. The fact is, we can't avoid feeling lonely at some point in our lives, so it's interview
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview a highly beneficial we learn how to make peace with being alone, as scary as it may sound. Alone is an invitation for viewers to think about what they find unsettling about solitude and how they can address it in a constructive manner. As discussed previously, the process of making the film has forced me to face my own fears and gave me no other choice but to accept them as a part of me, which strangely set me free. I am certain many viewers have felt the same way at the end of their relationships, and such experiences connect us as humans. Hopefully it will remind people that they're really not alone and that we're all in this together. Even though this film was created as a mean of self-expression, I'm really hoping it will bring light to anyone undergoing isolation. Afterall, life is just a game of our own design, so what could actually go wrong? draws heavily from the specifics of environments and as you have remarked once, over the years you have developed a strong interest in abandoned buildings: we have highly appreciated the way you have created such powerful resonance between the location and the atmosphere that floats around the story: how did you select the locations and how did they influence your shooting process? Abandoned buildings have played a great role in my childhood. I found growing up in a sleepy rural village extremely adventurous. That's where the differences between boys and girls became irrelevant. We, the street kids, as we called ourselves, all played football, built tree houses in the forest and erected bridges over what seemed to be the widest streams. The biggest part of our adventures were 'expeditions' to abandoned buildings that brought our inner Indiana Jones to the surface. Our most commonly visited sites were an abandoned school nearby and at least a couple of houses left behind in a hurry by their previous owners. One of these became an inspiration and the setting for Alone. I have a heap of memories that tie me to that house, and it fascinates me to think how many memories the house holds from the times long before I was born. I like to imagine how it was like when life inhabited the building, which fills me with an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. Just like nature, there is something calmingly still about such buildings. They remain my main focus in photography and inspire me to travel the world in search of abandoned
Women Cinemakers buildings waiting to be documented on camera. Visiting such places gives me an opportunity to bathe in solitude, ponder life and receive artistic inspiration. The setting for Alone is a little sneak peek into my roots, my past and my solid foundations that make me a strong person now. Deviating from traditional filmmaking, we daresay that your artistic research subverts the notion of non lieu elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé, to highlinght the ubiquitous instertitial points and mutual influences between human interaction with environment: how do you consider the role of direct experience as starting point for your artistic research? In particular, how do the details that you capture during daily life fuel your artistic research? I have never been able to create something I didn't feel strongly about. On some level I believe everything I create is derived from my personal experiences, mainly because I use my artistic expression as a medium for healing emotional traumas, changing negative self-beliefs and reprogramming limiting patterns of thinking. The locations of my filming or the motives in my photography hold an emotional attachment and have held an important part in my personal and spiritual development. Spirituality (not to be confused with religion) and mindfulness have been strongly present in my life since a very young age, and I've always been seeking out ways to better myself and spread more love and positivity. It's quite interesting to see how my art's evolved throughout the years. Teenagehood was my darkest time and consequently most of my painting and drawings consisted of dark colours and heavy linework. The older and more balanced I got by practising yoga and meditation, the lighter and more vibrant colours seemed to have made its way onto the canvas. Making art enables me recognise the sorrow and pain that follow us in our human experience, accept it, and transform it into light. It's how I see life; it may be hard, but it's fantastic! We have highly appreciated the way Alone challenges the spectatorship's perceptual parameters to explore the struggle between reality and dreamlike dimension, your film provides the viewers them with a unique multilayered visual experience: how do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination within your process? interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers I am the sort of person that when asked to draw a chair in realistic proportions will draw an Elven throne from a parallel universe instead. It's why fine art school and I were never meant to be. My imagination has always run wild and free to the point where I'd struggle to determine the line between dreams, spiritual experiences and reality. I wanted to bring these blurred lines into my film and expose the viewers to my train of thought. Such mental process brings a magical tincture to life, and makes everything a lot more exciting! I'm keen to explore the concept of reality and how others see it. I find it to be highly subjective, and therefore impossible to define. Imagination and dreams often influence someone's waking life, for example, have you ever dreamt of your partner cheating on you and being angry with them the following day? Or being upset by someone in waking life and punching them in the face in your dreams? Robert Wilson's managed to recreate that dreamlike state purely by creating a surreal theatre full of symbolism and dream state visuals. Slowing down time plays an important role in his process, and drawing from that I wanted to experiment with the idea of dreams and memories spinning out of control and taking over reality, resembling a panic attack. The mask present in the film serves as a reminder of the dreams that have come to pass and acts as a symbol of shame that's been shedded for good. Sound plays an important role in your film, providing the footage with such a both ethereal and dramatic quality capable of challenging the viewers' perceptual categories: how do you consider the relationship between and sound and the flow of images playing within your work? To continue with imagination and its role in the creative process, my mind would always create music videos when listening to songs. I find it important as well as beneficial to equip life with a brilliant soundtrack that gets the juices flowing, and that's what I tried to do with my film as well. I played with the idea of adding a single song to my short film, making it a sort of music video, but abandoned it after realising that the mood changes in the film needed to be accompanied by corresponding pieces of music. I've been on a mission to seek out good quality music since an early age, which made me appreciate most genres. I found a number of artists that I resonate with the most, one of them being Tom Waits. His music has become my signature in devising theatre, and it felt extremely appropriate to re-use Green Grass interview
(covered by Cibelle) in the film. The pain and sadness that the song emanates really gripped me tightly and summed up my experience of love. I decided to counteract it with Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself, as a celebration of finding my peace with the solitude. As discussed previously, music acts as a basis for my film and gives tempo to the story. I learned how to read music in piano school and wanted to transfer that knowldge to the dynamics of the film by thinking of it as a piece of music. The film's plot intensifies and fades out with the soundtrack. I also felt like it was important to provide an opposite effect with live sounds captured during filming to accenuate the silence and the feeling of solitude that I was exposed to at the time. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing: what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? It appears (and appeals) to me that women have started cherishing their own sensuality and more recently, that we're shaking off that ever present shame that's been forced upon us throughout the evolution. Women speaking up their minds have made a massive difference to the way females are perceived by men, but there is still a lot of progress that needs to be done. Such happenings around the world have influenced women to open up about their experiences, affecting the way in which women use their art. It seems to be an ongoing trend to share exactly how you feel, and I must say I am a big supporter of such blunt honesty. 'Uncommon' art is an authentic expression of how we see the world. It's not concerned with pleasing the audience, and it's a direct result of women starting to please themselves over others. It's a powerful place to come from both artistically and emotionally. Contemporary art scene nowadays and in the future is looking to be more concerned with being a statement rather than relying solely on its aesthetics. I'd like to stress again that in vulnerability lies true power. The most fascinating people that I look up to have this amazing and contagious energy about them. I believe that's a consequence of perfect balance between their inner feminine and masculine energies. It's exciting to Women Cinemakers interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
see women coming together by covering eachother's backs and abandoning the old mentality of seeing eachother as a competition. I believe sisterhood and compassion will be highly present in contemporary art scene in the future, as well as bluntness and erradication of censorship. Now is the time when we can be loud and proud about how it’s really like to be a woman. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Spela. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I'd like to express my gratitude for this opportunity to be open about my work, it's been a plasure. After I've finished Alone, I moved to Bristol and have been living life to the fullest. I'm currently working on my new short film called Alive, a continuation of the series of short films that I've been making under The Madhouse Collective. As the name suggests, Alive will be an ode to life that can be found in simple pleasures, such as taking in all the lovely colours of the grafitti on the way to work, the excitement of finding a little nature oasis in the middle of a lively city, or being in awe of that magical twinkle in the eyes of the person you love. I intend to focus on bodies in their natural state and in their natural habitat, as well as paying homage to my roots by using poetry from my region of Prekmurje. And, of course, there will be plenty of inspiring music to wrap it all up. I am hoping to enrol into a Filmmaking course in the next few years and continue to experiment with my art. I'd love to try myself out in creating unusual music videos for the bands I support and play with stop-motion technique, as used by Billy Corgan and Yelena Yemchuk in the music video for The Smashing Pumpkin's Thirty-Three. I also aim to bring creatives around the world together – it's what The Madhouse Collective was established for. It started off as a household of creative (and unusual) people that collaborated on art projects in Liverpool a few years ago. Since then, the original members have been dispersed around the world but I'd like to take this opportunity to invite new potential members from all around the world to join us in future collaborations. The Madhouse Collective is a safe space where everyone is encouraged to share their artistic ideas, thoughts and feelings. We want our members to feel connected and appreciated, and offer them a platform for emotional or artistic support. It's good to enjoy solitude from time to Women Cinemakers interview An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]