ILARIA FALLI ILVS STRAUSS ROMY YEDIDIA VALERIE DRISCOLL POPPET PORTRAITS ANNA ATHANASIOU CLAIRE VILLACORTA YASMIN MARROUM CELINE DAEMEN SANNE SMITS DARAE BAEK w o m e n INDEPENDENT WOMEN’S CINEMA S P E C I A L E D I T I O N
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04 CIRCUMSTANCES 30 The woman who wanted to be infinite 58 Andante 90 city-scape nº3 116 Captiva 140 Wash Out 158 Smile 176 Belly Love 192 COULD 218 Same Mistakes Darae Baek Sanne Smits & Celine Daemen Yasmin Marroum Claire Villacorta Anna Athanasiou Poppet Portraits Valerie Driscoll Romy Yedidia ilvs strauss Ilaria Falli Contents
Hello Darae and welcome to : we An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] would like to invite our readers to visit in order to get a wider idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training Darae Baek Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Glasgow and Seoul My work is based on my memory of an experience I had before coming to Glasgow. It is about my grandmother, who was suddenly hospitalised a few months before I moved. Last July, her health declined and she spent one week in hospital. The room in the hospital was very quiet. I could only hear my grandmother’s groans and the respirator which was helping her breathe. My parents told me that we needed to prepare to let her go soon, although they seemed so unprepared for this. As she was old, I knew this would happen one day. On one occasion, I spent the whole day with her. She slept most of the time. I sat next her and spent time watching her. I suddenly wondered if this would be the last time I saw her. I wanted to capture this moment with a camera, but when I saw her through the lens, I could not take the shot, as she seemed to be in pain. Instead, I filmed the respirator to remember the moment. Fortunately, she was later discharged from the hospital. This memory has remained strong in my mind and has often made me feel anxious in Glasgow. As a result, I decided to make a video to express the personal issues that I brought from South Korea to Glasgow. I wanted a video that could recall these anxieties, influenced by the Glasgow city scene I am currently staying in. I wanted to express the emotion I felt indirectly through simple objects and actions; gelatine, a spoon and a syringe. The gelatine was inspired by the respirator video I filmed in the hospital. I was looking for an object that was transparent, like the water in the respirator. I chose the gelatine as the substitute for the sound it made. When I touched the gelatine, it made a sound like that of the respirator.
Women Cinemakers and after having earned your BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the prestigious Central Saint Martins, you moved from London to Glasgow to nurture your education with an MFA, that you are currently pursuing at Glasgow School of Art: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum dued to the relationship between your Korean roots and your current life in the United Kingdom direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Hello WomenCinemakers! My major in South Korea was Oriental painting but I doubted that I really wanted to express a story on an empty white canvas. When I faced a new canvas, even though there were so many stories I wanted to express through art, I felt a heavy burden when I trying to create something from nothing. I wanted to start with the background of the real world because when starting with a white canvas I did not know how to express my story. I did not know how to start the painting because all the stories that I wanted to express needed a background in the real world. Therefore, for me, video was a breakthrough. I felt more freedom when using the camera than I did when using a canvas. This is because the camera lens contained the real world and I could finally express my story through reality. I do not think I am an artist who can start from nothing when creating new things. However, I do enjoy creating things (B) by transforming what already exists (A). I started to use the video method for the first time at Central Saint Martins in London, when I recalled the memories from CSM; the experiences were really new and free. There were no guidelines for Art but many people were seriously ready interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers to think about all forms of art work, even video art. It was a place where there was nothing to be ashamed of when showing amateur work, so I had fun as I learned how to be a film maker there. My memories became a good foundation for my video work so far. When I made the decision for my master’s course, I had a strong desire to move to a new place as a place-based artist, and Glasgow was the perfect new place. Glasgow is a city that I had never visited before, but many artists are based there. It is difficult to say exactly what makes it appealing, but Glasgow is a smaller place than London and is certainly a romantic place for artists. I think artists who have been in this city will agree. I try to visit many other places as well as London and Glasgow, such as Iceland, Japan, and Cambodia. I naturally encounter the cultures of the places I visit. These cultures often have an effect on my videos, thus there is a relationship between place-based culture and the culture of my own national background. If I define the characteristics, what I can say for sure is that I appear in my work as an Asian woman and I think it is clear that two cultures coexist in my work. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting dance video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . Centered on the expression of the personal issues that you brought from South Korea to Glasgow, this stimulating film has interview
at once impressed us of for the way you have been capable of providing the results of your artistic research with such captivating aesthetics, inviting the viewers to such a multilayered experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? In fact, 'Circumstances' started with a different root from the way that I usually work. A place is the most important resource for my work. The place where I am currently staying usually inspires my work, but the ‘Circumstances’ had begun with a memory that I experienced a few months before moving to Glasgow, in 2017. It was about my grandmother, who had been suddenly hospitalised a few months before I moved to Glasgow. Her health had deteriorated and she had spent one week in the hospital In July 2017. The room in the hospital had been very quiet. I had been able to hear my grandmother’s groans and the respirator that was helping her to breathe. Fortunately, she was later discharged from the hospital, but I had already learned the fear of death of those who I love. This memory remained strong in my mind and often made me feel anxious. I felt disgusted with myself because I lived
abroad even though my grandmother's health was deteriorating. As a result, I could not concentrate on being in Glasgow, and I felt like I was somewhere else. Therefore, 'Circumstances' was about adopting me into the city of Glasgow in my situation. I had to become accustomed to this place as soon as possible, reminding myself that I came here for a new challenge. However, inevitably, at that time I was not able to see new things or special things in the new city, so I started my work. I showed anxiety about my grandmother and about where I was, in this city. Directly through the camera lens, I began to shoot images of the action in the city of Glasgow, which continued to act visually, expressing my own state. features essential, minimalistic still effectively structured composition: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? I only use one camera for my work so, consequently, it is quite impossible to pick up various angles at the same time as a self-shooting artist. Therefore, a planning process is really important before shooting my work. To meet my personal standards and to
Women Cinemakers emphasise elements of my video for detail (title) shots and plan to take the title shots in advance before shooting, and for these title shots, I used the mode to switch the camera screen during the basic and mid-shots. In ‘Circumstances’, gelatine chunks were an important material and it was key point to clearly show the action of destroying the gelatine and observe its changing shape. During the shooting of the video, no scenes were shot more than once. In this video, I wanted to exclude other unnecessary glancing scenes when I shot the gelatine action and the part where I was drawing on the body as much as possible, so I used title shots for those scenes to emphasise the touch of gelatine and the movement of the drawing on my body. Now, I think it was good decision. It's important to remark that is based on your memory of an experience you had before coming to Glasgow, about your grandmother, who was suddenly hospitalised a few months before you moved: how important was for you to make a personal film, about a theme that you know a lot about? And how does your daily experience fuel your creative process, in general? My work relates to the feelings and experiences that I perceive within a place, so past experiences have become good data and the basis for positive inspiration, along with new encounters. Sometimes, when I visit a new place, I recall familiar fragrances and past moments from unfamiliar places, and, within a totally different time and space, I recall unexpected memories that I had forgotten. I believe that this is probably because emotions are based on the experiences I interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers have accumulated throughout my life so far. This even happens in new places; for example, if I felt fearful in a red room during my first visit, my emotional experience would appear with my past memory and the feelings I experience would be a strange mixture of new emotions and past encounters. This is why I keep data regarding the experiences and emotions in my mind at each moment; I believe that this affects all the directions of my work. Featuring well-orchestrated camera work, has drawn heavily from the specifics of its environment to reflect the entanglement between the concept of place and memories. We have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful resonance between environment and the ideas that you explore: how did you select the location and how did it affect the performing and shooting process? The process of place selection is really important. I try to select places that I usually visit and ones which are familiar to people in the city. However, these places are mostly famous open spaces so that I can shoot a video; I check the details of the place in the morning and in the afternoon, to determine the best time to film. Sometimes when I shoot my work at dawn, I often meet people who are starting their morning exercise and, in the evening, I meet teenagers who are wandering the streets. When I start to film, I really need to concentrate purely on the performance, so I cannot watch the camera or the surroundings, but when people start to gather around me, I become anxious. I try to ignore the situation and concentrate fully on the action of my performance. Fortunately, most people know when I am shooting, and, thankfully, they try to keep a short distance away and watch quietly, so I have not experienced any problems so far. interview
Women Cinemakers interview Finally, the reason for choosing these places is my method of communication with people who are actually living their life in the city, through showing my existence in the most familiar places to them. Would it not be more interesting if the city people met unexpected images of a familiar place? Moreover, it is another pleasure to have conversations with viewers about the places in my videos. The combination between sound and visual is important in your practice and we have appreciated the way the minimalistic sound tapestry provides the footage of with such an ethereal and a bit unsettling atmosphere: as an artist particularly concerned in the connection between sound and moving images, how would you consider the role of sound within your practice and how do you see the relationship between sound and movement? In my previous work, the sound was purely supporting material for my video. Now, the sound has become one of the most important roles in my film. In my recent work, I show a simplified image of actions on the video screen, while I wanted to express various parts of the sound, my exact feelings of the story in the video, the atmosphere of the place, and so on. In other words, if the image expresses the indication of my story as an indirect action, the sound directly expresses the emotion of my experience. I normally decide to improvise instruments to create sounds according to the emotions I want to express at
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview that time. I use the recorded sounds at that place and I try to touch all the instruments in the sound program on my computer and determine the most appropriate instrument sounds that I want to use in relation to the memory. The process of making sounds is separate to the process of shooting video images. Therefore, the length of sounds does not exactly match the length of the video. So, this usually happens through the extra deformation work that cuts or edits the sounds to an appropriate length to match the video. In ‘Circumstances’, I produced many sounds, each of which included a keyword for each emotion, and from the recorded telephone conversation during which I talked with my parents about my grandmother. It was not easy to make it work, but it was a good experience Rich with symbolic value, gelatine is a material that play a crucial role in : German art critic and historian Michael Fried once stated that 'materials do not represent, signify, or allude to anything; they are what they are and nothing more.' What are the properties that you were searching for in gelatine? I try to maintain the view of a third person, in the same position as the audience in a video even if the video is all about my own experience. I also appear directly on the video. So, in my work, I rarely directly express the story of my experience. I indirectly express all stories using a setting object that is connected with my experience. Thus, gelatine was used as a visual object in the work. The images are not of a respirator in ‘Circumstances’. This idea was inspired by the respirator video that I filmed when my grandmother was in the hospital. I was looking for an object that was transparent, to represent the water in the respirator. I watched a jelly-making video, sourced randomly from the
Women Cinemakers Internet, and, after a few attempts, decided on gelatine as my substitute. The main reason I chose this material was the sound it made; when I touched the gelatine, it made a sound similar to the respirator. For this project, I made two types of gelatine lumps. One was gelatine with a feeling of transparency similar to water, and the other was a white foreign substance matter with gelatine in it. Both the transparent gelatine and white gelatine represented my memory and situation. The white gelatine represented my nervousness about my grandma's situation. The transparent gelatine represented Glasgow, where I am currently living. The appearance of approaching the white gelatine, while gradually decomposing the transparent gelatine against the background of Glasgow city, where I exist seems like clinging to memories of a situation other than reality. This image is not only for the viewer but also for myself; the image clearly shows where I exist. Perhaps the gelatine could just be a chunk of jelly to the audience and I may be seen as a strange person in the city who breaks the jelly. Nevertheless, someone might be faced with a scene in their memory through my strange repetitive act, in which, carefully, one-by-one, the transparent jelly mass was separated. Then, maybe, it could be possible that gelatine is a mass of their memories, not just jelly. I want to create a video that allows viewers to match similar experiences to their memories, rather than a feeling of seeing a personal story. interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the ideas you aim to communicate and the physical act of creating your artworks? In ‘Circumstances’, there are two representative behaviours: the action of breaking down the gelatine and the drawing of the lines connecting the lines on my body to the city. The images of the drawing were taken from the middle of the production of the gelatine video. I have repeatedly watched the scenes: for my existence in the city through the gelatine video, I gradually understood my existence in the city. I made the decision to obtain direct evidence of my emerging existence that would make it clearer as the reality of me in Glasgow. The evidence was the image of the direct drawing action, which overlapped the existing lines of the city on my body, arms, face, feet, and legs and placed myself into one part of the city via lines. The interesting point is that the main story is a gelatine video; the drawing video is produced as a sub-story, which shows the gradual change in my mind after starting the gelatine project, but many viewers who watched ‘Circumstances’ in the exhibition felt that the drawing part of the video was the main story. They were persuaded that the act of drawing on the artist’s body seemed more meaningful. Of course, both images have important stories, interview
but I was very interested in the opinions of the audiences. It may be, because the medium of the body is a great medium that everyone has in common, it was a good experience to rethink about the artist's actions and the visual power of the human body. Maybe the artist's body is the most effective canvas? We like the way challenges the viewers' perceptual categories to create personal narratives: what are you hoping will trigger in the spectatorship? In particular, how much important is for you to address the viewer's imagination in order to elaborate personal associations? The viewer is a precious witness to the fact that my work and I are in reality. I always consider of the viewer 's gaze when I make a dark story work. I want to make sure that the viewer is not burdened by the image, even if the story is depressing. In this intention, ‘Circumstances’ is a video combined with two stories as mentioned above. The first is the story about my previous unforgettable memory and Glasgow, where I am staying, and the second story is about my situation in adapting to Glasgow. Though the second video, I wanted to create a turning point in my video relating my grandmother’s story to the relationship between me and Glasgow. I wanted to broaden the choices that happen to the audience and encourage various emotions through the mixture of Women Cinemakers interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
these two stories. In this way, I have my own ending for my video, but I am the only one who knows the actual ending. To be honest, it is not important that the viewers know the actual ending, because, although I am not a kind storyteller who talks about the ending of my story via the video images, I want people to watch my video, then create their own endings to my video as people all have different views of the end of life. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Darae. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Recently, I have worked on a new project. It is another story about myself and someone else. This project starts to doubt my double-sidedness. It is not a complicated story, but a simple ‘I love myself, but I hate myself as well’. The project will be filmed at various venues, and I have already started shooting some parts of the video in artist residencies in Spain and Sweden this summer. It is still at the beginning phase, but the goal is to finish by next year. I am a video artist, who is also interested in installation work. I am going to create a composition in which two videos of this project will be overlapped through the action of the visitor, so, I am currently looking for a way to use a motion technique for this installation. I hope that it is completed successfully. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] Women Cinemakers interview
Hello Sanne and Celine and welcome to this special An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] edition of : to start this interview we would ask you a couple of questions regarding your backgrounds: are there any Sanne Smits Women Cinemakers meets The woman who wanted to be infinite is a captivating experimental short film by Sanne Smits and Celine Daemen: featuring brilliant cinematography and unconventional storytelling, their work walks the viewers through a liminal territory where the boundaries of life and death blend to address us to inquire into the fear of ending and parting: we are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to Smits' and Daemen's captivating and multifaceted artistic production. Celine Daemen (1996) is a Dutch director of theatre and film. She graduated from the Academy of Performative Arts Maastricht in June this year. With a specific interest in visual arts, music and philosophy, she explores themes such as desire, fear and emptiness. Through an inventive use of aesthetics she enables her audience to connect with the emotional undercurrents of which we tend to lose sight so often in our daily lives. Her work is characterised by a deliberate eye for detail and a tense and mysterious atmosphere. Her characters are often trapped in a small world of anxiety and inactivity. They are lonely and have an unfulfilled yearning for greatness, purpose, happiness and love. Daemen combines different art forms, with the aim creating a sensuous experience. Her work varies from plays to video installations and short films. Sanne Smits (1995) is a Dutch theatre and film director. She will graduate at the Academy of Performative Arts Maastricht next year (June 2019). Smits’ work is characterised by its imaginative, radical and rhythmical power. Focussing mainly on the motion of the actor, she places rhythm and movement at the core of her work. She explores dream-like structures and storylines, in which the subconscious plays an important role. The characters in her work have an insatiable appetite for grandiose and meaningful lives, but at the same time are constantly confronted by their own shortcomings. Besides being a director, she is the singer of the Dutch band Pastinaak & de Vergeten Groenten. Celine Daemen
Women Cinemakers experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as artists and creatives? Moreover, how do your cultural substratums address your artistic researches? Celine: I was born in a small, hilly village in the south of the Netherlands. I grew up surrounded by nature, in a Catholic culture. As a young girl, I was fascinated by the greatness and aesthetics of this faith. Despite the fact that I am no longer religious right now, this fascination still influences my work a lot. Sanne: I grew up in Haarlem, a town in the shadow of Amsterdam. Although my family was not religious, I did go to a Catholic primary school and I used to sing in the church choir every Sunday. I also found myself deeply impressed by the great symbols of the Catholic faith. So much that I sometimes embarrassed my mother, when, as a little child, out of sheer excitement, I shouted “look mum, a church!” whenever we passed one. As a child, I already had a strong will. I am the eldest of three children and, during our childhood, I used that position to get my brothers to perform in plays in our living room, even if they did not feel like it. As a teenager, I started engaging more seriously with theatre, film and music. I spent almost all of my pocket money on theatre tickets, I wrote my own songs, and watched all films by Alex van Warmerdam, David Lynch and Lars von Trier. Celine: I decided that I wanted to be a theatre director at the age of 16. Just like Sanne, I started as a student interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview of the directing track at the Maastricht Academy of Performative Arts. Within this program we got the opportunity to develop our own artistic style, expression and drive. Sanne: After doing Theatre Studies at university for a year, I realised that I wanted to make art myself instead of analysing it. At the Academy of Performative Arts, I developed myself as a director with a strong love for magical realism, who likes to combine visuals and music. When I direct, it’s like I am creating a choreography with the actors. Celine: The Academy of Performative Arts encouraged us to work with and combine all kinds of art forms. In my second year I decided that I want to focus on film. From that moment onwards, I started working right on the crossroads of film and theatre. Obviously, our theatre background influences the way in which we make films too. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected The woman who wanted to be infinite, an extremely interesting experimental short film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://youtu.be/SB4v-qqafnU: what has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into the fear of ending and parting is the way you have provided the visual results of your research with such visual consistence, combining spontaneity with rigorous aesthetics. While walking our readers through the genesis of The woman who wanted to be infinite, would
you tell us what did direct your artistic research towards these theme? Our original idea was to make a film about the apocalypse. While we were doing research, a young teacher at our school died very suddenly and unexpectedly. Our school, a small and close community, was deeply impacted by his death. This incident made us realize that our research for this had to be more personal. It turned out that it was not the end of times that we were afraid of, but indeed death, as a definitive ending. Our main question was then: what would you want there to be after death? We interviewed all kinds of people (young, old, religious, non-religious) about their thoughts on death. “Are you afraid of death? Do you think death is followed by something else? If yes,
by what?” We got the most beautiful answers. One person hoped to be transformed into a bird; another person imagined how he could oversee his entire life. We were struck by the fact that a lot of young people we interviewed, despite not being religious, did hope there would be something after death. Old people, who are closer to death, were less passionate in their fantasies about the imminent end and approached the matter with acquiescence. And we noticed ourselves that, despite the fact that we are not religious (anymore), we found some consolation in thinking that death does not inevitably mean “living no longer”. At some point in our research, we came across the Buddhist view of life. We grew up with a rather dualistic conception of the world: there is good and evil, black and white, life and death. In Buddhism, these
Women Cinemakers concepts are not so much opposed to one another. It is believed that everything is moving and part of a larger whole. We read a Buddhist parable about two waves. The one wave is jealous of the other. He wants to be just as big, strong, and beautiful as the other. But at the moment when both splash down again, the wave realises that all this time, both of them were water. This little story struck us so much since it tells us that we are all part of a larger whole. Death could be a surrendering to go back to our source: surrendering to be a part of nature in a very basic sense. Another big inspiration for our film is the Tibetan book of the dead (Barbo Thodol). The book offers a description of the space between death and rebirth; the state-in-between. “Bar do” literally means “between two”. We found the idea of a state-in-between so beautiful and comforting, that we ultimately took it as the basis for our film. In our film, we wanted to consider dying not as “living no longer”, but as the start of merging into something larger. Elegantly shot, The woman who wanted to be infinite features intense colour palette with keen eye to details: what were your aesthetic decisions when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? When shooting The woman who wanted to be infinite, we chose for a radical aesthetics. Refined, classic, epic, and detailed images that create a certain strong atmosphere. It is an emotional kind of aesthetics. The images guide interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers you through an intuitive and associative journey. We found that the aesthetics of imagery and filming had to follow this dramaturgy. Thus we chose to shoot the middle part with a steadicam, but change to wide landscape shots towards the end. We used a small and easily manageable camera: the Sony alpha 7s 2, because of its low-light camera features. Interesting to know is that we did almost no special effects and color grading in post production. We dragged all kinds of lights to our filmset to get the right atmosphere on set. We lit an actual tree on fire, because we refuse to ‘fix it in post’. This way of working might be something we learned from theatre, where we are used to create any world in a black box. There is no post production. There is one transitory moment in which you have to visualize your story. We have appreciated the way The woman who wanted to be infinite walks the spectators through a liminal area where reality blends with imagination to question transcendental questions around the nature of time. How do you consider the relationship between perceptual reality and the realm of imagination? Moreover, how important is it for you to trigger the viewer's perceptual parameters in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? The woman who wanted to be infinite is a film that has to be experienced by the beholder. We invite him or her to form a personal interpretation of it. It is not up to us to determine and fix its meaning. We believe that, when the interview
Women Cinemakers spectator has the freedom to have their own interpretation, they will be able to draw the film closer towards themselves, and that in this way the film gains a larger and more personal value. We focussed on shaping an emotional experience, which the beholder will feel right in his heart and his gut. The sequence of images is a direct sensory and associative experience. We guide the spectator on a path of atmospheres. We try to stimulate reflection and meaning, but their content is in the first place dependent on the subjective experience of the beholder. Meaning only emerges in the encounter with the public. The force of the film lies in its subjectivity, immediacy, and physicality. In this respect, we have certainly been inspired by other forms of art. Poetry, dance, theatre, and music. In the process of making this film, we let ourselves be inspired mostly by the principles of music. Its aesthetics, its immediate form. Music moves without reference or anecdote. It reveals a mood. In one of our first drafts of the concept, we described it as follows: theatre and film often show a fight against tears, music constitutes the tears itself. The woman who wanted to be infinite is an attempt to explore a space inspired by music where moods, physicality, and atmosphere form the starting point for a cinematic and theatrical experience. It gives space for subjectivity. Featuring stunning landscape cinematography with well orchestrated camera work, The woman who interview
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview wanted to be infinite has drawn heavily from the specifics of its environment and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful resonance between the environment and the movement of human body: how was your creative and shooting and performative process affected by locations? The scenes emerged entirely from the location. Dramaturgywise, we selected the location very early on in the process. It has defined the performative and physical actions. The dramatic starting point for our actress is mostly dependant on her reaction to her environment. It's a constant perception and experience of the here and now. She takes in the absurd world that is forced on her. We went looking for ways in which the location could constitute a conflict for the body. By placing her in a certain environment, her struggle arises. A good example of this is the way she flees into the forest at a certain point. By letting her run up a hill, we show her battle in a physical way. One could view her environment as a character. It's not just the location in which something takes place, it is at the same time part of what is happening. It is the use of the location as a theatrical means. 6) It's no doubt that collaborations as the one that you have established together are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project: could you tell us something about this proficient synergy? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between artists from different backgrounds? The team we worked with is extremely inspiring and diverse. Our
Women Cinemakers interview cameraman Daniel van Hauten is from Germany and has a background in mostly music videos. Marc, who was responsible for music and sound, is from Syria and works as a musician and DJ. Flemish Yentl and Dutch Heleen both have a background as directors and actresses in theatre. The different backgrounds of our collaborative partners were crucial to the process, certainly because the project was a cross-over of different forms of art. We are both greatly interested in this way of interdisciplinary working. Within our Academy, we worked with multiple disciplines. For example, we studied subjects such as mime, text based theatre, film and opera. The way we see it, making gesammtkunst is our trade. Interdisciplinarity to us not only means that all disciplines have a place in our work. We also look for the principles of these different disciplines that we could use, or be inspired by. Like we mentioned before, we asked ourselves the question: what is the effect of music, and how can we translate this to the dramaturgy of our film and the aesthetics of our image? Cross-pollination. Disciplines may affect, change, infect and inspire each other. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative process. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once remarked that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how would you consider the relation between the abstract nature of the ideas you explore and the physical act of producing your artworks?
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers