'The process of seeing...is less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe. A large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention...Perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder. It is like a beam from a lighthouse, only instead of light travelling outwards, appearances travel in. Our tradition of art called those appearances reality...With the invention of the camera everything changed...'
extract from John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972)
'I am an eye, a mechanical eye. I the machine show you a world the way only I can see it.
I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I am in constant movement.
I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them.
I move alongside a running horse's mouth.
I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies.
This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after the other in the most complex combinations.
Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I coordinate any and all points of the universe wherever I want them to be.
My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world.
Thus, I explain in a new way the world unknown to you'.
These words above are part of a manifesto that Russian film director, Dziga Vertov, wrote in 1923. I the machine show you a world the way only I can see it.
In today’s society of social media, virtual reality and of lack of physical connection, we are being constantly exposed to an abundance of consumer culture imagery, to a world seen through and directed by the camera. As contemporary society promotes, for the sake of its economy, a model of efficiency and productivity which signifies success, any kind of bonding is disabled. The body has become a consumer item, a representation of good life and happiness, in constant need of improvement.
Often these images do not represent how the body actually looks like, but through the use of the camera, its perception is manipulated.
So what role does the camera play in my artistic practice? And how does it relate to the theoretical aspects of my work?
I believe that the way we perceive the body and its relation to identity is frequently stimulated by images. Taking as an example, for the sake of enhancing this argument, the fitness industry, it is evident how, through branding and marketing, a fit body is inextricably connected to a healthy inner self, how services and consumption objects are displayed as ways of re-inventing identities, of connecting with a community.This obsession for the outer appearance can lead to a numbness of the inner self and to a consequent delimitation of human subjectivity’s immanent potentiality.
H.I.I.T is a project with which I aspire to underline identity's immanent attribute, the potentiality of being 'more than one', as asserted by cultural theorist and practicing artist Erin Manning. In order to generate multiplicity, and consequently negate singularity, I had to find ways to construct and alternative truth. This is where the use of the camera as a methodological tool became fundamental.
In Boyan Manchev's The New Arachne: Towards a poetics of dynamic forms, Manchev makes and interesting remark. He underlines how impossible it is to approach form without acknowledging its limit, which could only be reached through its activity, a concept of transformation. If transformation could be the way to bring forth multiplicity, then, to my understanding, there were two actions that had to take place:
To attempt to actually 'transform' my body by engaging into two specific regimens, High-Intensity Interval Training workouts and Intermittent Fasting nutrition regimen.
To invent ways to manipulate the gaze of the audience, particularly for the solo piece, through the use of the light on stage and through the placement and movement of the body in relation to the latter.
For the second action, the camera enabled and accelerated the decision-making process. Through the experimentation and creation of videos, I managed to figure out what I was looking for, as well as to assume possible ways to make it happen. All elements which compose this solo performance, such as the camera, the light, the body, the sound, the space, are indispensable one to the other for the final artistic outcome. Through the making of the video for the promotion of H.I.I.T., I took decisions regarding its dramaturgical composition, decisions which I had difficulty to take before seeing the image and environment created on the screen.
For the time being, everything has been postponed due to the Covid-19 virus spread. This creative process and further evolution of my performance is temporarily suspended. However, having the footage for the creation of the promo video gives me a head start, for when everything starts getting back into place. I can keep on exploring and combining material and trigger my imagination through it. I would like to conclude this post as I started it, with the words of John Berger, in Ways of Seeing (1972):
'Perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world, but the human eye can only be in one place at a time. It takes its visible world with it as it walks. With the invention of the camera everything changed. We could see things which were not there in front of us...'
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