Experimentation

 Experimenting with Footage from Recent Shoot

The artist I spoke to during my recent shoot is currently working with textiles inspired from Ancient Cypriot heritage. After studying Cypriot archives and artefacts, she came up with the idea of bringing ancient elements of Cypriot heritage and integrating them within modern Cypriot society by taking ancient designs and putting them on women's two-piece swimsuits. 

During the shoot, the artist talked me through the process of making one of her pieces, which I recorded on both cameras (one static wideshot and another handheld close-up). She first talked about the fabrics she uses, then marked them with removeable white pencil, before cutting and shaping them in order to sew the separate pieces together.

The process of watching the artist construct a new piece was very self-reflexive, as throughout explaining her process she reflected on decisions she made and what could have been done differently in hindsight. Whilst watching the footage back, I realised that a lot could be said about identity by experimenting with this footage. 

Watching the artist choose shapes, mark with dotted lines, cut fabric, compile, and in the end combine the textiles, I thought about how identity is constructed through inclusion and exclusion, marking through gates and borders; how it can be re-negotiated by considering past histories and their influence on present and future generations. In an effort to visualise this and create a metaphor through the unfolding of this haptic process, I began editing the footage which eventually turned into a collage with its own lines and boundaries.

In continuing working on this experiment, which may or may not be in my five-minute excerpt, I will consider using voiceover, both my own and from the conversations I had with the artist and my grandmother, since hands and sewing have organically transformed into a motif that can reveal a lot about identity, gender, and artistic expression in Cyprus and for Cypriot people living in the diaspora. Since it has taken the form of a semi-collage, through overlay and the separate fabrics themselves, I also want to experiment further with the mixed-media style and think about incorporating other collage elements like digital camcorder archive footage from Cyprus, as well as the dream sequence audio I captured recently as it aligns with the collision of past versus present in Cyprus.