Lucy Clout lecture + tutorial

I was intrigued to hear about Lucy's practice as she does both video and performance pieces. Surprisingly I have been drawn to work with video recently so I really wanted to talk to her about the way she works and talk to her about my ongoing ballroom obsession and see what she says about it. 

Lecture 10:00

The first thing she said is that she is going to hold her phone whilst giving the talk. At first I thought that it was because she was more comfortable this way, however later I realised it was nothing to do with that, the phone was just there to trigger notes to look at if she was stuck. She was very comfortable with giving a lecture and being herself which I really liked. She was casual and relaxed which was very pleasant. 

She stated that she is interested in embodiment (a tangible or visible form of an idea, quality or feeling) which was very interesting to me as I noticed that I am moving away from any visible or touchable artwork, where the art is in the moment and experience in that moment with minimal objects. I have recently thought about creating a work that is a bit more tangible just to see what happens, such as creating a video.

Throughout the lecture she focused on five recent videos she has made. She said that she creates one video a year, however does other bits and bobs around, such as sculpture and performance. One video she has shown us was called Warm Bath which was a home movie, a fiction telling two interlocking stories. The first story was about seven women living together in one house, being obsessed with the movements of water. The second story was about a man who films a particular drainage ditch everyday, twice a day in California endoeric basin. The video explores and captures the passing of time, systems and intimacy. Throughout her explanation of this video I realised that her research might be similar to mine. She researches a lot of things that aren't artistic such as the geographical terms or looks into history for an explanation, that later feed into her work somehow. She explores what occurs in real life and makes them visible through video she creates, making us see the relationships more clearly. 

'Warm Bath', 2016, Exhibition View, Limoncello, London

'Warm Bath', 2016, Exhibition View, Limoncello, London

‘Warm Bath’, 2016, Video Still, HD Video, 10'08''

In terms of the actual video production and quality - the video was raw which added reality to it. The video of the man filming the water was bad quality and not as sharp as the video created by the artist. Also I found it quite interesting how the artist overlapped the videos together, where whilst watching her own recordings there would suddenly appear a small screen on top showing something else, and the other way round. I really enjoyed the video and the multi meanings and stories it was exploring - time, systems and intimacy. The video was well narrated throughout either by the artist or the video found by the artist where the man could be heard stating time and day he visited the place again.

An interesting phrase that Clout said in the lecture, where she said that the video was like 'a performance which happens between the person and the screen'.

Tutorial 14:30

For my tutorial I wanted to talk about my interest in the old ballroom in city centre and the ongoing research that I keep generating for it, whilst waiting for the opportunity to visit. We discussed what potentially can come from this exploration. There could be a video piece narrated, focusing on the transitional stage the space is in whilst also linking to the transitional elements of own everyday life. The way the builders began working from the outside of the building first, leaving the inside as it is. Whilst walking past it always feels as though the inside is frozen in time whilst the outside is constantly changing. Even the music that is imprinted onto the walls of the ballroom is completely different from the music played just outside, on the other side by the workers. An invisible divide of time.

Are you the music, are you the vibration, are you the air that fills the space? Are you the broken wood scattered on floor? Are you the time that has passed? Are you the light that shines through the windows?

This could potentially be an interesting sound piece as well, which could be listened to whilst in the space itself if I get lucky, as I would require permission to bring anybody to the space. 

~Ev