Vertov and his contemporaries wanted to explore the power of the camera’s mechanical eye to challenge existing  ideas. I couldn’t help being reminded of this as I watch Vertigo Sea. What would would Eisenstein have thought about the interplay of three images and a rich multilayered soundscape? Fact, fiction, historical, contemporary, colour, text, word, music, sound.

I felt the richness and vibrancy of Vertigo Sea created an experience as immersive as any Hollywood Action film but used this experience to challenge rather than dictating to an audience. So many questions are asked; political, cultural, environmental, all bound up with the framing device of the beautiful but violet sea.

Whilst looking for a clip of Akomfrah’s work to illustrate my point I discovered this film of him talking about his creative process where he describes montage in his films, making reference to a dialectic between the images joined by a cut (or three screens) creating a new meaning.

For me Vertigo Sea pushes against but also acknowledges the the legacy of cinematic filmmaking techniques. Rather than outright rejection of the work of other filmmakers Akomfrah instead utilises and extends the techniques to tell a tapestry of stories that cinema is unsuitable for.

The way that images and theme repeat and evolve for me give Vertigo Sea parallels with the ideas of minimalism. Images want to tell us stories, even TH:EC:LO:CK found it difficult to break away from this, we seem to be driven to create linear narratives. For me, Akomfrah challenges this by repeating imagery and forcing us to be active viewers, ours eyes scanning across multiple screens, we pickup and drop the treads in different ways until the stands leave us with a net rather than a line.

I have been working on this post on and off since the seminar on the 18th October, there was some really interesting conversations in the seminar that I wanted to follow up on quickly but fell into the essay writing habit of lingering too long on them. I want to avoid this as I want this blog to be a record of the development of my thinking over the duration of this process rather than a summary at the end where inevitably I will omit (by mistake or design) some of the detours and dead ends that I explore. I am attempting to be conscious of Donald Schon’s  work regarding reflection in and on action. So in this spirit here are the thoughts of the moment.

The seminar on 18th October left me returning to the question that I have gravitated since I started being interested in art, why do I want to say anything at all who am I to say it and why.

I want to say have hope be positive there is hope humans are brilliant. Most importantly I want to say this to everyone.

Yet Roope ended his doom-laden column with a rallying cry to designers: “This is perhaps the biggest challenge humankind has ever faced, and also perhaps its most exciting… let’s start designing the future that gives us a future. Now.”

I want to say it because I forget, and I want to remember. When I am stood at the bus stop reading an advert for a big brand wine, that promises to make your problems go away, get you a new partner and do the washing up, I want to remember we went to the moon.

Sometimes we are individually or collectively heinous, but sometimes we are sublime.

Why we need a definition of Art

As I mentioned previously Brian Eno’s music has been highly influential on my approach to sound, but Eno’s thoughts on creative processes and the importance of art have been even more influential. When I’m stuck on a problem I reach for an oblique strategy. Eno’s 2015 BBC Music John Peel Lecture resonated with me in his framing of art as “all the things we don’t need to do” and the way that it can help us to safely explore new and frightening ideas in safety. I recently came across an article on the design website Dezeen where Eno’s thinking helped to clarify my reasoning for wanting to make art and how this relates to my personal and political philosophy. 

Eno points to Mariana Mazzucato and Kate Raworth, economists who are redrawing how we measure value in society, and reframing the boundaries of economics to the scale of the planet. As Raworth says: “Today, I think ours is the generation that must raise its sights once again, beyond the household, the city and the nation to the planet: it’s time to take on the economics of the planetary household.”

Finn Williams https://www.dezeen.com/2018/11/09/brian-eno-architecture-planning-finn-williams-opinion-column/

This post has the tonal shifts of a meandering river because it has been written over many sittings and my thoughts really need the rest of my life to clarify so I am going to fall back on Brian Eno for now.

We need a wider we

Brian Eno