HEAVEN VIDEO INSPIRATION

For the video to accompany the death video I want to create something that clearly contrasted that video, so the heavily edited death video would contrast a more simplistic and conceptual video about paradise. Below are some clips that I've taken some inspiration from, I want to portray a very natural vibe, as if it wasn't at all planned.

This is a scene from Larry Clark's KIDS (1995) ignoring the drugs and the violence, I really love the summer setting in the park with all of these friends together in one place and time, everything seems very relaxed and natural. This is something I hope to get across in my video.

This is Archy Marshall's A NEW PLACE 2 DROWN, there are a few parts of this video that i really admire and think the vibe would really go well with what I have in mind for the video, the scenes where he's with his friends at night and during the day with his friends all seem very natural and uncoreographed. After watching this I think I'll carry a camera around with me when I go to meet friends and just film what happens when we're just hanging out, as if that is paradise to me. 

PRINTS TO TAG ON TOP OF 

I got 4 of my favourite old engravings from Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno, most done by Gustav Dore, and put them onto one A0 size sheet to order on instantprint: 

Once I have got these prints I will start to deface them using spray cans and graffiti pens.

KENNETH ANGER: LUCIFER RISING

Lucifer Rising is a short film by Kenneth Anger where Egyptian Gods summon the angel Lucifer to start a new occult age. The film was released in 1972, here are a few of my favourite stills from the film.




I like the pentogram (the star of satan) on the back of that red cloak seen in the second still, this got me thinking of decorating the clothes that death will wear in my film, perhaps i will paint similar things on the black hoodie in white. Lucifer's jacket in the film was in such popular demand that Kenneth now sells them for $300 a piece, the juxtapostion of the bright rainbow colours and the word Lucifer is very striking.

THE JEWISH MUSUEM BERLIN

Menashe Kaidshman's contribution to the Jewish Museum of Berlin is a piece called fallen leaves, I went to visit this installation of 10,000 coarse, iron faces spread across the floor of a large, long room. When walking over these faces I felt as if I was passing over dead bodies, a feeling which I would like to recreate in my exhibition. However instead of having faces on the floor I want to have a few hands sticking out the floor as if they are reaching for help from the depths of hell. Below is a picture of me on the faces. 

GOYA AND THE CHAPMAN BROTHERS

This documentary explores the Chapman Brothers' obsession and fascination with Goya, an 18th Century Spanish painter and print maker, most importantly his 'The Disasters of War' a series of 82 prints showing just how evil humans can be to each other, which the Chapman Brothers have worked with a lot. They have created a series of small toy-looking models of the prints and also worked directly on top of his prints with paint. (both pictured below)

One of my original ideas was to do something similar to what they have done with prints, reusing old illustrations from books like paradise lost or paintings of hell and making them my own by tagging on top of them. It was helpful to see how someone else has done this however I think I will be taking it further than they did (just painting faces on top of already existing faces) and writing messages and essentially defacing the original prints, going back to the idea of tagging as an attempt to become immortal this will contrast the death and suffering that is projected in the images.

FACEBOOK EVENT

Getting people to the event is key and I've been using Facebook to find out about events because its so easy to see whats going on and when and its easy to invite friends along. Here's what the page currently looks like: 

VIDEO INSPIRATION CONTD.

Cult Member from Cult Gloria on Vimeo.

I really like this video from independently run clothing brand Cult Gloria, the zoom shots and the lo-fi nature of the whole video is exactly what I had in mind for my own video on Death. If I can manage to animate some of my illustrations I may lay them on top of the video as the story plays out. This video was useful to me however I have to restrain from recreating it, so by putting cut scenes in it to death related things and having animations and my own music i should avoid this.

NO MANS LAND- MISHKA HENNER

No Man's Land from Mishka Henner on Vimeo.

Mishka Henner's No Mans Land looks at people in spaces that are completely deserted apart from the road they stand by, the whole project was taken place on Google Street View, the video (above) that accompanies the book of screenshots shows screenshots of the journey to and past these people by the side of the road. I prefer the video to just the pictures because as we pass the people it feels like we're leaving them behind, evoking a substantial amount of emotion. The locations where these people are found are an inspiration for where I'm going to film for my first video, these locations include boarded up houses, places in my local area that I know people don't go to because they are so unappealing. I went on streetview and went around my local area finding spots like that:



Remnants of a house



empty sports area of my local park



construction sight with tags




old, dirty, tagged tunnel that leads to a park

PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL I

Whilst researching through the afterlife I stumbled across the four horsemen who descend to Earth which marks the end of the world. The horsemen embody 4 things: Death, Famine, War and Conquest. I thought this would be a good place to start my promotional material as it puts everyone into the afterlife and will end up in my exhibition: Purgatory where they will explore my visions of life and death and heaven and hell.

This is a painting by Viktor Vasnetsov depicting the four horsemen starting the apocalypse, I think this painting is incredible and wanted to use it for my promo material. I decided to make a poster, I wanted it to be in black and white so I put a threshold on it on Photoshop which came out like this:

Although, this didnt work out very well just due to the contrast in dark and bright in the painting, details were lost and it ruined the magnificence of the painting. So instead I used a bitmap and half-toned it and added details of the event:

This is what it originally looked like, however after messing around with font size and layout it ended up like this:

The white bold text on the black box catches the viewers attention, personally if I saw this I would think it was some sort of extreme church propaganda which is always interesting, upon further reading the viewer will see the details of the event.

DEATH VIDEO IDEAS

I drew some sketches from what I had in mind for a few of the shots of this video, essentially the story is that the camera sees Death and is then constantly followed around by it, there will be outdoor scenes in woods, subways, parts on public transport, out the window of a bedroom etc. I have also drawn out the costume for Death to wear, it will be wearing a full black tracksuit with the hoodie being way oversized to be mimetic of Death's famous cloak. It will be a modern day Death.

VIDEO RESEARCH CONTD.
I looked at some more music videos to get inspiration for my own video:

The lo-fi and upclose and shaky nature of this music video really struck a chord with me, its very dark and sinister and I think a similar vibe would work perfectly with my death/hell video



In this particular video I like the motion blurred and night scenes, it seems very surreal yet slightly sinister at the same time, I may use similar effects on my video when I'm editing.



I also liked the one take nature of this video and the use of night vision again, it reminds me of horror movies and is quite unsettling.

FLYERS

To continue on from where I left off, I booked a day at the shoreditch arts club for my exhibition, unfortunately the doomed gallery was fully booked, however this means that I can now start promoting the event.

Here was the initial design, it has quite a zine type look to it which I really like, because the whole exhibition is very lo-fi and DIY, although I forgot to write free entry on it and wanted to change the layout of the text a bit.

I tried hand writing it in a similar handstyle to the title and put it in photoshop:

I quite like the rough look of the handwritten flyer, however I worry that some may find it hard to read. I will need to make further changes to the details of the exhibition as I go on, this is just a draft.

VIDEO INSPIRATION (DEATH/HELL)

this is the music video for Death Grips' Whatever I want (Fuck who's watching). Essentially there's a man wearing a skeleton mask in a field of long grass who beckons the camera closer, inviting the viewers closer then suddenly, aggressively pushing and kicking the cameraman away, making the viewer feel very unwelcome. After watching this video my idea for my death/hell video has been finalised; I want to have a figure who is representing Death following the camera/viewer throughout a walk in the night. I need to book out a video camera with a decent zoom, because I want the beginning shots of Death to be from afar, and with cut scenes of symbols and references to death (eg zooming into a butchers store or a cemetery) Death will start to follow the camera/viewer and get closer and closer as time goes on, hopefully making the viewers feel unsettled. 

EXHIBITION SPACE

Ive decided to use DOOMED GALLERY DALSTON for my exhibition space, I have been there many times for a wide range of exhibitions, I like the size of the space and also the concrete floors and white walls, it gives me a good blank slate to work off. I obtained the floor plan of the space and started to think about where certain items would go.

The advert for hiring out the space

The floor plan of the gallery

A proposed idea of the layout of my exhibition, a coffin sits in the middle of the space, there's A2 pieces of mixed media art on the walls (marked by red lines) and 4 TVs (the red boxes) the first TV is just playing static, it throws the visitor off, the second shows a film about death, the 4th about life and the 3rd shows a live video feed of the visitors, so when standing in between the two videos they are essentially having a moment of reflection in purgatory with a coffin behind them. The blue line shows the route visitors will take around the gallery.

ILLUSTRATION EXPERIMENTS:

In my exhibition I want to have pieces of art on the wall, for this draft piece I took the iconic moment from the film The Seventh Seal where death appears on the beach, I abstracted detail and left Death faceless and gave his robes a veiny/fleshy look, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

from The Seventh Seal

My quick scketch

INSTALLATION RESEARCH

This work by Liselot van der Heijden i took a look at just because of the use of the old TVs which i wish to use as well, I quite like the idea of them being scattered around an empty space, however I'm not sure how well the visitors will be able to see my footage which is an essential part of my exhibition at the moment.

This piece is Shirin Abedinirad's Stairway to Heaven, I love how simple it is yet how large of a concept it has behind it, the mirrors are looking towards the heavens but there is a sense of fragility as one imagines walking up these mirrored stairs, a fear of the glass smashing, perhaps this is a comment on the fragility of life and the certainty of death.

This is found at The White Temple (Wat Rong Khun) which is a contemporary piece of art/scultpture made to look like a Buddhist temple, it was finished and opened to tourists in 1997. I love the piece pictured above, I get a sense of tortured souls in purgatory reaching out for help, I think I will use the hand gesture reaching for help in my exhibition.

FILM RESEARCH: GHOST (1990)

Directed by Jerry Zucker, this film deals with death and purgatory in a very different way to the other films I have looked at. After the protagonists death he is still on earth as himself, just a ghost, he makes the decision to decline his offer to heaven because his girlfirend is in danger. This whole time him being dead in new york city is very lonely and an interesting take on the afterlife, he bumps into a few other ghosts who have been waiting around for years or for a loved one to die so they can join them. I think that version death after life is one of the most interesting, the frustration of not being able to be noticed was fascinating.

DVD Cover for Ghost

Sam looking at his own dead body

INSTALLATION RESEARCH//

one of my favourite exhibitions of all time was Salcedo's Crack and the Tate Modern, its still quite unsure how she made the crack, regardless, seeing this huge crack made me feel a sense of fragility and I felt very overwhelmed, I had been immersed by this crack, thinking of why it made me feel this way, it was a very dark and bewildering moment so it was interesting to see all the kids jumping over it, not thinking about how the art makes them feel.

LEANDRO ERLICH underwater pool. Although I havent been to this installation, it has fascinated me since the first time I saw it. Visitors are invited to look down into the pool where it looks like its full of water, but then you see other visitors wander in and out as if theres no water. Its the perspective that I'm most interested in, what are the people under thinking when they see the people above and vice versa. Its almost a window to another world.

This is from Kely Mark's Stupid Heaven. I love this particular piece, The TVs' one purpose is to show images to humans, not only is the tv just facing a wall, its facing another TV, it really shocked me, these are the kind of things that I want the visitors to view when they come, I want them immersed.

INVITATION IDEAS//

Although most of the publicity for this exhibition will be online, I still want to create a few hard copy invitations, going off of what I've researched so far, I decided to write a possible title in graffiti handstyle, (i ran out of space for the Y but I'll fix it in photoshop)

Possible title for the exhibition.

I found this image of a sculpture, its been impossible to find the creator or any credits but I think its called Pit of Despair and relates to purgatory. You can really just feel the torture of it in their contorted faces all pushed up against eachother. To edit this picture, I bitmapped it to give it a modern spin on an engraving: i.e. just black and white.

So here is one of my concepts for the invitation, the information about the event, a description, time, date, place etc would all be there. These would be A5 flyers. 

CHARLES SAATCHI//DEAD

In Saatchi's book, Dead, a Celebration of Mortality, he looks at a wide range of aspects to do with life and death, one thing he speaks about the necropolis railway. During the industrial revolution, life expectancy was low and mortality rates were high, however there was also a huge boom in population in the early 19th century. This lead to a crisis of not having enough room to bury the dead or even to keep the living alive. The solution to this was building a station as part of Waterloo station just to transport dead bodies to a cemetery out in surrey where there was enough room to bury them. I find the idea of this one final journey before being buried really interesting and the station looks really cool and creepy too.

Necropolis Cemetery Station

Another interesting part of the book is the one where, in the 70s, because public records were so poorly managed and officials were easily bribed, you could accidentally or purposefully be legally dead and not know about it. One young man went to a bank to get a loan but was refused because he was dead. People started to 'kill' their distant relatives so they could inherit any wealth they had. Being legally dead but still very much alive is a very intriguing state to be in. 

A comical image of a man reaching out of his own coffin, interesting and strong imagery.

TAGGING AND IMMORTALITY 

Tagging, where graffiti artists just write their alias on something, is a whole different game to street art, the aim of tagging is to get your name out there, to be everywhere for the longest. From my point of view this seems to be a way to make yourself immortal, to have left something behind despite people hating it, avoiding the monthly clean ups and the police is all part of it. Is it a cry for attention, a somewhat passive way of getting the attention of the older generation, look at us, you're fucking us over. Or is it someone's way of making themselves seem worth something, being able to escape into your tag. I like the idea about immortality the best, whether its worried about getting forgotten or leaving something behind to piss anti graffiti people off, tagging is a way of leaving a mark.

Tags on a black board

Tags on a door, leaving a mark

Tags covering a stolen piece of street furniture; domesticating the idea of the tag.

FILM RESEARCH: MEET JOE BLACK

This film took on an interestingly different approach to the character of Death, instead of being this skeleton figure, he does not actually exist in his own form, he assumes the body of dead people. In this film the main character is confronted by death however Death decides to follow him around, leaving him in this uneasy space between life and death: A LIMBO of sorts.

This is what death looks like in the film, a very non threatening, bleached hair Brad Pitt, it was interesting to see this almost child like behaviour from the most deadly man to have existed. I found this hidden darkness very interesting and will explore  hidden darkness as a theme as i go on.