intention statement

for my lungs video:

In this video, I go between two segments of video taken through my lung x-ray. The first is taken at a window and the second is taken outside, and these are joined by scenes of rushing and flowing water. In the first, I bring the body into conversation with its surroundings by seeing the landscape outside my window through the lung x-ray. In the second, I interject my body into the exterior world by holding my lung x-ray in front of me. In both lung segments, I both mirror and conflate interior and exterior by aligning bodily forms with those of the trees and the sound of wind with that of my breath. I also aim to conflate a sense of moving, breathing life with a sense of decay, mortality, and death. Through my video, I consider issues of inclosure and exposure--safety and vulnerability--as well as feeling unsure whether I am really alive or dead. I spoke in a quiet voice and whispers, so that my words are only partly understood in places, and the phrases that come out such as, "honestly don't know" and "hidden, all this is hidden" point towards fear and feeling unable to speak or communicate.

The water sequences in between are connected audibly by the sound of breathing meeting the rushing water and vice versa. I had intended the branches without and then with leaves, and another later that is being tossed to and fro, to be metaphors for what was happening to the entity who is speaking--having a tumultuous experience or feeling a sense of growth.

I am interested in seeing what would happen if I really push this towards being a cyclic narrative of growth, decay, death, and rebirth, but I know that this is not how the video is functioning now. Right now, in it's most basic sense, the video is a meditation on the body joining and reflecting it's surroundings as they move and change and how we insert ourselves into a place.



A quick note to end on (and not so quick because it means reshooting a bunch):
I think I should try loosing the hand, too on the second section. The act of inserting myself creates division between interior and exterior, and also is distracting from what I really want people to focus on, which is the light and trees as seen through my air tract and heart.

And then that just gave me another idea. Insertion in a place. I might try using the footage with my hand in Berlin in another video.

Oh no god damn. I missed the last tram.

final project (s?)

follow // fallow (final version) from Bonnie Veblen on Vimeo.

hidden // honestly don't know (another version) from Bonnie Veblen on Vimeo.

wind trees from Bonnie Veblen on Vimeo.

tree hands from Bonnie Veblen on Vimeo.

The truth is, I don't know which of these videos is my final project for this class because I'm just making them. They all have to do with process.I don't know which I will talk about in our critiques tomorrow, or maybe I don't need to talk about one of them but all of them. I feel like they need to be seen in relation to one another in some sort of way whether in sequence or in tandem because it seems that they are parts of a greater whole (a narrative, even? could I be making a narrative?).

Anyhow, here is my statement.

I don’t know where my body stops and the earth begins. There is only a blur. My eyes move; the trees move. We grow, branch, crack, split, decay. We grow again. Pushed by the wind, we speak in whispers, afraid we might say too much, afraid no one will hear.

I forget my body and the earth sometimes. I forget that I need soil, air, rushing water and the afternoon sun. I need to remember that my body is falling apart and coming together, that we're all falling apart and coming together. I make my videos and paintings to help remember.

In using photography, which is mechanically mediated, as well as language, which is personally mediated, I aim to validate the empirically existent as well as the poetic and personal, as reality. The shifting quality of my stop-motion videos is a result of the inevitable movement of my body—and my camera with it—as my eyes move through a space. Moving up close to far away, my eyes never rest for long; forms blur and reiterate one another. I see them again and again, attempting to understand and translate their physicality, growth and decay as they change through time. As a body of work, these visual and verbal fragments come together to form an experience where motion and stability—the sure and unsure—are conflated.

today

scary video. spooky. fear. I don't want to make people scared. but there is this thing. these things are here. the scary parts. I am finally going into the dark.

flat painting. it's just color. it's color.

right now.
it might change. things can change.

I am going down, going dark.


and I know it well.

(so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.)

lost it

why do we have to say things? I'm tired of saying things. Nothing has meaning. I can find no meaning. I am becoming numb. I am becoming dead.

she said because we want to make things that we enjoy. joy. joy. we make because it is enjoy joy joy.

joy joy joy enjoy joy joy.
I cannot enjoy joy joy. I do not want to speak. I am tired of speaking.

I don't want to not speak either.

I figured out how gerhard richter makes his abstract surfaces. mine is thin, big surprise; it could be thicker. back and forth. back and forth. it's all just back and forth. there is no meaning. I can find no meaning. I can find no meaning in leaves, branches, trees up close, far away. I can find no meaning in these because they're not real. None of this is real. In an instant, I have lost it all. I can find no meaning. There is no why. I am not those trees. I do know where I stop. I stop here.

go ahead. push paint back and forth. I'd like to go home now. I'd like to be quiet now. I'd like to not speak now. I want to go aware, go away.

why is it that I never can speak when I must? like now. I must do this. I must finish my videos. I must finish my paintings, push them. say them, make them. I don't know what I'm doing. Nothing has meaning. I can find no meaning. I honestly don't know.

she said this is the one thing that can save me. but I've lost it. I don't know where it went. it was there. in the water. I know where it was, but it's so far from here. I can't touch it. you can't touch it. I can't help you touch it. it's gone. I'm gone. I want to go aware, go away.