spring//wood//blurring//movement

one month (incomplete) from Bonnie Veblen on Vimeo.

hello again, after a several month absence. I have not been posting because I haven't known what to be writing or making for that matter, and I am finally working on editing a video that I would like to share. I have been taking photos//footage for the last few months but it has mostly been sitting on my hard drive as I collect and collect and collect images, not really knowing what they are for. Tonight I started making a video out of what I've taken in the last month here. I have been thinking a lot about blur--seeing and not seeing at the same time--and it is spring which is an apt time to be thinking about this, as wood energy rises and we all begin to move and vibrate after a long winter. It is a time for both blurring vision with such frenetic activity, as well as clearing vision as we birth and grow. There is a push and pull, a tension in the air, a vibrancy. Everything is pushing, pousser, growing out of its old self, birthing, always moving, even when we are still we are moving, moving.



In terms of how far along this video is, I would say, perhaps 35% overall. Visually, I would say it's 85% there, but I'm not exactly sure where it should end, whether here is far enough or if my most recent moon rising sequence and fully-leafed-out-silver-maple sequence should be in there, too. My most most recent things are not meant for this, they are something different, so it's a matter of sifting through, and trying a lot of options, per usual. Then there is sound, which is done in the same fashion--I am contemplating actually making some music by mixing and editing, and perhaps even covering some tracks I have been, admittedly, obsessively listening to lately (mostly from Trois Colours soundtracks, Rouge and Bleu, especially), because they are so full of the edginess that this time of year embodies. I expect it may end up being highly layered in parts and sparser in others--but these are just ideas.

My important questions right now are about how to end it visually. Do I leave things at a cusp, vibrating and then boom it's just over? Do I try to find rest, even a heightened energy state where it remains for a little bit?

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.

important words

follow the body. trust in the body.


let, let leave. laisser.

and I know it well.
hidden, all this is hidden.



and we were falling, too.


why am I so afraid to tell the stories for why these are important? maybe it's not about my stories. maybe I want you to connect them to your stories. because these aren't just about one story, they're about many stories. (they're so personal--and I'm not saying why, not giving specifics--and so they are universal). or something. I honestly don't know. I don't know what you are supposed to get out of them. I know they're important because they are where the weight lies.

bowing red blood onto a wall, a chicken with a head. without a head. she wasn't telling stories, either. a mark, a silhouette. traces left.

these are the traces I hold onto. how to make them speak?