Was it Rauschenberg who covered his face in graphite and then pressed it to paper?

Extraction..

This project was about photographing myself in reflective surfaces, extracting everything outside the frame of the reflective surface with the intention of seeing how much could be told about my surroundings within the gaze of my camera and the reflective surface.

Photographs taken between 2007 - 2013.

Essence..

Project concerned with self-image and how often we learn to rely on an external third party to feed back to ourselves who we are instead of relying on our own internal thoughts and concerns about ourselves.

Photos taken between 2011 - 2013.

"What is the reality of things just as it is? It is the absence of essence. Unskilled persons whose eye of intelligence is obscured by the darkness of delusion conceive of an essence of things and then generate attachment and hostility with regard to them."

- Buddhapālita-mula-madhyamaka-vrtti

Conformity

Abbey Road

New York Beat Movie a.k.a Downtown 81 - Jean-Michel Basquiat

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq9DcCF-AGY

IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208993/

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_81


Basquiat Biography and links to Artworks: http://www.basquiatbiography.com/home

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968 / 1971) - William Greaves

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm from claudiapalma on Vimeo.

16mm colour.
Shot in 1967 around Central Park, N.Y.
Directed by William Greaves.

The Actor's Studio, if you haven't already heard about it, is a New York based acting and theatre school where the theories of Konstantin Stanislavski are taught in a workshop based with the aim of setting actors free from the outside pressures of performing to an audience and where their 'method' can be refined and worked upon. This is where actors could train amongst their peers in the dramatic art of what became known as 'The Method'.
Stanislavski was a Russian actor and stage director from the Moscow Art Theatre of which he was a founder. Stanislavski's own acting preparations took inspiration from psychology, in particular what interested him was the nineteeth century theatre movements of Realism and Naturalism which seeked to provide a truth to the character the actor was playing via certain things such as environment and psychological characteristics. In brief this was an ideal of 'living the character', not only costuming yourself as a character but also doing the things that character might have done if they were a real person. For example, if an actor was playing the role of a homeless person then not only authentically costuming themselves in the kind of clothes a homeless person would wear (or possibly even going as far to seek out clothing from homeless people to wear on stage) but also carrying out research specific to the role such as maybe spending a couple of nights on the streets, talking to homeless people and people / organisations who work with the homeless, entering the psychological mindset of what makes a person live on the streets, how they got there, perhaps also building a backstory about how the character became homeless and ended up where they did. This is what can prepare an actor to play a role authentically instead of an actor assuming and building up their own ideas of the character role which can sometimes bring to it their own prejudices which could detrimentally effect not only how one was to play the role but also the realism and natural flow of the dramatic production.

William Greaves is an award winning African American actor / writer / director / producer whose career started out in theatre and film after studying acting at the Actors Studio alongside classmates such as Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn. Becoming disillusioned with and tired of being cast as the stereotypical black subservient character which was prevalent in Hollywood during the 50's & 60's due to racist attitudes at the time, Greaves decided to take his career in to his own hands and after decamping to Canada to study at the National Film Board of Canada Greaves formed his own  production company which has gone on to make many award winning films and documentaries celebrating African American sports stars, celebrities, inspirational and historical characters. Greaves has also taught at the Actors Studio and is currently on the board of directors.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is an interesting film experiment in itself. It attempts to capture not only the background machinations involved in film making but also the interaction of crew and cast from rehearsal straight through to production wrap. As the film production progresses the crew themselves eventually arrive at the possibility that they are perhaps being filmed for a behind the scenes look at film making but Greaves throws a few interesting 'psychological' spanners in to the work and films their reactions to it as well as the progress of the production itself. The crew eventually decide that the director (Greaves) is maybe not what he seems and its interesting to watch their confused responses as everything is caught on camera. Who are the 'actors'? The cast or the crew? This is truly a film about a film about a film.

Buy the Region 1 dvd here: http://www.criterion.com/films/751-symbiopsychotaxiplasm


Links:

William Greaves Productions website: http://www.williamgreaves.com
William Greaves IMDb page: http://uk.imdb.com/name/nm0337348

History of the Actor's Studio: http://www.actors-studio.com/history/index.html
Konstantin Stanislavski [Wikipedia]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Stanislavski
Realism (theatre) [Wikipedia]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(theatre)
Naturalism (theatre) [Wikipedia]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(theatre)

Nilsson - Son of Schmilsson / Did Somebody Drop His mouse? (unfinished documentary)

Buy it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Son-Schmilsson-Harry-Nilsson/dp/B0045DO89W

Listen to samples here: http://www.last.fm/music/Harry+Nilsson/Son+Of+Schmilsson

Did Somebody Drop His mouse? is the Richard Perry (Nilsson's producer) unfinished music documentary shot on film during 1971 / 72 in London, about the making of Son Of Schmilsson.. featuring various characters involved in the making of the album as well as Nilsson himself. 

Best viewed as a curio / home movie footage rather than as a straight forward documentary. This upload (not mine) is obviously taken from a copy of a copy of a copy etc and is rather bad quality as the film maker intended to show it to a small private audience but obviously someones grabbed a copy of it somehow and ran off many pirated copies. Interesting viewing! Enjoy.. 

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Pt5:

Irving Norman - Social Surrealism

Irving Norman, The Bus, 1953.

For a few years now I have been totally digging Irving Norman's paintings and lithographs depicting what is called 'Social Surrealism'.

I suppose that instead of Socialist Realism (which is usually Soviet Russian or Communist in origin and usually depicts the struggles of ordinary everyday working folk or the extraordinary 'heros' that do the work of the Soviet states and are feted as inspirational human examples for their fellow workers to follow) Social Surrealism takes the idea and imagines what life or the human condition is like to the extreme, taking the hustle and bustle of city life and exaggerating and critically examining it. There are some similarities with Socialist Realism in that Norman portrays the opposite end of the same spectrum.

With some examples you see commuters on futuristic public transport packed in tight buses together almost like herds of cattle struggling for breath, monstrous figures with spikes coming out of them, foetus-looking humanoid creatures encased in shards of glass, and almost skeletal human figures leashed on chains by sharp angled oblong Military-type figures. Big structures feature; surreal industrial machinery, honeycombed lattices reminiscent of worker bee hives but re-imagined as human living conditions - the obvious impact of the environment on people. The range of colours used convey its message clearly, the power of the powdery blues and reds and vivid bright colours against black and grey - it's dark literally, political and very strong work.

I strongly urge you to check his work out further, Google him even, and perhaps buy the book of his work 'Dark Metropolis' too: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Metropolis-Irving-Normans-Surrealism/dp/1597140414

Irving Norman's website: http://www.irvingnorman.com

A Youtube video of an Irving Norman exhibition visit.

Ken Loach archive to be made available to the public - BFI

Interesting news! Director Ken Loach's archive of scripts, notebooks, research materials and papers associated with his film and television work are to be made available to the public at the BFI Rueben Library ( https://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/bfi-reuben-library ) at BFI Southbank in London. The archive is available to personal callers by appointment only. The first part of the archive is being released next week, and more of it will follow once it has been archived.

More information here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/ranked-filed-ken-loach-archive

The Ken Loach Film Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/kenloachfilms?feature=results_main


Cathy Come Home


Poor Cow