14. Idea for Symposium presentation

I see the intention of this presentation not to tell about my work and approach, but to show it, to display it. Not to give an explanation, but a demonstration.

And not of the whole train of thoughts and big ideas behind them, but an example of my method in action, a peek into a larger body of the process.

Of course, this means the form is as important as the content, if not more. The relation between the what and the how could be pretty interesting here. Because if we think about the what not in terms of content but the raw material, and about the how as the method of working with that material, then that method is actually the point of the presentation. Or rather its point is to present the method. The how becomes the what.

Throughout the unit 2, no matter what topics I touched on, my actual material was ideas. I combined concepts together, overlapped them, challenged them with one another, arranged them into a train of thought. In essence, I designed with them. The produced visual material with time became a secondary matter. Not even a manifestation of what became of those combined statements, but rather a means to an end, since those ideas came to me along with reflections about the process.

On the other hand, one of the topics that resurfaced from the unit 1, from Elaborate, was the nature of perception. To be precise, its mechanism of putting observed fragments of reality together, like puzzles, and filling in the gaps between them, based on patterns, connections, associations. Creating a fiction that would explain the actual.

This process of patching separate pieces together into a perceived unity could also be something worth demonstrating as one of the areas of my interest.

Perhaps that’s why I thought about patching up a presentation from quotes. None of the words said would be mine – I would piece together bits of other people’s reflections into a possible to follow train of thought.

The visual side would be, again, secondary. The images can’t demonstrate exactly what the words say, but they could influence how they would be perceived.

It might also be interesting that I’m touching on a topic of a narrative, and at the same time the only way to make sense of what I’m saying is to link it together into a narrative.

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That idea makes me think (or perhaps it actually came from some far association in the back of my head) of a movie Painted with Words, a documentary about Vincent Van Gogh for which the main material was letters. The movie begins with words:

Nothing can be said about Van Gogh that he didn’t say himself. There are 902 letters here, the vast majority written to his younger brother Theo, who became his confidant and his lifeline. This is Vincent thinking aloud, taking us through his life step by step, documenting his struggles as an artist and as a man. It’s from these letters that this film is made. Using only Van Gogh’s words and those of the people around him. Nothing is imagined. Every word spoken is true.

This means that the para-documentary breathes new life into words written in letters through people giving account of the events in Van Gogh’s life to a camera, especially Van Gogh himself (performed here by Benedict Cumberbatch).

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