Black and Blue - Carol Mavor (moments, and bruises as their symbol)

I picked up this sweet and lovely book from the college library after failing to find a copy of Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida. Mavor's text heavily references Barthes. The book's purpose seems to be exploring the markedness of people, things, etc, after some impact of history, life, or experience. An exploration of happening which is framed within the two colours, black and blue, predominantly here a symbol of bruising. The book is very visceral in it's exploration of this, and for that reason I like it very much. It feels like a very artistic work in itself, like mist in a book form. It has a lot of fascinating pictures too, and I like books with pictures.

Quotes:

"I was once an infant, without speech, marked by (a black and white) image from the womb."
- Introduction, First Things: Two Black and Blue Thoughts, pg. 2

"When I first watched A Patch of Blue I was a nine-year-old white girl enjoying the freedom of being just a little sick, of missing school, of drinking ginger ale in the morning and sucking on red, triangular-shaped, deliciously artificially flavored cough drops."
- Introduction, First Things: Two Black and Blue Thoughts, pg. 5

"One only needs to sink into the wistful longings of Proust: unalloyed blues of the azure sky, beryl blues of the ocean, and melancholic dusky sapphires of the midnight hours."
- Introduction, First Things: Two Black and Blue Thoughts, pg. 11

"Sometimes, between the time of the pain and when the bruise presents itself, we forget the injury. I am trying to not forget. Bruises are the before-time wounds of always-falling childhood and the after-time of growing old."
- Introduction, First Things: Two Black and Blue Thoughts, pg. 16.

"This moving image of three Icelandic children in 1965 wounds me. It bruises me with that Barthesian black-and-blue feeling of that which has been."
- Chapter 3, Happiness with a Long Piece of Black Leader: Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, pg. 81

"I am eight years old. The Chandelier Tree, with its hidden rings of time and its huge branches, like lamps that light the way to the past, has lived and will live far outside the parameters of my lifetime."
- Chapter 3, Happiness with a Long Piece of Black Leader: Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, pg. 109

"I remember the darkened classroom, the sound of the film moving through the sprockets of the reel, the constellation of bits of dust dancing in the projector's light (like a dandelion blown), the shock of seeing fellow students crying, even boys. Still, I can hear the words from the film, especially the bit about the atomic flowers."
- Chapter 4, "Summer Was inside the Marble": Alain Resnais's and Magurite Duras's Hiroshima mon amour, pg. 123

becoming paint

Continuing with my concentration on "the" "moment", I printed out these two sweet 'n' personal photos and I wanted to paint all over them. It's layering moments. A new comment on an old thing. I like altering the realness of photographs by physically tearing them or painting them. It rather creates a whole new realness. A new layer of personality and personal connection. V. special.

And as I have touched on before, the potentially over-personal comes into play here. The overshare that the internet makes too easy. I don't know if I'm being gross or beautiful.

bulk art / texture / moments

Wanted to be really scribbly like a child or someone in a rush. It's fun to use up materials and it feels (much like collaging, for its speed and method) cathartic, expressive. It feels really natural and probably does a lot for my mood. It seems diary-like too, in a way. My favourites here are the more scribbly, mad pages. The thoughtlessness of them.

Video collage, musical persona, and being the sum of your experiences

I always find collage quite cathartic, as it is a hurried slamming down of stuff that I have been in contact with. It's a quick, momentous collection of myself at a particular time. It's more odd and textural than a photograph, but it does the same thing in terms of capturing a moment. It's sort of like instead of capturing what I am or what I see at one time, it's capturing more of an abstract mood. It's more complex and chosen. It's a strange expression of my inner self. Things I don't even understand.
Everyone wishes to know who they really are, and ultimately that's impossible. We can never understand ourselves fully, but we still try. Collage combines an endless desire within me to know myself, with a delicious output / collection created hurriedly and alive.
Video collage carries all of these traits too, but possibly seems more involved with the addition of movement and sound. Following is a video of visuals for my band. The music is our own, but is a cover version (of Roxette).

They include snippets from films, adverts and video games I've been inspired by or interested in, or that made me laugh. There's a lot of Japanese content here too, which represents my exposure to and interest in Japanese media, I guess. This wasn't a conscious decision really. That's what I like about collages. For me, they are very spontaneous. At the same time they are expressive. I need to record and represent tiny moments. It's the most important thing in the world right now.

As these are visuals for a music video, the concept of the band persona, or my persona within that (?) are also relevant. We are partially constructing something here. It's a little more blurred than my purely personal collage.

artist: Hatti Rex (anonymity)

Who's anonymouses??????????????????????
Hatti Rex has pasted some anonymous internet comments onto old photographs. It is quite fun to imagine a lot of people from 1942 slagging each other off on the internet, giggling mischievously to themselves whilst listening to The Andrews Sisters and wearing clothes in the style of 1942.
Looking at these pictures with the captions added makes me wonder if these people were actually very rude. It's hard to tell by looking at someone but I bet they all were really nasty and made rude jokes about people's cooking when they had tried very hard and it was actually okay cooking anyway, not like on Come Dine With Me.
I think it's quite good to combine old and new things like this because it's easy to forget that people in the past were just like us except without the music of Usher and jumpers with Bart Simpson on them.

Images from hattirex.co.uk/Anonymity

Handwritten notes

(source unknown)

artist: Frederic Leighton

The Fisherman and the Syren

Flaming June

The Painter's Honeymoon

milky baby bodies bathing in light, sun on cheeks, elbows and muscles and cloth
touch my soft face, gimme a blanket, dunk me in waves of crystal swirling foam ahhhhhhh

Frederic Leighton did some really nice sunny paintings of sleepy, twisting humans. I find it hard to describe them because they make me feel all wonderful and fairy-like and cute and human. They make me think about being real and filled with blood and always moving and touching and feeling. I love bodies and I want to be a body and I am a body.

A text I sent recently said "It’s nice when light shines through people’s ears. I wish I was light shining through people’s ears." and that is exactly how I feel looking at these paintings. The light and the cloth and the water and the skin. All things given to me at once like a gift basket of beautiful existence.