questions about relationships: in preparation with a tutorial with MW, i have been trying to distill some of the key questions that i have been recently working on. i guess i can boil it down to a series of questions around relationships related to myself and the landscape – relationships between landscape as image and bodily experience, between landscape as real, unreal (and romantic) and imagined, between landscape as an outer and inner experience and related to gender – between the optically and haptically framed landscape, far and near, still and moving.
materially: i have been exploring these questions through lens based media and continue to explore the lens as a point of contact between myself and the landscape. in fact, my contextual paper last year argued that as an embodied practice the lens is inherently gendered. recent experiments include completing landscape frames using print stills and moving video, some rough cut stop/go animations using photos and stencils, and some screen prints moving/smearing the the formal inked grids of image bitmaps. needless to say, i continue to collect material through the lens by going out and walking with my camera. and needless to say, these questions and areas of interest overlap each other and raise their head as i gather/work/research.
recap and statement: by way of a recap, i include a link to an article that was recently published in LandsEscape Art Review which includes an interview with me and images of my work …. hope i’m doing what i say i’m doing?
link to my work – page 30 onward
notes on my tutorial: the main items/questions discussed are as follows. materials: what materials do i use? the landscape as a material in space and time, the lens, still and moving image etc. position: where do i think i am at in relation to my work? on the cusp of starting into a new cycle of exploration. gender: where do i think gender is present in my work? through an embodied lens but am i still creating a distancing framing of the landscape which is patriarchal. are there ways i could create less distance – through breath, voice etc. is my recent ‘smearing’ bitmap printing related to the disruption of the patriarchal frame? could I be more experimental in this way? could I see my whole body as a lens – ‘my body the lens’? voice: where is the voice in my work? is it a feminist voice? it is important to keep sight of this voice and intention. have i ever considered recording my voice in the landscape? could the voice be the framing of the landscape rather/and/or the visual? what about recording ambient sounds? editing: what is my relationship to editing what i gather? i prefer to keep to a minimum and would rather retake than edit as a way of capturing in real space and time. is this to be more authentic? light: how do i relate to light? not sure but my work seems to show a movement towards light. being drawn: if I say I am drawn to the landscape, what does that mean? how, why? these questions are good to keep in focus. references: what references am i reading? female geographers and theory, film theory – address of the eye, touch etc. new references given. need to update my reading list bibliography.
references:
Daniel, N. [ed.] (2002) Broken Screen, Expanding the Image, Breaking the Narrative, 26 Conversations with Doug Aitken. New York: Distributed Art Publishers.
Griffin, S. (1978) Woman and Nature, The Roaring Inside Her.
https://www.luxonline.org.uk/ – LUX online archive on London Coop lens-based movement started in the 1960s.
elaine crowe 
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