Exhibition Research: Autoportraits in Love-like Conditions - Qasim Riza Shaheen

Autoportraits in love-like conditions is a new body of work by Qasim Riza Shaheen produced over a year of travelling and spending time with family in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. It explores relationships and feelings between people and family and real/imagined connections that we experience. Shaheen presents a relationship with a person but does not disclose what the relationship entails or who they are. It was a really interesting exhibition, exploring how Shaheen reacted to the other person in silence. I decided to go and see this exhibitions before I was given the brief, just so it allowed me to think about how I would like my own work to look without being tied to a theme.

There were 2 galleries in the Cornerhouse, Manchester. Gallery 1 consisted of a closely curated series of 24 found images that is presented on aged paper, accompanied by calligraphic script. They give the impression of authenticity, the text says, but are actually an exercise in romantic artifice. There are also a selection of childhood photographs showing Shaheen, giving us an insight into his personal life and what has shaped him as an artist from his childhood. The videos were the most inspiring part of this exhibition for me, they were relatively simple with no cuts and lasted for about 20 minutes per cycle.

I have been inspired by the work of Shaheen because of the simple way the films have been shot. The models are just looking at the camera, for an undisclosed amount of time because the film is on a loop. I am not sure what my work is going to represent, but I would like to experiment with the stillness of someone being sat in front of the screen and the awkwardness that comes with it.

Briefing + Considerations

We received our briefing on our first project of the academic year, which is a moving image based project.

"You are required to produce a time based piece (between 80-240 seconds long), responding to the theme 'Stillness/memory'. Your work must feature audio, but this should not be a soundtrack. Your work must be contextually and critically engaged, and you must reflect upon choices made along the way, and why you have made them."

Upon reading this briefing, I am initially excited to produce my first moving image piece solo. I have worked alongside video producers on projects but never edited together my own video. The briefing MIS gave us a few quotes to think about regarding our research and work.

"I think that what makes a photograph so powerful is the fact that, as opposed to other forms, like video or motion pictures, it is about stillness. I think the reason a person becomes a photographer is because they want to take it all and compress it into one particular stillness. When you really want to say something to someone, you grab them, you hold them, you embrace them. Thats what happens in this still form." Joel-Peter Witkin (Photographer, b. 1939, Brooklyn, NY)

"My belief is that you should take stills of what doesn't seem to move, and take movies or videos of [what] does." Robert Polidori (Photographer, b. 1951, Montréal, Canada)

Upon reflecting of the briefing and the quotes provided I have been thinking about what stillness and memory I can incorporate into my work. I was recently watching the 30 Seconds to Mars video "Up in the Air" and loved the stillness and movement that was included in that video. I am going to include some research on certain music videos and short films that I find inspiring in terms of filming approaches, camera angles and editing techniques whilst trying to incorporate some of their ideas into my own work.

After the briefing I decided to look at a few books and quotes that related to video, especially stillness and motion. I was reading the introduction to " Slow Movies: Countering the Cinema of Action" by Ira Jaffe and found a really inspirational quote, "it is stillness that one may be said to find true speed". I think this is referencing the fact that just by using speed doesn't mean that you are going to create some amazing footage. Sometimes, stillness can be the source of creative filmmaking. He also discussed a number of different films which are slow by means of visual style and structure, such as Stranger Than Paradise by Jim Jarmusch and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu. I am going to try and find clips of these on Youtube, but may not be able to find any based on the fact they are foreign films and not very well known about.

(Jaffe, I., 2014, Slow Movies: Countering the Cinema of Action, Columbia University Press)