Wistful Thinking - Weemoedig Denken

nl

Dit project verwijst naar het melancholische verlangen naar het verleden. Foto's en video's roepen collectief gedeelde herinneringen met impliciete verhalen op. Zelfontwikkelde zwart-wit beelden belichten nachtelijke buitenwijken. Elke foto probeert het schijnbaar alledaagse te transformeren en het vertrouwde om te keren. Video-grafisch werk, bestaande uit found-footage, kijkt speels terug naar het generieke als een ironische commentaar op het moderne en excessieve consumentisme, reflecterend op de sombere glamour van het postkapitalisme.

eng

This project refers to the melancholic longing for the past. Photos and videos collectively evoke shared memories with implicit stories. Self-developed black and white images highlight nighttime suburbs. Each photo attempts to transform the seemingly mundane and invert the familiar. Video-graphic work, consisting of found footage, playfully looks back at the generic as an ironic commentary on modern and excessive consumerism, reflecting on the gloomy glamor of post-capitalism.

info

When I was young, I occasionally spent the night with my grandparents, I asked: what are we going to do? While we were still watching some TV on the couch. They usually responded with: we're going to sleep in a bit, but sometimes they said, "We're going to “The White Ball". Naar het wit bal gaan (Rond den heerd : een leer- en leesblad voor alle lieden, 1890) is a saying that means to go to bed, the white sheet and white duvet symbolize a fictional place that appeals to the imagination. Sparking the imagination is what the night does to us, it transports us to another world that covers everyday life with its veil. The past is important to me.

At night I find peace and my creative mind can escape. The night offers me a dark studio to work with, which gives me a relaxing feeling because there is no sense of time anymore. You can forget many things when you start walking at night. The night and the promise of every secret it keeps under it’s veil are the pillars of what keeps night photography young and fresh for me. Every night is different, a different light, a different shadow. “Aside from often being night owls seeking relief from boring or stressful day jobs, night photographers are typically romantics, lured by the mystery and intrigue associated with night and darkness.” (Keimig, 2010). We all swim through an artificial light pond. This river extends worldwide. There is always an unexplored branch somewhere if you step, walk or swim far enough. You only do this fictional swimming when you focus on the light and how it falls in the dark. You swim from lantern after lantern caught by the radius of the light that falls. Making something with little is something that was sometimes given as a guideline by photography teachers. During the day this was about cropping and omitting elements. Usually, this means looking beyond the subject itself and framing something out of it, getting close to subjects with little information and conveying something. Without light this has a different twist, making something with little to see. Everything takes its time, which is why you don't necessarily have to go to the most lit parts of a city to get to an image. You can light up an entire room with a candle using a tripod if you have the time. Because as (Hamel, n.d.) simply says: “Night photography immediately solves a huge problem that you confront constantly in photography. That problem is being faced with ordinary scenes that just aren’t very interesting. If you take a picture of a building or a standard street scene during the day, it can be sort of dull. We are all used to seeing shots taken in the middle of the day. That same scene – shot at night – can be a really interesting photograph though.”

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The music genre that I practice is called Vaporwave, submerging out of electronic music and smooth jazz, deriving from the early 2010s. Vaporwave is a sample-based genre, using 80s, 90s and 00’s music such as elevator Muzak, commercial music or advert jingles. Through editing and altering corporate stock music to tell a different story, vaporwave directly pokes at the genericity and vapidity as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern excessive consumerism also reflecting on the dreary glamour of the late-stage, post-capitalism. (Fandom, n.d.) “Teletekst” is the artist’s name I adopted when I started making music some years ago. The name refers to a feature of cable television. It was a source of information and added text for hearing-impaired or deaf people. It started in 1980 but has seen a decrease in the years following its untimely demise in 2016. How I got to that point was through merely wanting to slow existing songs down. There exists an entire sub-genre of slowed down music. Search on YouTube “Michael Jackson – Human Nature slowed” and look at the many slowed versions of just one song. Having the power to control any vocal or instrument to express thoughts and emotions in a fairly easy way is liberating. “The ease with which someone with a BitTorrent client can now pirate an expensive DAW, (digital audio workstation) such as Ableton Live, enables anyone with a computer to produce amateur or perhaps professional-grade sampled music. Most DAWs come equipped with some kind of sampler, so the average DJ, producer, sound artist, or amateur can not only load an manipulate samples in a DAW butalso mix and master those tracks. The end result can be a professional-grade music track produced solely on a laptop by anyone.” (Tanner, 2016) Just as I approach photography by capturing something that is already there, for instance, a pair of slippers left out on a porch, I use sounds that already are present. I source this music by going through online music archives. Sometimes this can take hours to find the right sample. Sounds are abundant on the internet. Songs from the 90s especially caught my ear. The mixing of pop music reached its peak by then. It is also the era I was born in. The pop culture from that time acts as a continuous source of inspiration. And can be, through art, acceded and lived through. Art provides a pathway to access and experience a different reality. Albums like Palm Mall by 猫シ Corp provide the listener with the experience of walking through a mall in a lost nostalgic dream you never had. “This album was my introduction to vaporwave. The bright lights and endless stores of the palm mall drew me in and I never left.” (leave_a_message2021, 2014) The right sample holds a certain quality. Sometimes this can be a small portion of the song that when looped provides a soundscape. Other songs may provide multiple parts that speak to me. In this instance, I will use my music software to splice the sample or song into numerous fragments. These segments are then projected across the keyboard, enabling the user to play each part individually. This is a beautiful feeling. Using parts of the vocals and playing them as you would a piano is fun. “The artist starts with an opinion, he organizes the materials, from which and with which he draws, to the expression of that opinion, every material he employs has become significant of his emotion. The things have no longer their dead meaning but have become living parts of a coordination.” (Henri, 2007) I have viewed this practice as a musical therapy at times. Songs that have special feelings, when I use them,I feel better afterwards, I can leave that feeling behind now.