FINAL PIECE

Today I shot my final piece. I have known for a while that my final piece was going to be my challenge of not touching males.

A lot earlier in the project I began tallying the amount of times I had physical connection with the opposite sex when in a situation which was obviously difficult to avoid. The tallies show that it is almost impossible to not have that physical connection and that it seems to be part of human life. Even in the interviews which I have done with those who keep the law the mention that in some situations it is impossible to avoid, therefore having that physical connection.

My video shows myself walking down a busy street and I avoid any human connection at all cost. Whilst shooting the video and avoiding people it made me feel bad for being so cautious knowing that I am not better then any one else and that human connection is a normal ritual of life. Maybe not having human connection, even the smallest amount can change a persons outlook on others around them.

Everyday life rituals such as getting on a busy tube is something that the majority of the capital does and therefore sort of brings us together. We all get on transport to go somewhere as we all have lives to live, we all have places to be and so we do it together.

I realise that this has gone off the topic of Judaism and I did not mean for that to happen, however it has become an interest and it is an issue which I want to carry on looking into. I want to keep on looking at the importance of physical connection and how it can make a person feel.

Screen shots of some of my journey videos

The videos which I have been shooting on my journeys are to show how difficult it is for a person to avoid the opposite sex. Travelling around London, home to 7,668,304 people is proving difficult to avoid people. It is something that is almost impossible showed my my current tally charts which I have been keeping.

The next video which I want to shoot will be of me avoiding the opposite sex.

IDEA

I have been thinking about the actual, literal meaning of shomar nagiah and from what I have learned, the word shomar means protector or guardian. I therefore have been thinking of ways that people could be protected from others. For example putting a cage around somebody or wrapping somebody up so they can not be recognised or touched.

I have also began to look at how I could show my final outcome which is my own challenge of myself not having physical connection in a certain situation. I am going to begin filming and taking photographs of this challenge to see how it will look.

Ideas and thoughts

I have been thinking a lot about Mara Alper's work. I like the fact that her documentaries involve dance and more performances. Although I don't think I can work a performance into my documentary at this point it is something I will think about for the future.

For now however, I know that for my final piece I want to show the challenge which I have more or less been doing since earlier on in the project. I have been thinking about how I could show it and was thinking about a video of myself or presenting the tally charts which I have been keeping when out in public about how many males I am touched by (by mistake). I will have to experiment with different ideas so I know which way will look the most successful.

Some of my tally charts below:

Screen shots of interview #1

I have interviewed two people who both follow the law of Shomar Nagiah and therefore do not touch the opposite sex. One of the girls was brought up keeping the law and the other took it upon herself at a later age which I think shows in their interviews (but maybe that is because I already know). I wanted to know what Shomar Nagiah actually meant, how it plays a part in their daily lives and if it is difficult to keep.

Sean Gallagher

Sean Gallagher is another documentary artist who I have been looking at. He documents with both video and photography and has therefore inspired me to look also into taking photographs of those people who I interview (alongside their interviews).

Research

video art and film between documentary and fiction

One-day Symposium Wednesday 9 June 2010 10.30-6pm Grimond Lecture Theatre 3 and Aphra Theatre

Speakers: Irit Rogoff (Goldsmith’s) and Jon Dovey (U. of West of England)

Panels with artists and academics: Adam Chodzko, Brian Dillon, Jeremy Millar, Lauren Wright, Sarah Turner, Elizabeth Cowie and Michael Newall.

The symposium addresses video and installation art that engages the social through combining techniques of documentary and fiction. In this context it also examines participation and reflexivity – approaches that are often important to such art. The distinction between fiction and non-fiction is one which emerged primarily in relation to literature and to journalism. However it was with the development of photography and later cinema that a specifically documentary project emerged, and which developed as a film-making practice in the 1920s and 1930s not only of social scientists, such as John Grierson, but also of artist film-makers, Hans Richter, Germaine Dulac, Joris Ivens, Humphrey Jennings, Luis Buñuel. It was a project influenced by both abstract art and surrealism and that reappears within conceptual art. But while many contemporary artists have a moving image practice where works ‘move between reality and fiction’ – indeed it is an oscillation that is now something of a cliché, which we as viewers can easily decode – this symposium addresses the question of why in an art work these transitions occur at a particular point in its temporal organisation. It asks: why, at particular moments in a work, does a document of the real become excessive such that it seeks a correcting truth of fiction as a ‘surreality’, or alternatively, why and when does a fictional work deploy the truth of documentary?

I have been researching information on documentaries, especially within art, to guide me through this medium which is new to me. I found the short text above from 2010 which was a talk at Kent University about video art and film between documentary and fiction. Although the passage has not given too much away it has made me think about vital points such as, at what point does a documentary become a documentary and not fiction?

I feel as if I need to create all relevant and truthful information and facts to create my documentary and to justify it as a true documentary and I need to use real sources, for example people who know what they are talking about.