Assignment Five

Notes from the Tutor's video call

I drew many ideas to better focus on the work done in the assignment. In particular, how to group the two sets of images, what connotation to give to each set, and what references.

As for the first set, the images are evocative and the suggestion is not to link the images together, because each of them has its own narrative.

There are points in common (the presence of double and triple but also of art) and, in some images, the theme of life and death is recalled, just as we can refer to concepts such as vanitas and memento mori.

Even if the images are posed, narrative prevails and this is the logical thread that must bring out the selection.

I should look for more references, and some examples are cinematic, such as "Being John Malcovich" and "Primer".

As for the second set, the reference is to the performance and therefore I can look for further references in authors like Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, in films like "Shawshank Redemption" and some ideas of performance art that I should find on the Tate site.

It is necessary that I review the whole to give greater coherence to the set of images if I want to keep the choice of the two sets.

With reference to assignment 6, we thought it a good idea to build a document that summarizes my training path in this unit, my critical reflections, my personal evolution, my experiences.

Notes on Formative Feedback

The formative feedback from my Tutor stimulated me to re-analyze the two series and characterize them better.

For this purpose, he suggested the additional reference to other authors: in particular Kelli Connell for masterful use of digital cloning in "Double Life" and Hannah Starkey for the use of the mirror.

Beyond the techniques used, they contribute to a narrative that goes beyond the self-portrait and that instead recalls themes of identity as in my first series "Cloned Identities".

In the case of another suggestion, Anthony Goicolea, I find analogies with my second series in the performance within the image.

My Tutor made me also discover for the first time an artist with whom I immediately and surprisingly found an analogy: Anny Wass with "Me, Myself and I".

And I thought I had a new idea with the "Trapped" series ....

Assignment 5

As stated by the former advertising photographer and, later, artist Paolo Vegas (Italian) in an interview in 2014 (accessed on 15/11/2021):

"Today we all live in a world made up of stereotypes where Social Networks like Facebook reign, where maybe you have 500 friends but friends, the real ones, in real life, not even one. Today, unlike in the past, television is populated with formats that replicate the same successful program in all countries, for years a new program with particular characteristics has not been invented anymore. Most young people, especially teenagers, are all the same, they dress, talk and communicate in the same way. There is a stereotype in everything that surrounds us. Here is my concept, my idea of 'Cloning' through which to claim what is really real ".

1 Cloning Carol nine 90x112, 2013 (Photo ©Paolo Vegas), accessed on 15/11/2021.

I read these statements and realize that not only I do totally agree, but also that this artist’s statement describes part of the ideas in my following two series.

In Assignment 4, I had used cloning, starting from the doppelganger theme and arriving at the telling of a personal and family story.

In this subsequent work, I aim to state the supremacy of the real over the virtual, using the resources of the second in favour of the first.

The real in the constructed image

I like to think that digital tools are used to modify part of the content in a real context (the container), without compromising the original nature of the content itself.

In the digital age, what is the relationship between the photographic medium and the visual work of art? Does art still need the camera or can the camera be replaced by digital tools?

Hundreds of debates have flourished and rivers of words have been written on these questions: evidently, the destiny, from the beginning, of the photographic medium has been to be first questioned as a full-fledged component of the artistic sphere and then to be a candidate for the replacement by digital tools.

I firmly believe that the birth and propagation of new digital tools simply increase the number of choices available to the artist.

As for me, I will continue to use the camera with conviction, because my desire is and will always be to start from the real in my artistic work and I feel that the camera maintains the link between my visual work and reality.

I feel comfortable in thinking that the mere act of composing pieces of reality is a projection of my identity in the world: as a photographer, as a subject, or as both.

By consistently keeping this line of thinking and style, I don't mean to deny digital art or digital graphics: I simply intend not to use that language.

Following this line of thinking, I analyzed the work of a Swiss-born artist, Chantal Michel, who uses cloning as a component of her artistic work.

Michel, whose work is often related to the artistic current of pancalism, in her artworks, keeps a strong relationship between photographic image and reality, which I explored in a post.

2 Chantal Michel, Die Entauschten Seelen, 2014

(https://www.artsy.net/artwork/chantal-michel-die-entauschten-seelen, accessed on 12/11/2021)

Multiple identities

In a post, I started an analysis of the works of two artists, Martin Liebscher and Paul M. Smith.

The photographic works of Liebscher and Smith, although being different in meanings and contents, have something in common: both stimulate the curiosity of the viewer, who is induced to dwell on the story of every single clone.

Thus, multiple copies of the same identity, coming from different times, converge in a single image, creating multiple roles and telling multiple stories.

3 Martin Liebscher, Brain Institute, 2014, accessed on 11/11/2021

4 Paul M. Smith, Artist Rifles, 2011, accessed on 11/11 /2021

As already mentioned referring to the Formative Feedback, the notes of my Tutor and the artists he suggested as a further reference helped me to give a more defined profile to the two series.

Kelli Connell is an American artist who currently lives in Chicago. Her cloning technique is based on the creation of a digital image on a composite of multiple negatives of the same model in a single context.

According to the artist, the resulting tableaux does not represent identity in reality but is the result of a social and interior investigation that occurs within the mind.

Kelli Connell, "Pastime", from "Double Life"
https://www.kelliconnell.com/new-page-5
(accessed on 5/1/2022)

Kelli Connell, "Long Weekend", from "Double Life"
https://www.kelliconnell.com/new-page-5
(accessed on 5/1/2022)

The following work is a cameo in the artistic production of Hannah Starkey, Irish from Belfast.

In this image, I particularly love the lighting and the series of squares formed by the image itself, by the mirror, by the portions of windows, by the shelves and by the tables, which determine an aesthetically powerful composition.

In the image, a double-double is created, consisting of the two women and the reflection of one in the mirror. I find analogies in the images of my first series, that are related to the composition: I use sections created by the works of art on the walls, windows and architectural spirals, which balance the composition and host the human being.

Hannah Starkey, "Untitled" May 1997
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/starkey-untitled-may-1997-p78246
(accessed on 5/1/2021)

The work "Me, Myself and I" by Austrian artist Anny Wass, despite being a series of self-portraits, has an outward political message, inspired by the Chinese workers' movement in Central China.

Hence the choice to use the overalls as a stage outfit. I too, in my "Trapped" series, often used the overalls, but only for the staging.

Anny Wass, from "Me, Myself and I"
https://drasticsocial.wordpress.com/2020/02/02/vienna-art-me-myself-and-i-anny-wass/
(accessed on 5/1/2022)

I would also like to mention Wendy McMurdo, because in our culture, based on realism and rationalism, the concept of double or multiple identities awakens ancestral fears, suspicion and anxiety of the unknown.

Wendy McMurdo's work, particularly when she uses cloning techniques, is an interesting source of reflection.

Sheila Lawson, a Canadian artist, in her interview with Wendy McMurdo, introduces the topic of the negative meaning (discomfort and anxiety) in front of a representation, allowed by digital tools, of the multiple copies of a sitter. She cites films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Don Segal's The Body Snatchers (McMurdo interviewed by Sheila Lawson, 1995, accessed on 14/11/2021)

McMurdo states:

".... As you say the group pieces are anxiety-producing because, rationally, we know or believe that only one of us can exist. Freud’s text on the uncanny, written in 1919, is useful here. He attempts to describe the uncanny, defining it as arising from a number of fears or anxieties....."

First Series - Cloned Identities

Having involved other sitters and me, I cloned them in their environment, inside or outside their homes and workplaces.

In each image, the subjects are edited, cloned and recomposed in the real environment: this is my personal statement on digital identity, which I think and visualize in the subordinate relationship (content and container) with reality.