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Fun-Fatale
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An artistic reserch in, throughW∑ and out of cinema Critical review semester IV Yafit Taranto
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Contents ........................................................
p.09
First Dot: Attitude, subjectivity and intention ..................................
p.12
Second Dot: Vidding as a method and position
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p.16
Third Dot: Research question: death, life and everything inbetween ................................................................................................
p.30
Fourth Dot: Research - Fun Fatale .........................................................
p.36
Fifth Dot: Farewell death, my old friend
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p.46
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p.50
Seventh Dot: Sustainable Practice .......................................................
p.58
Eighth Dot: Nine points manifesto ......................................................
p.62
Epilogue: Springboard to freedom
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p.66
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p.68
Prologue: Connecting the dots
Sixth Dot: Expanded Cinema
Colophon
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Prologue
"When I was twenty years old, I read an interview with my favourite Israeli cookbook author. She confessed that for years, her life seemed like an incoherent ‘connect the dots’ game. She was a chemist by profession, as well as a Latin and French academic and was secretly writing short stories. When she turned forty, the dots finally connected. Being a chemist perfects her cooking, she uses French and Latin daily to find inspiration in old recipes and years of writing make her cookbooks pleasurable to read. I admired the beauty of her dot connecting process and had a vision of myself going through the same process one day. Twenty years later, here I am. Taking two years to review, research and investigate- in and through film- who I am as a maker and as a person. Now it's me hoping to connect the dots: the child waking up with a strong fear that "they are all dead"; the young critical, angry and passionate me that is taking photos, the sixteen years old making films and political pamphlets, chaining herself to the first McDonalds in Israel, on the grand opening day to get arrested; the frustrated graphic designer; the VJ that is fascinated with the way mass media uses and misuses beauty and the female body, the volunteer in elderly homes, the literature scholar that is investigating freedom within the existing apparatus, and last but not least the doodling school girl that wants to make her environment a better place.
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(preface to my blog's Master)
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And here I am now, twenty moons after I wrote the paragraph above. As this critical review is the last for the Master's trajectory, I want to critically overview the different layers of the process I went through, my findings and conclusions, as well as sketching the next steps I'll be taking after rounding off this trajectory. During the past two years, I indeed went through the process of connecting my dots. It started with my intention: creating a new sustainable artistic practice. Three years prior to entering the Master program, I retired from VJing after almost two decades. Somehow, I didn't seem to know how to authentically operate in the daylight, within the dominated framework of cinema. I also wasn't sure how I can merge, what at the time seemed like very different practices. A VJ by night, a serial scholar by day (I have three Master's degrees), a volunteer at elderly homes, unhappy graphic designer and an experimental moving images editor without film festival ambitions. It was, and still is, a core necessity to find a way to grant me a frame to work in and the necessary working conditions. When my aim was clear, I created change on a physical level turning my intention into daily habits and actions. These new routines gave inner space to research, exploration and experimentation. I will be writing about my new habits and practices in chapter seven. The new practice led me to co-creation with others. I consciously contemplated what it means to take part in a small community of the Master's program, a process I will elaborate on in chapter seven. The making itself was deeply changed by my new environment and behaviour. The next step was the dialogue with the material and re-encountering the world when exposing my work. My way of engaging with the spectator completely changed during the Master, I'll elaborate on that in the last three chapters. 10.
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First ; Attitude, subjectivity and intention
The following saying, which is one of my favourite phrases in the Hebrew language, guides me through the research process. This way of perceiving the world gravitates the responsibility to me and the present moment. It is a call for action and emancipation.
?אם אין אני לי מי לי? וכשאני לעצמי מה אני? ואם לא עכשיו אימתי Im ein ani li, mi li? U'kh'she'ani le'atzmi, mah ani? V'im lo 'akhshav, eimatai? If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? But when I am for myself, then what am "I"? And if not now, when? I have found this sentence to be a good trajectory guide; it helps me shift my responsibility from the outside world back into my hands." (First critical review)
It is important to trace and contextualize how this Hebrew sentence set me free. To understand it, I'll take you back to the moment when I finished high school in Israel at the age of seventeen. Refusing to be drafted for military service, I decided to follow a childhood idea. When I was twelve years old, somewhere at the beginning of the nineties, I read an article about the best prison in the world. At that time it was the “Bijlmerbajes” in Amsterdam. The inmates had their own cell, they could bring their pet and they even had their own TV.
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The idea that criminals lived in better conditions than me, was enchanting. I knew I would live in Amsterdam the second I would get to choose for myself. I moved to the Netherlands before my 18th birthday. People's reaction to this story is mainly confusion ‘Did you plan to become a criminal’? No, I didn’t. Years later I read Rosa Luxemburg's quote: “
Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter”
(Rosa Luxemburg)
As I understand it now, the way a society treats its outcasts is a mirror of that society as a whole. Years later I learned that the origin of the name “Bijlmerbajes” is Yiddish, as Bajes means 'a home'. This prison is now turned into a hotel and student housing. The Dutch government is trying to reduce the number of jails around the country as they realize that it is more effective to reintegrate inmates in society. The prison called me to the Netherlands and making art was my passion. At the age of almost eighteen, I went to study art at the Rietveld Academy. After the basic year, a year of having a lot of fun, trying different methods and media I decided to confirm myself and choose a 'serious study' with 'future job prospects'. I wanted to make art, but was afraid that I would not be able to support myself. A nightmarish thought for a freedom seeker, so I went to study graphic design. It turned out I hated every minute of straight lines and equal spacing. But I encouraged myself with the thought that I had only 2,5 years to go until the end of the study. Just 27 months, just 26 months and three weeks and a day.
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The days passed slow, but I finally made it. Only after my graduation at the age of twenty one, it dawned on me: now that I finished my proper education, the rest of my life will consist of rasters and straight lines. Manipulating people with beautiful images to buy toilet paper was my first assignment at the commercial agency. Three months after working for an agency, I decided to let the straight lines disappear along with the ambitions of a career, fitting in and making money. I became VJ Tarantula by night and an eternal student by day. The combination meant freedom; at university, I could keep on researching the topics of my interests while hustling images as my creative expression. I was not at the mercy of art critics and art galleriesas the nightlife does not convey to the rules of daily life. But after 16 years of nightlife, this freedom became a prison. I hardly saw daylight, and encountered mostly drunk people. My work was assembled from bits and pieces of one long night. I was ready to engage with the other world again, to search what it meant to me to be free within society. At that time I was asked by the Van Gogh museum to VJ during the Friday evenings. My canvas consisted of two huge walls, 16 meters wide to translate Van Gogh’s paintings into contemporary themes. I got more opportunities to make films and animations. Instead of freedom, I found boredom. Long meetings with the marketing department, education department, online marketing and programmers talking about strategies of manipulation. If I learned one thing studying graphic design for three years, it was not to compromise on boredom. So at the age of 39, I took two years off to redefine my practice. There is an urban legend that the Film Academy building was designed by a prison architect. Hence, the narrow halls, panopticon design and viewless roof terrace. I amuse myself with the thought that once again, I went to prison to find freedom.
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Second ; Vidding as a Method and positioining One of my main concerns until recently was my position as a maker towards society and cinema in particular. Where do I enter "in and through cinema"? In the first semester's critical review, I reflected upon my VJ -practice as a strategy to keep creating while operating outside of the dominating art discourse( Book 01 p.02). When I recently came across the 'Vidding' phenomenon, I felt a strong connection to the vidders strategies, aesthetics and operating form. In her article "An Editing Room of One's Own: Vidding as Women's Work" Francesca Coppa explains what Vidding is: "Vidding is a grassroots art form in which fans reedit television or film into videos called "vids" or "Fanvids". A form of video production overwhelmingly dominated by women, vidding is also one of the oldest ongoing forms of remix." (Francesca Coppa)
Coppa explains Vidding as a form of "in-kind media criticism: a visual essay on a visual source". Unlike music videos that illustrate songs, vidding gives the spectator a different read on the video that represents it and mass media in general. When I read Coppa's article my position towards VJing fell into place.
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"Vidding is an art form that happens through editing- a field historically open to women, as it was thought to be related to sewing. In the case of vidding, editing is not just about bringing images together; it is also about taking mass-media
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images apart. A vidder learns to watch television and movies fetishistically, for parts; to look for patterns against the flow of narrative structure; to slice desire images out of the larger whole." (Francesca Coppa)
My way of watching TV and films resembles a surgeon; at times ignoring the patient as human, focusing mainly on the body parts. Searching for images that call my attention and desires. During those long nights VJing, I was exploring the way women were presented in mass media. Bringing female characters that were usually functioning as a backdrop into the frame. I was isolating these characters from the original narrative, cutting their physical backgrounds, bringing them to the front of the frame and sewing them into my own world. "What a vidder cuts out can be just as important as what she chooses to include. Entire characters and subplots can be eliminated or marginalized, so that the vid asserts own narrative values. [...] This customization of the visual text is particularly important for women and people of color, who often find their desires marginalized. In vidding, their priorities are central."
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(Francesca Coppa)
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In the first critical review, I explained my desire to keep telling my stories through assembling found footage: I could not stop creating personal work, I found ways to continue doing what I must do, but on my own terms. I exposed my deepest secrets on the screen; texts from my diary, made adaptations of films- using its heroines as the protagonists in my own story. My work had no beginning nor end; it had no logic or chronology. It was a 17,664 hours night. A night never painted black but filled with projections of women layered on more recordings of beautiful women."
(Critical Review, first semester p. 03)
The vidders choose to remain invisible, just as I was as at the time. Yet, we have the power to tear films and other media products apart for our own pleasure and as a critical, political act. Our control lies in the editing, including and, even more powerfully, excluding video footage.
"The powerful invisibility of the video editor- and the pleasurable invisibility of the vid spectator to whose sensibility footage has been tailored-comes as a welcome change from the pain of objectification and identification"
(Francesca Coppa)
Vidding is initially a female practice and also popular in the gay community (especially in the lesbian community), as it offers "reading against the grain", away from the dominant point of view.
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My practice focused on female repositioning. Cutting out the female protagonists, marginalized in the original text, to finally grant them the spotlights. It gave me the chance to engage, play and talk to them, myself and the audience. Here is a short compilation of VJ work: https://vimeo.com/240365473
"Revisiting my past work was a journey full of surprises. To my great delight, I found out that I was not as oblivious to the world around me as I thought I was. The Post- Research workshop helped me realise that I was in a constant dialogue with other makers and thinkers (see blogpost). I held a discourse not only at the university but also on the screen. My discussions took place in the realms of aesthetics, the female body, the female gaze and the limited possibilities of authenticity being a woman. I used commercials, films and media fragments to hold up a mirror to society."
(Critical Review, first semester p. 03)
This way of "sewing" the material gives footage a new'Lo-Fi' existence. The first vidding was done by Kandy Fong in 1975, she was performing the vidding with two slide projectors to make the live editing quicker. When VCR was commercially available, vidding was done by two videorecorders, one for playing and the other for recording. The technical challenges in this workflow were incredible. The video layer was edited first and only later the music track was added, hence the syncing is a true craftwork. Digital media possibilities make vidding much simpler technically. 'Gleaning' the material became easier, as well as the editing and the sharing of it. 22.
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The analogue age was technically challenging for me as well. Before the year 2000, I was still VJing with VHS videotapes. I had 200 VHS tapes laying around my desk. I needed to find the right tape on the spot, never knowing what music the DJ will play next. For the live mixing, I used a Panasonic MX50 video mixer permitting me to remix live recorded footage from TV and DVD. With the new millennium, new technology was developed. The first VJ program "Resolume", a powerful tool for 'live' mixing, made my workflow so much easier. Resembling Photoshop it can mix three layers of videos live. It enabled me to feed the DJ audio into the program and make the footage react to the music. Let's not forget that my vast footage collection now fitted on a 20x40 cm hard drive. Resembling the Fanvids, I too was using footage of the films, series and music videos I admired. The venue and the type of music being played, of course, had an influence on the footage I used. The music at the Melkweg on a Saturday night (where I held a weekly residency for 16 years) consisted mainly of pop music. That is also the reason I can relate my VJ-practice with Vidding. I also offered new readings to the played songs and used footage, the only difference is that I was vidding an average of 160 songs per session. As VJ Tarantula, I was sitting on the sewing machine creating a tapestry of videos. My practice was to take the different footage-fabrics and sew them 'live' in front of the audience. I embroidered a huge video-rug during my 17,664 hours night. The action of cutting, weaving together often juxtaposing, gave me a sense of power and freedom. While doing that, I was telling my stories and at the same time the narrative of the society I live in.
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Third ; Research question-Life and Death (and Everything in Between) Last Kiss of the Tarantula For (s)he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.” (Oscar Wilde) My surname is shared with a place, a spider, a dance and a Hollywood director that almost killed his muse in a car while shooting a trilogy. My VJ name was VJ Tarantula, as my surname is Taranto. It is also a gulf in southern Italy where the Tarantella is originated. The Tarantella (the dance of the spider) was traced back to the 14th and 15th century where the outbreak of the 'tantaism' epidemic started in the region of Taranto and slowly spreaded to other parts of Italy. "According to legend, once bitten by a tarantula, the victim, referred to as the tarantata — who was almost always a woman of lower status — would fall into a fit in which she was plagued by heightened excitability and restlessness. Eventually, she would succumb to the condition and die. The only cure, it seemed, was to engage in the frenzied dancing ritual of the Tarantella. Townspeople would surround the tarantata while musicians would play instruments such as mandolins, guitars, and tambourines in different tempos in search of the correct healing rhythm. Each varied beat would affect the tarantata, leading her to move in erratic ways in line with the tempo. Once 30.
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the correct rhythm was found, the victim — dancing the Tarantella alone until exhausted — was thought to be cured, having “sweated out” the venom!" It is curious to notice, that the Tarantula spider miraculously attacked only women of the lower class and the only remedy for this dangerous situation was to gather musicians with the rest of the village and to dance ecstatically. I dare to conclude that the' Tantaism' was merely a medical excuse for legitimising women to dance their sorrow away. My initial research question 'Death as a Teacher' was about death and the need to view death through a new narrative lens (see book 02 p.18). I am closing the circle with questions about freedom. As I understand it now, like the bite of the Tarantula, the desire to get to terms with death was a call to emancipate myself from its dread. Death is an old friend, my first panic attacks took place at the age of eight. I woke up every morning in terror, knowing that "they are all dead". Years later when I volunteered at retirement homes, it struck me that even 92-year-olds were ignoring death. I thought that through engaging with death in an empowering discourse, I could learn how to live more meaningfully. Death perhaps could become a teacher for life. As Emily Dickson wrote: 'That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.' The camera and sound were my initial tools to research my hypothesis and later communicate my findings. During the first year, I was working on what first seemed like two contradictory aesthetical and philosophical notions: sublimation and Wabi-Sabi. (read book 01 p.10 second alinea) 31.
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Sublimation is a metamorphosis of bringing the mundane to a higher realm. In the arts, sublimation is done mostly through aestheticisation. Wabi-sabi is a Japanese Philosophy that acknowledges that nothing is perfect, finished or forever. It's an aesthetic that rejects the sublime and embraces the imperfect; a clear example can be found in the practice of Kintsugi. You can read about the practice of Kintsugi in my blog: http://blog.yafittaranto.com/my-guiding-principles/ During the summer and the third semester, I put my conceptual notions to the test and interviewed various people about their experiences with death from personal to professional perspectives. And most importantly I chose three women that became my muses. Anneliese Wolf, a 73 year old photographer, who hitchhiked to India in the sixties. My grandmother, Mathilde Mayers, approaching her 100th birthday, who married seven husbands in her lifetime. And Merel Westermann, born in 1967, who worked as a midwife and switched careers to become an undertaker. While working with these three women, I experienced a shift in the mode of making. At first, I wanted them to instrumentalise my idea of "Death as a Teacher". I hoped they would teach me how to grow older and die in a culture that glorifies youth. Neither Merel, Anneliese nor my grandmother was responding the way I expected as a director. Neither of them approached death as a contrast to life. Mathilde Mayers Mathilde, my grandmother, is in limbo between life and death. Last September I was summoned to Israel by my family, worried she had few days to live. I went to say goodbye and took my camera with me. I wanted to look closely at my beloved one on her death bed. 32.
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https://vimeo.com/manage/299934485/general
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Reviewing the material later, I didn't see death or sublimation. However, I did notice that my grandmother was getting fed by Judy, a woman from the Philippines. Judy has been living with my grandmother 24/7. She gets Sundays off, but she often stays to work for extra money. She sends her salary to her daughter and husband back home. In the past eight years, Judy saw her daughter only once. When she left the daughter was nine years old.
Anneliese Wolf When I first asked Anneliese how she relates to death, she replied that she thinks about "now", death will come later. A few weeks later when I came for a visit, I saw two folders on the table titled: "Op Weg naar het Einde" (on the road to the end), also the title of a Dutch classic by Gerard Reve. On the folders were two sets of keys to her apartment and instructions in case of her final departure.
When I viewed the material I saw my grandmother in the middle of the frame, slowly detaching from life, while in the audio oridinairy life is evolving all around her.
https://vimeo.com/manage/272846419/general
My uncle speaks of a Romanian woman he met on Facebook; she was supposed to come and stay with him. He talks about money, cars, vacations and women. I noticed that every time my uncle speaks, Judy gives him a hateful look (00:23). It turned out that he is trying to get her to marry him. His plans are not very romantic: he wants her to take care of him free of charge, one of the perks of marriage (I won't mention other perks he has in mind). In the editing room, I could suddenly read a typical family situation, otherwise opaque. In 01:49 minutes of roughly edited film I traced at least two cases of female deprivation. If I remain faithful to the footage I shot, it reveals a state that is far from sublimation. Eight months later Mathilde still refuses to die, though she is mainly dwelling on the bridge between life and death.
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Anneliese explained that after she took care of the practical side of her death, she can go back to the now and not worry about death anymore.
Merel Westermann Merel's perception of death is also rooted in the present. She explains in the interview that the most intense moments in life are the period after giving birth and the period after bereavement. She is somehow simultaneously pragmatic and spiritual about the subject. https://vimeo.com/manage/303686457/general
While approaching my archives with a researcher's mindset, I could actually see the material unfold in front of me instead of merely trying to reproduce my own thoughts. When I took a closer and unbiased look at the material I gathered during these two years, I didn't see sublimation or learn about death. What was revealed to me were women attempting to free themselves within the system. This shift in the mood of making made me curious about my muse's past, I wanted to dig deeper and find out more about them. 35.
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Fourth ; Research - Fun Fatale Mathilde is becoming a centenarian this June. Born in 1919, a year after WWI in Palestine, she was forced to marry at the age of fourteen. After a couple of attempts to run back to her parent's house, she finally understood how the system worked. Instead of running away to her parents in Jerusalem, she escaped to 'Eden Cinema'. The first cinema of Tel Aviv exposed her to an image of a different kind of woman. A temptress, a"man-eater", femme fatale - a woman that chooses her own path and does not commit herself to anyone or anywhere. She made it her vocation to become a banker's wife, though never trusting the banking system. She married seven times and had countless affairs, always kept on flirting as a remedy for sadness, longevity and control of her own life. She made sure to hurt the system that caused her pain where it hurts the most. There is nothing more scary for the patriarchal order than raising a child that is not biologically yours, under false pretences, inheriting your money and property. Mind you, bankers do not enjoy giving money to strangers. An interesting fact to notice; my grandmother, mother and myself were disinherited by our fathers. I guess that that's the price you have to pay for disobeying. Macabrically, all three of them, were named Jacob (Ya'akov).
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As a girl, I learned to reject pleasure and to associate it with guilt, shame and repulsion. Paradoxically, even my grandmother that was herself led by pleasure (at least from the outside) enforced the patriarchal regime. She caught me playing doctor and patient with my friend when I was about 5 years old. She was furious and told me that if I kept on doing such horrible things, blood would come out of my private parts until I'll bleed to death. Can you imagine how scared I was when I got my first period?
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Female pleasure is risky business in a male society where possession is a core value. According to Biological Anthropologist Helen Fisher, it became a threat from the moment humanity turned into an agricultural society. In her book 'The Sex Contract – The Evolution of Human Behavior', she states: "Women's worst invention was the plough. With the beginning of plough agriculture, men's role became extremely powerful. Women lost their ancient jobs as collectors." (Helen Fisher) Fisher explains that in the hunter-gatherer society women had an equal role. About 90% of the food was collected by women and children. Hunting was done by males on special occasions, while gathering women were free to roam and had several sexual partners. With the invention of the plough, physical strength became important. Women were domesticated and lost their freedom to move, now they were seen as a possession. With the new logic of the feeding system came a way of thinking and acting: the most important value in agricultural society is to pass on land from father to son. Female pleasure, therefore, was perceived as a threat. If a woman follows her desires, you never know who is the father of that son that ploughs the fields. If the theory of Fisher is correct, female pleasure was denied for 10,000 years. We were not allowed to choose our partner, our playmates, our destiny. We couldn't have possession but were possession ourselves. We could not dance (we had to pretend to be bitten by a spider to take a spin). We were not allowed to sing; according to the Jewish Talmod ", a woman's voice is her vagina" therefore women were prohibited to sing, in extreme situations even to have their voice heard. 38.
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Luckily, with the coming of industrialisation, women came back to the workforce. The 'Spinning Jenny' was invented in 1764, this machine spins more than one ball of yarn or thread at a time, making it easier and faster to make cloth. It is one of the first machines that spurred the industrial revolution. It is interesting to notice that the word 'spinster' (an unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage) shares an etymological root with the Spinning Jenny. Unmarried women could support themselves without a man, working as spinsters. This invention granted women to stay single, whether by choice or by force. Fun, pleasure and sexuality are, therefore, fatal for a woman in the patriarchal society. While writing these lines, I ponder upon my plea, wondering if it's outdated. The feminist revolution took place forty years ago, our society is no longer agrarian, as machines took over manpower. Yet, when I talk to women of all ages I clearly see we are still programmed to physically deny pleasure. I notice my dismissive behaviour at times and wonder about my inner restrictions when it comes to gender programming. It is not surprising that the women I am interested in, turned out to be what I call "Fun-Fatale", using a subordinate attitude to take back control over their lives. Leading lives designed by themselves, within the dominated system.
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My second "Fun-Fatale" muse is Annaliese. She was born in 1946, a child of her time, the so-called baby boomers. Anneliese travelled to India from Amsterdam, hitchhiking through Pakistan at the age of 17. Later she squatted an island with two men and a goat. Then moved to Berlin in the early eighties, living in a commune. She lost her job as a social worker at the psychiatric hospital for smoking weed with a patient. Anneliese rejected the order of things and learned how to live in the margins of society with very little money. She used her camera to navigate her world.
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Anneliese has an extensive photo and video archive, which she permitted me to use. She used her camera for pleasure; beauty gives her fulfilment, in turn, browsing and editing her images gives me fulfilment. Then, there is me, I freely exiled from the male order of things, such as my fatherland and the army of that land, migrating to a place where being jailed seemed to offer more freedom. I became a Fun Fatale as well, guided by pleasure; spending my days studying for fun and my nights working as an image pusher sipping cocktails. However, when I started the master I decided to give up the pleasures that didn't serve me anymore and focus on a more substantial existence. Nevertheless, I insist to design this new life and I am determined to include pleasure and fun into my practice. Though my initial contact with my third muse, Merel Westermann was during the nightlife, she represents another way of emancipation. She took part in two feminine movements: natural birth and natural death. Merel was a midwife for twenty years and changed her vocation to become an undertaker about fifteen years ago. Natural childbirth became popular in the seventies with the idea that giving birth is as natural as anything gets, therefore, it should not be institutionalized. Around the same time hospices and palliative care widely spread in the Western world. The voices of this movement were mainly feminine such as the 1969 bestseller by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: "On Death and Dying". In her book Kubler-Ross states: “We live in a very particular death-denying society. We isolate both the dying and the old, and it serves a purpose. They are reminders of our own mortality. We should not institutionalize people. 42.
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We can give families more help with home care and visiting nurses, giving the families and the patients the spiritual, emotional, and financial help in order to facilitate the final care at home.� (Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)
My research that started with questions about new death narratives in a non-religious society is now revolving around narratives of Fun Fatales as examples for modes of freedom within the patriarchal order. For my project "Through the eye of the needle" I will weave these personal stories into a tapestry of narratives and images about women over the course of a hundred years. My grandmother, who is still alive, chose her own way of practising freedom, so did Anneliese, Merel and myself. It is a project about modes of freedom in a given time and place in history (their stories). If Mathilde would have been born in Anneliese's time, I assume she would have joined the flower power movement (one of her many mottos was: "wear more sex and put a flower in your hair"). The research and the project revolve around the freedom to keep on seeking, changing and evolving.
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Fifth ; Farewell death, my old friend The research about death led me to life and questions about freedom. Yet, I still felt that I needed to gain a deeper understanding of death. My favourite way of learning is by experiencing. I wanted to face the fears that led me to choose this path of research. To have a tangible sensation of death. I asked Branka Zgonjanin, a friend and performer, to help me rehearse my demise. We invited my dear ones to attend my funeral and resurrection. "In shamanic practices, death is seen as a powerful tool to for transformation, same like in alchemy. Yafit Taranto wants to die to release herself from her fear and her old self. With this performance-ritual I propose another view on death. What if death is a lack of ones’ self-importance? What if surrounded by arms of death we learn how to marvel a gem of true life? What if death is a blacksmith of our new transformation witch-prop and fastforward of our human evolution? What if Yafit dies happily and rebirths herself (w)holy? What kind of life awaits?" (Yafit's Obituary, Branka Zgonjanin)
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During the ritual performance, I was buried in the ground for twentyone minutes. I went through a process of mentally melting into the earth, letting my identity dissolve through meditation. I must admit that though being very frightened beforehand, the physical sensations were rather pleasant. I felt very quiet and peaceful surrounded by earth on a sunny day. The burial and resurrection symbolize finishing the phase of researching death and entering into a new phase of exploration.
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My intention is to become a ceremonial/performance host, giving workshops revolving around death and dying. These workshops can give people a chance to get acquainted with death. I feel that this is a project in itself that I want to develop slowly over the course of a year, before opening it to the public.
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Sixth ; Expanded Cinema During the Master, I experimented with the cinematic frame and the way I want to engage with the spectator. I wish the encounter to become a meeting point, a space where dialogue can exist. My experiments were initially situated during the presentations of the exams in the form of performance. The past three exams brought me closer to the spectator and away from the conventional cinematic experience. During the first presentation, 'I came out of my artistic closet' and revealed myself, the maker, to the spectator. I used the screen of the cinema as the backdrop for my appearance. For my next exam, I realised a long time dream to 'VJ with drums', using an electric drum that steers video footage. I transformed the cinema into a music lab, full of sound equipment, again the screen was only part of the performance. According to the Tate Modern, Expanded Cinema aims to make the relationship between the spectator and the screen active. It fights the notion of the audience as a passive receiver of cinema. It emerged in the 1960s and operated between the arts and pop sub-culture. According to Julian Ross, a researcher of the subject, Expanded Cinema treats audiovisual projections as an event or performance and rethinks the space of the exhibition. Often it refocuses attention on the cinematic apparatus. According to Ross, the Expanded Cinema operates against the industrial framework of cinema. It provokes the possibilities of chance, 'happy accidents' and has a 'one-off' quality. 50.
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For the third exam, I invited the examiners to a Four O'clock tea and biscuits ceremony- a tribute to the Wednesday afternoons at my grandmother's. The liveness of the performance, the nowness and especially the intimacy with the spectators provide fertile soil to my work. Reflecting upon the work I made over the past two years, it becomes evident that the most exciting moments were during live performances. My intention in entering the program was to find a new position in the world of cinema, but the pleasure of the practice led me back to what I enjoy doing. The liveness and nowness of a live performance is the space I operate in. The essential difference from VJing is that I take a clear position as a maker and I now operate consciously, aware of my subjectivity. As a result of this understanding, I started making a monthly performance, co-creating with the choreographer Branka Zgonjanin. "Stolen Pleasures" is an audiovisual dance performance taking place anywhere but in the theatre. We performed in a construction site, a parking lot and so on. Besides activating our audience, this frees us from the constraints of theatres and programmers. We curate our audience; inviting a small number of carefully selected people. My workflow is based on an ongoing process, resembling the VJ workflow. While VJing, each session was a continuation of the last set; I used the same materials while adding new footage. Each live set was affected by the music, the public and the aspect of liveness of the performance. The linear time framework of the cinema is deconstructed, as the work has no beginning nor end. It is genuinely work in process as I am editing live in front of the audience.
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When I exhibited in theatres and museums, I often felt that the end result was merely a starting point. The opening night was the point where the different aspects of the performance finally came together and often the only occasion for a presentation. I was never satisfied with the workflow; by the time I was ready to play the game had already finished. Therefore the performance with Branka is based on the principle of continuation and addition. We prepare the elements but each performance we create a new dialogue. When a conversation with the public occurs, we later integrate it in our next event. Engaging with the public in the context of expanded cinema fits in very well with the VJ tradition. Curating the spectators is also a form of collecting, sewing different patches together. The conscious choice over the power of visibility is shared with the vidding community. This workflow and context permit me mobility and freedom. Therefore, the results of the 'Fun-Fatal' research and the 'Through the Eye of the Needle' performance is not a film you can simply watch on Vimeo. It is a lecture-performance we will be sharing together very soon.
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Seventh ; Working Conditions A holistic approach to making and exposing Now my time for change has come. After living during the night for twenty years, I decided to devote myself to the morning. The past two years, I woke up at 06:30, meditated, exercised, read and wrote. By 8:30 I was ready to start the rest of the day. I gave up drinking, smoking and playing American pool. I have been exploring the influence lifestyle and working conditions have on my work. A 126 days ago, I added an ice-cold shower to my regime as a way of training endurance and overcoming the fear of the 'most- unpleasurable'. I understood that by welcoming uncomfortable situations I free myself from their regime. As being in the comfort zone took a heavy toll on me. You can read more about that process in the first semester's critical review (book 01 p.08). Working conditions form the basis of a sustainable practice. During the past two years, I made it my practice to contribute to the all-round research environment. Creating pleasurable conditions means 'holding space', for myself and the people I work with. It is just as important as the work itself. I started with small gestures such as having plants, flowers, tea and fruits for us to share. I continued creating a cosy working environment in the editing room and the classrooms. Finally, I also learned new ways to communicate and solve problems: in the past year, I took a 12 week course of non-violent communication. In addition, I am following a one year course to become a guide during ceremonies and rituals.
A simple example; while working in the editing suite, an alumnus comes in. We sat for half an hour; I presented her my Visual Abstract. We discussed it, and she offered me advice based on her experience making the Visual Abstract last year. One thing led to another, and I asked her to shoot my next performance. I have these kinds of encounters daily. Small miracles occur when I am here. Being part of a small community of artists that inspire, support and work with each other and individually turn out to be a powerful tool. Therefore, I was one of the initiators of an artist guild named WIP (Work In Progress). We are six artists from different fields, and we are meeting on Sundays to show each other's artistic developments (and setbacks). I co-created during the master with all of them. From my experience of the past two years, I understand that being physically in a shared space is essential for my artistic practice. We are therefore searching for a studio together. After graduation, we will form a foundation to continue to sustain our activities. It was through giving presentations for the exam each semester that I understood that I prefer engagement with the spectator in a performance form. The presence of the audience is a part of the working process. The spectators are also collaborators, the dialogue with them help the process of making. The work grows organically, resembling breathing. I inhale as I go into the studio, then exhale as I explore during the performance. After the performance I have a feedback session with the audience, inhaling their impressions. I go back to the studio incorporating what I experienced and discussed. Then I take another breath in the studio and continue this process.
During the period of the master, I found inspiration in working around my peers and mentors. Though I have a private studio 300 meters from the school, I choose to work daily at the academy. 58.
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In the past two years, I gave up coffee and replaced it with drinking tea. Tea, to me, is a way of giving myself time and permission to stop whatever I am doing and reflect. I used to smoke 60 cigarettes a day so that I could have those precious moments. Coffee is about waking myself up and pushing to go faster and harder. Coffee and cigarettes used to be my fuel to keep on speeding even though I needed to rest. Tea became a way to connect with others as well as myself, and slow down. May it be daily in the classroom, before or after a performance, or at other times drinking tea was itself the performance. In the first semester, I gave a chadō (茶道), a Japanese tea ceremony for my class. The third exam was a five O'clock tea party. I hope we will be drinking some tea together very soon.
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Eighth : Sustainable Practice The main reason I chose to follow the master program is my sincere wish to connect the dots of parallel worlds: the theoretical and the practical, the political and the private. I also like to focus on the connection between research and product, cooperation with others and the spectator and myself. My desire is to deepen my work and create conditions for what I call 'sustainable practice' over the coming years. 'Sustainable practice' is a well-planned way of working and operating professionally. It grants me freedom and time to experiment as well as maintaining a practice. It takes into consideration that making and creating is interdependent on many other aspects of life. Such as technology (as the vidders showed us), politics, financial situation, personal health, working conditions, human relations and so on. How does a long-term praxis that is designed by me, for me, look like? What kind of working ecosystem would I like to create for myself? On a more practical note: who are the people that I want to engage with daily? Who are my allies? And how am I going to finance a process driven practice in a capitalistic system? I got inspired by the tradition of ten point manifestos. Lists such as 'How to Work Better' (Peter Fischli and David Weiss 1991), 'How to Behave Better'(Anthony Huberman's, 2011) and 'Facing Value' (Studio Stroom ,2017) are a quick way to remember and to communicate their guiding principles. I too, made a list of how to research better in a sustainable practice. In the future, if I get distracted, this list can help me. 62.
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There is a crack in everything that's how the light gets in�
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(Leonard Cohen)
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New Cycle: Springboard to Freedom Entering the program I hoped to get a 'Deus ex machina' moment, wherein everything will fall into place. The dots will connect and the way forward will be easy. I progressed over the past two years, I rediscovered my intention and subjectivity. The necessary working conditions and my methodology were never so clear to me. During these two years, I got the liberty to explore and experiment what is "just" for me: in, through and out of the cinema. Yet, I have many questions, doubts and especially a lot of 'fun' work ahead of me. Schopenhauer’s allegory of the way humans perceive the world is a recurring analogy I work with. According to him, the world is just like an embroidered tablecloth. When we are in our twenties, we can see only the magical beauty of the upper part of the cloth. As we get to forty, we finally notice the other side. The construction layers of threads tangled tightly to create the illusion of the upper side. The backside is perhaps less perfect but much more interesting, and dare I say even more magnificent. Though many dots got connected during the Master program, there are still plenty of dots yet to embroider on the tablecloth of my life. I embrace the pain and pleasure hidden on the bottom side. Though this is the end, it feels more like a new beginning.
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Colophon
fig. 13 (p.32) Yafit Taranto, collage from private collections
fig. 01 (cover) Yafit Taranto, still image from my video archive.
fig. 14 (p.37) Mathilde Mayers, private collection
fig. 02 (p.05) Yafit Taranto, collage based on the cover of the book "Women who Read are Dangerous"
fig. 15 (p.39) Anneliese Wolf, private collection
fig. 03 (p.08) Yafit Taranto, collage based on the cover of the book "Women who Read are Dangerous" fig. 04 (p.11) Yafit Taranto, collage based on the cover of the book "Women who Read are Dangerous" fig. 05 (p.14) Yafit Taranto, still image from a live performance fig. 06 (p.17) Yafit Taranto, still image from my video archive fig. 07 (p.18) Yafit Taranto, still image of my desk, 2013 fig. 08 (p.20) Yafit Taranto, photo taken at the Melkweg, 2013 fig. 09 (p.23) Yafit Taranto, assembled photos of synchronized swimmers fig. 10 (p.24) Yafit Taranto, cutting out one frame work process fig. 11 (p.26) Yafit Taranto, cutting out one frame work process
fig. 16 (p.40) Anneliese Wolf, private collection fig. 17 (p.42) Yafit Taranto, private collection fig. 18 (p.45) Merel Westermann, private collection fig. 19 (p.46) Orbituary Yafit Taranto, invitation to the performance 'Farewell Death, my Old Friend' fig. 20 (p.49) Still image from the performance 'Farewell Death, my Old Friend' fig. 21 (p.51) Still image from the performance 'I am Nobody' fig.22 (p.53) Still image from the performance 'Moon River' fig. 23 (p.55) Still image from the performance 'After 8' fig. 24 (p. 56-57) Invitation to the performance 'Stolen Pleasures'
fig. 12 (p.27) Yafit Taranto, cutting out one frame work process
fig. 25 (p.61) Yafit Taranto, Last Kiss of the Tarantula solo Exhibition Melwkeg, 2014
fig. 13 (p.26) Yafit Taranto, VJ still image
fig. 26 (p.67) Yafit Taranto, studio, editing suite
fig. 13 (p.29) Yafit Taranto, Interface Resolume
fig. 27 (p.67) Yafit Taranto, bottom side embroidery
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