The Future Of Art?

I have spent a lot of time over the years working as part of teams on film sets and in pre and post production of short and feature films, which lead to working as part of a small production company, which gave me the opportunity to work in creative positions on multiple projects. Part of the reasons of stopping to work with the production company was how much time was wasted sat around a big table arguing about what a Facebook post about an upcoming trailer should say, and whether it should have a full stop at the end or a fucking exclamation mark. A typical film meeting takes place over 5 hours and the only decision that is ever made is to have another meeting.

Craving creative outpour lead me over a few years to creating films by my self. I bloody enjoy making films by myself. I can write whatever story I want to, and make it look however I want. The best thing about making films by myself is that I really don't have time to make films by myself, I have to come up with the idea, write some sort of script, make the sets, make the props, make the costumes, direct it, star in it, as all the characters, 'write the theme tune, sing the theme tune', and then edit it and do the VFX. When I was working more prominently I wrote unfinished scripts, directed unfinished films and occasionally did production design, but never on the same project.

So when it came to making films by myself it meant learning EVERYTHING, which didn't quite go as far back as learning how to turn a camera on, but it wasn't far off.. I learned to do things I'd been too scared to do in the past, and I had to do it quick because I had so many other roles to fill. This meant that in true nature of myself, everything gets done to an alright standard, but nothing is every really good. I'm fine with this, because now I start projects and finish them, all without having to sit in a bored meeting for 5 hours on multiple occasions throughout a project, I've made films by myself, experimenting with different ways of presenting narrative in a social media driven context and not had to compromise ideas with anyone for the last two years.

Enter Collaborative Dialogues. In a post? Covid era every part of this masters degree has been 'online', actually convincing myself none of the other students are real at this point, and the masters degree is just an extended new update of club penguin..? Prove I'm wrong..

The idea of spending the next three weeks intensely working on a project with a group of strangers who may or may not exist was definitely an interesting thought. Over the past few years I have discovered a very specific and loose way of working, I've killed the perfectionist and imposter syndrome inside of me, keeping only an essence of SoUR SiMON in a labelled jar for when I absolutely need him. I was definitely excited to work within a collective, but slightly concerned that two years of isolation and a very specific, non specific process wouldn't go down well with a group of other students, who may work in a more methodical way, especially when we could be placed with students from more design based backgrounds, who would definitely be looking for more of a finish than myself.

The details of how we met, what we all look like and what we each assumed everyone else smelled like, I assume has been covered in multiple other blogs, so if you're into that kinda thing.. its out there.

Ideas are a very special thing, I've been putting a lot of research into it for my personal practice, creativity is something that on the surface usually seems individual, yet it comes from inspiration, a collection of ideas from your experiences in life, the individual part of creative thinking is to combine things that may or may not have a connection. But the human race, the solar system, the universe, it's all part of the creative process, that is the continuous creative process of our species with each idea that is shared or materialised, another is born from it, in another mind, and so on... Nothing is ever truly original not because all original thoughts have been thought, but because everything comes from what's been before, and I think that is much more beautiful a concept than originality, the idea that the human race a just a huge creative collaboration, in all aspects.

Our ideas bounced around in what seemed to be a conversation that really could have been forced, but it wasn't, conversation and sharing of ideas and research lead to another very naturally and without panic. This conversation lead through to me mentioning off the back of something else and idea I had for a fine art bargain store, that was one of the ideas I had for me degree show last year, but it was never much more than an idea, it was just mentioned in passing with no intention of it being the project we take on, yet it hit the right spots with the rest of the group and and the fine art bargain store was born.

I was originally concerned that this would now become my project that these other people worked on.. I'm trying to push myself through this masters degree, so essentially directing a project of my own idea, whether film based or not, I've done it before, I wanted to collaborate, properly, not like how a film crew does. My goal was to find the true meaning and essence of collaboration.

It turns out that our original one day group collaboration about a character called Hilario Offendas, an art thief we put into a presentation played by myself, actually mentioned the fine art bargain store during the presentation whilst ad-libbing, With my personal practice, these ideas live rent free in my constructed universe inside my head, the fine art bargain store was something that doesn't exist outside my head, but its cannon in my Faketrix universe, so it came out where it fit, I didn't even realise until another group member mentioned it.

I assume that because I mentioned it there by chance, it was fresh in my mind so when something was mentioned the next day in the conversation, that's is the connection my mind made, I mention this because it's interesting to my personal research into creative thinking. Would the fine art bargains store be the idea we ended up creating if I didn't mention it by complete chance whilst improvising?

My concerns over directing this project were very quickly wiped away with this realisation that there was already a connection between Hilario Offendas and the fine art bargain store. The narrative grew from there, with the rough outline that Hilario would be the stores owner. 'It's hilarious' was quickly replaced with 'it's Hilario' throughout the group whenever we found anything funny, which was a lot of the time, I'd like to think that my way of run and gun thinking of getting it done quick, trusting the process and putting in the first ideas you have rubbed off quite quickly on the rest of the group, but it was probably just because we only have a few weeks to do this.

We took inspiration from artists such as Imbue, Meow wolf collective, Banksy's Dismaland and personally I took a lot of the satirical inspiration from Darren Cullen (spelling mistakes cost lives) My attempt at gathering any other more solid research specifically on this project is pretty much non existent, I have pulled some very late nights and pissed my wife off with how much time I've spent on this much more than usual, yet there has been no time for gathering any documented research. I did though however deep dive down a rabbit hole for a few night on YouTube whilst getting my son to sleep though, and to recap that, my conclusion is that I'm pretty sure mark Zuckerberg is an actual cardboard box.

Here is a series of links for you to ignore..

https://youtu.be/gElfIo6uw4g

https://youtu.be/i_Xsd81TgN4

https://youtu.be/rtLTZUaMSDQ

I would also add that I have taken roughly 45 out of each week of this project to watch the new episode of The book of Boba Fett, the Star Wars series, and though I'm not going to pull anything specific from it, it's worth mentioning that the world building in Star Wars, whether good or bad, is always an inspiration to my work.

My research into creativity this term lead my 'research' for this project in more of a thoughtful collecting and more of a study of the nature of collaboration, watching how a conversation can turn into a fully fledged project, learning about other people's processes, and watching the brilliant designers in the group completely embracing the roles of an artist, watching an artist slowly killing the perfectionist and seeing absolute passion for a project that no-one is getting paid for putting time into. There is something magical about putting a group of random people in a (teams*) space together and watching the cogs turn, it's an incredibly creative experience, it's random and thought provoking and abso-fucking-lutely nothing like a 5 hour bored meeting about 'someone else's project'.

I have learned every step of the way through this project, and will take lessons from the last three weeks into the future of my practice, ideas are made to be shared and idea'd upon.

Long story short, in 2020 I had an idea for a satirical fictional store called the fine art bargain store, which would sell a few sculptural based items that would stem questions around commercialism and art. It became nothing more than an idea. I mentioned it in conversation and that little idea has turned into a compelling narrative about a Welsh artist who disguises himself as a famous French artist who's opened what's essentially a glorified art gallery for overly commercialised art disguised as a home bargains store, whilst dealing with the demands of online society and competing with futuristic art technology, whilst utilizing the creative practices of each individual in the team in constant conversation and development to a finished science fiction mockumentary style satirical comedy short film, that has the spin-off capabilities of a Hollywood movie, and it was all done in less than three weeks. I'm pretty blown away with how this project has gone, and following on from this will make a conscious effort to collaborate heavily in the future.

Here's some process shots. I'm going to bed.