*** Statement ***

The folder with rest of the investigation goes underneath and includes rest of the clues:

This project begins in November 2011 and is a record of what was before, during and after the culmination. A work caused by series of events, perhaps linked, perhaps not. It maps out the characters, locations and times: an affair, a mistake and a death.

I started out creating a short movie, a portrait of the memory of my Father, told by his family and friends. Shot onsite in Bulgaria and using both new and archive material (family albums, friend’s videos, unshared stories). My trip back home was taken especially for the purpose of this particular area of research. It was physical and emotional challenge. I absorbed myself investigating tightly each of the stories, which culmination seemed to be my Father’s death. This project I see as the biggest challenge in my practice so far. Firstly, because I haven’t been working on family related piece, although I do constantly record through images and diaries. Another taught step ahead was talking to the people for the first time after the accident. I was surprised how keen and open they are to participate. In the end, the investigation transformed into therapy, and helped me move on with both my personal life and professional practice.

 During this process, my project has turned into a mapping out key protagonist over a short period in our lives, which came to define all of them for variety of real events. My father’s death made my mother’s affair and my brother’s criminal mistake saturated. I decide to investigate all of them and find the best way to narrate it. Although, each of the events is picked up and presents how I see them all, they may or may not be linked together. They do look connected, simply because all of them have been revealed during the same period of time. Despite this, no one will ever know for sure how affected of each other they actually are.

 The final resolution of this piece is a reflection of my synthesis/exploration of the situation. Started out as an investigation it becomes a piece on the wall, most correctly portrayed as the chaos of a storm. The best way to represent these series of events is by using the metaphor of the storm as my thematic device. I edited down from the many hundreds and thousands of images garnered from family albums spanning a period of 40 years. These are presented pinned to the wall.  The piece is complimented by a folder underneath, which includes all of the clues I found, giving the audience freedom to understand and re-arrange the story themselves. It is a project, which relies on its investigation value, rather high quality artifacts. This is the start of the bigger project, including video film, book and a handmade photo album. They all will keep the chaotic (non-linear/hyper textual) narrative structure.

 The current presentation is created especially for the purpose of this particular exhibition and portrays the clarity I experienced during the mighty emotional chaos in my life.

Eye (cyclone)

The eye is a region of mostly calm weather at the center of strong tropical cyclones. The eye of a storm is a roughly circular area, typically 30–65 km (20–40 miles) in diameter. It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather occurs. The cyclone’s lowest barometric pressure occurs in the eye, and can be as much as 15 percent lower than the pressure outside the storm.

In strong tropical cyclones, the eye is characterized by light winds and clear skies, surrounded on all sides by a towering, symmetric eyewall. In weaker tropical cyclones, the eye is less well defined, and can be covered by the central dense overcast, an area of high, thick clouds that show up brightly on satellite imagery. Weaker or disorganized storms may also feature an eyewall that does not completely encircle the eye, or have an eye that features heavy rain. In all storms, however, the eye is the location of the storm’s minimum barometric pressure: the area where the atmospheric pressure at sea level is the lowest.

eye-of-storm images

I researched about storms during November 2011 and I found there is actually one. Exactly the same time I was in my own.

The 2011 Bering Sea superstorm was one of the most powerful extratropical cyclones to affect Alaska on record. On November 8, the National Weather Service (NWS) began issuing severe weather warnings, saying that this was a near-record (or record) storm in the Bering Sea. It rapidly deepened from 973 mb (28.7 inHg) to 948 mb (28.0 inHg) in just 24 hours before bottoming out at 945 mbar (hPa; 27.91 inHg), roughly comparable to a Category 3 or 4 hurricane. The storm had been deemed life-threatening by many people. The storm had a forward speed of at least 60 mph (97 km/h) before it had reached Alaska. The storm began affecting Alaska in the late hours of November 8, 2011. The highest gust recorded was 93 mph (150 km/h) on Little Diomede Island. One person has been reported missing after being swept into the Bering Sea.

So, I decided to include this along with the other documents into the folder by my piece. The storm’ information will be printed as originally the text is, but I’m blacking out the names (Alaska, Bering Sea, ect.) and leaving just numbers and explanation of the disaster. Like these:

Also I’ll make a stamp, accurate for my piece and folder:

 Inside (in the end) will insert my fingerprints as well:

]]> http://mariyamileva.com/blog/re-size-and-pin-on/feed/ 0 http://mariyamileva.com/blog/further-editing/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=further-editing http://mariyamileva.com/blog/further-editing/#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 19:00:30 +0000 M. Mileva http://mariyamileva.com/blog/?p=9381 After printing the bunch of images I’ve been collecting for the past few years and especially from the accident to present day, I needed to make a huge and brutal edit. In the end I left the once I love and mean a lot for me (as Jon Levy suggested me). The images I left on the board are some taken before I was born, some of my early and late childhood, and others which I took before and after the accident. I separate them into 4 sections and started thinking how to present them in more interesting way.

In the end I decide to make a little chaos, non-linear presentation (which I already mentioned before). I put them in a circle with a center, few main images around it and rest of them spread around. I do think at some point for the future I’ll make the book I thought about, but for now think this is the best way to present and explain the story, which includes in itself 3-4 different ones. As long as this project is still chaotic in my head I think chaotic presentation with supporting statement would be the perfect one.

In addition, I think I’ll make either a key to that the viewer to be able to read correctly the story or a little leaflet with my supporting statement and titles/explanation for each image. After talking to different people and hearing their opinion, I saw how their point of view and attitude to the images change after me telling them what exactly it is, where and why has been taken.

A family project might be a tricky subject of investigation and sharing. However it is one of the universal things in life and shown/presented in an universal, broad way could easily catch audience’s attention.

• These are all the images survived my first final edit: chosen-images
• And here the final selection so far: select-images
• Plus first draft statement: statement-draft1

I’ll present all the images on different paper and size – 9×13, 10×15 and 13×18 cm. I might also include statements which will separate and point the 3 main stories in this project. Also I though to make it more interactive leaving the viewer to move and connect the image in their own way, as they understand and see it. Then, to read my statement and get to know more about the project itself. I believe, after that they will clearly see my idea, emotion and story.

Images: selected-1 and selected-2

As I mentioned they will be in 3 sizes, pin on the wall in a chaotic way. Still think about the right way though.

• some-old-1
• old-selected
• dr
• 2009-1
• 2009-2
• 2010
• 2010-1
• skype
• after-selected1
• after-selected2

I was planing to have just one picture on the wall, the last one I took of my Dad – 6 January 2011.

As it could be seen the quality is really bad. What surprised me was both of the images on the film on the sides of this one have perfect exposure. Not this one. I don’t believe in coincidences. So, this image become more than just an image. Even taken in front of my grandfather’s shoemaker’s shop, it’s extremely important for me. It has a story, it’s saturated with meaning. More than just a frame. Extra frame, because of the meaning behind.

My plan was printing this and including the video. However, looking at the rest of the huge amount of footage, I took before, during and after the accident, I decided to leave the video as a development of the project. I can’t see the start as a film. I see it as a chaos, what it actually was. The chaos that transformed my life into another. The hurricane that turned me upside down, put me in the middle and opened my eyes, making me see everything in focus. Understanding what this subject area actually did to me, and the reasons of my unconscious decision of recording everything, I decide to include the main, most important images. They are those not only see relevant, but explain what actually happened. It’s not only the death, although this was the pick. There are 2 more stories, tightly connected with this one. And this is exactly what used to make me so confused and unable to start making the video, simply because it’s not the right time, not now. I also want to make a book, like Phillip Toledano’s piece on his father, but need to see the start first. I believe, this is the start when the whole chaos starts making sense.