Work, Concept and practice in motion pt 2
Another key part of my practice for this project is the loss of control, hens the “uncontrolled” in the title. This is because a few factors. When I expose negatives in Ice I have no control over the shifting of the negative in the water as it freezes, the formation of the ice or how it cracks once it begins to thaw during exposure. When I am exposing the negative to different elements or matter if you will. I am working in complete darkness, I have a rough idea how I would like the sand, dirt or carbon to lay across the film plane but even the slightest touch or breath of air can shift them. Oddly enough I find myself closing my eyes, in the pitch black while I am doing this. The other thing is that when I use the small explosions to expose the film the impact causes everything to shift and scatter.
This brings about the last part of the practice I suppose which is the abstraction of each piece. Each negative is an individual and will never be identical to the one before or after, there are of course similarities as it is the same practice being performed. Which then brings on the question of is it all too repetitive? So I have this body of work that technically consists of over three hundred images, some work, some are complete wastes and then some in my eyes are perfect. But are they all too much of the same just slightly different? Are people just going to see a bunch of white flashes and scattering dust and sand? Did I just waster hundreds of film to create the same thing over and over?
I often find myself once again in this spiral of negative thinking and self-talk, and honestly every creative does right? It is because I am far too close to my work, it is impossible not to be. Which in turn makes it impossible not to question everything about it, it’s my job I need to think, look and create then repeat if I am ever going to make something new. It is thoughts like these that roll in my head constantly, but one quote that rolls with them is the famous Edison quote "I haven't failed -- I've just found 10,000 that won't work." So it helps put things in perspective because I have about 20 images for a show out of 368 negatives, which is a bit better than 1 out of ten thousand.