Throughout my second year I have focused on activating discourses around art as work and the demystification of art as labour. This can be seen in 'Where's the lie?,' which satirically subverts the truth-telling documentary conventions of narration and interview, to explore how truth can be manipulated and re-presented in the same way that social anxiety can distort one's reality. This meta-moving image is a video conscious of its own construction and editing of the truth; of the mechanics involved in production and post-production that suspend documentary between fact and fiction. As an extension of the interview form, this work asks audiences to question both the constructed nature and essence of truth. Going into my third year I am critical of what is an 'image' and also expanding from moving image and photography into screen printing, coding and textiles.
'Where's the lie?' (2022), 2 channel moving image, duration: 5 minutes, 4 seconds.
'Where's the lie?' satirically subverts the truth-telling documentary conventions of narration
and interview, to explore how truth can be manipulated and re-presented in the same way
that social anxiety can distort one's reality. Throughout the work, the exaggerated use of an automated narrative voice questions the objectivity of an omniscient narrator, by dictating various 'truth-editing' processes. This objective/subjective dichotomy is further explored with the two channel format, which breaks the fourth wall by simultaneously comparing the perspectives of a subjective handheld camera, with an objective stabilised wide-angle shot. Further, the considered use of a Canon 800D and Canon 500D to intentionally produce a less cinematic picture, emphasises how the audience is viewing the scene through both the lens of the camera and the agenda of the artist. This separation between the viewer and the work is thoroughly explored using various adapted 'distancing effects,' including narration, a discontinuous structure, exposing the setting and sequencing of clips, maximising lighting, including or explicitly omitting 'stage’ directions, and breaking both the fourth wall and character. As the interview unfolds, different questions that stem from my anxieties around what others think of me, are paired with the elevated presentation of various production and post-production mechanics, to create a fantastical distortion of reality. In all, the accumulation, exaggeration and exhibition of different truth-editing processe allows 'Where's the lie?' to effectively explore the tension between fact and fiction in the documentary genre.
'Where's the lie?' satirically subverts the truth-telling documentary conventions of narration
and interview, to explore how truth can be manipulated and re-presented in the same way
that social anxiety can distort one's reality. Throughout the work, the exaggerated use of an automated narrative voice questions the objectivity of an omniscient narrator, by dictating various 'truth-editing' processes. This objective/subjective dichotomy is further explored with the two channel format, which breaks the fourth wall by simultaneously comparing the perspectives of a subjective handheld camera, with an objective stabilised wide-angle shot. Further, the considered use of a Canon 800D and Canon 500D to intentionally produce a less cinematic picture, emphasises how the audience is viewing the scene through both the lens of the camera and the agenda of the artist. This separation between the viewer and the work is thoroughly explored using various adapted 'distancing effects,' including narration, a discontinuous structure, exposing the setting and sequencing of clips, maximising lighting, including or explicitly omitting 'stage’ directions, and breaking both the fourth wall and character. As the interview unfolds, different questions that stem from my anxieties around what others think of me, are paired with the elevated presentation of various production and post-production mechanics, to create a fantastical distortion of reality. In all, the accumulation, exaggeration and exhibition of different truth-editing processe allows 'Where's the lie?' to effectively explore the tension between fact and fiction in the documentary genre.
