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Jiaxin Duan
29.03.21 - 04.04.21
Day 1
29 March
Introduction, plans, draft
At the beginning of unit 2, I realized that I wanted to express one of the memory phenomena which call "Deja vu". I wanted to grasp this feeling and wanted to learn more about Deja Vu. So I started to find some articles and videos about Deja Vu.
I was inspired by the photographer Patrick Celland. I use one of the Patrick Celland photographs as the starting point for my creation. I like Patrick Celland's photography very much. He is good at using film to solidify the warm vision of life. He uses grainy texture and retro tones to make the photos full of nostalgia. His works make people feel a sense of loneliness but warm and not lonely.
Patrick Celland
In the first few weeks before starting my residency, I made some collages and drew some drafts, and I found several portraits of people with different expressions. And I combine them with the above photograph by Patrick Celland in a collage.
My collage by using procreate in iPad. 23 Feb. 2021
I made people in this image looked in different directions, just like they tried to recall some moments of memory.
My sketch. 24 Feb. 2021
So my plan for this week is to finish this painting that I already started.
One of my practice. 22 March. 2021
My physical painting with digital painting. 23 March. 2021
Today I just stretched my big canvas and finished my draft.
In the next few days, I plan to tackle the issues of my artwork and its interpretation that are about Dejavu and game.
Draft of physical painting on the big canvas. 29 March. 2021
Day 2
30 March
Technique experiment
The following two time-lapse videos record the progress of my painting.
Time-lapse video: Work in progress. The start and finish of my painting session today. 30 March. 2021
Today, I want to discuss the techniques of using painting to a narrative feeling of Dejavu by expressing sky and water in different painting techniques. Besides, I want to discuss a little bit of acrylic this particular painting material.
First, I directly put the colors on the top of the canvas. When I painted the sky, I used a round head brush to smudge the boundary between colors. When I painted the water surface, I used the press method to blend the transitions between colors. Just like below what I demonstrated in the video.
The painting technique of the sky
My painting technique of the sky. 30 March. 2021
The painting technique of the water
My painting technique of the water. 30 March. 2021
The final effect
Details
Secondly, I chose acrylic paint for two main reasons: The acrylic paint dries quickly which could help me to add more layers to the first layer of the picture. In addition, because I study Chinese painting in my undergraduate degree, so I am more familiar with paints that use water as a medium than oil paints that use oil as a medium.
Acrylic paint can use the fluidity of water to make some different effects. Just like the effect of my practice before.
Practice before 22 March. 2021
Final outcome today
Work in process, Acrylic painting, 170x150cm, 30 March. 2021
Day 3
31 March
Process of "black and white head"
"Déjà vu is the subjective experience of familiarity combined with the knowledge that this experience is false." (Moulin, 2018)
So return to the question I focus: Deja vu is produced by our memory or imagenation
First of all, let me explain why the sky and water in my painting have color, while the figures in my painting are black and white.
This is because the sky and water represent memories with time. The figures immersed in the water represent different imaginations of each person.
Many people think that things that don't exist are colored， like we would say that dreams are colored, and the future will be colored. But the things that have existed are black and white in our memory, such as the dead kitten, the lost white gloves, and so on.
So these things in our imagination have colors in our mind, and the past things in our memories may often be black and white, because it has gone through the baptism of time, and it has faded away from color.
Then I can say imagination is colored, and the figures in the painting represent imagination. But why they are black and white? This is because I am looking for a question: Is what we imagined is the result of our memory confusion? Or imagined it out of thin air?
Back to the original question: "Is it imagination or our memory?"
Time-lapse video: Work in progress. The start and finish of my painting session today. 31 March. 2021
Details
Final outcome today
Work in process, Acrylic painting, 170x150cm, 31 March. 2021
Exquisite game with my classmates
Day 4
1 April
The Definition of Play:
J.Huizinga's opinion of the game was influenced my exploration of creating a game with my painting through the idea of Deja vu this special memory phenominon.
Those my thoughts and direct quote of J.Huizinga's opinions from a book Man, Play and games(Caillois, R. (2001) Man, Play and Games. America South Oak Street: University of Illinois.).
"He First, he sought an exact definition of the essence of play; second, he tried to clarify the role of play present in or animating the essential aspects of all culture: in the arts as in philosophy, in poetry as well as in juridical institutions and even in the etiquette of war."
"Huizinga defines play as fellow:
Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside"ordinary" life as being "not serious," but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it . It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disquise or other means."
Therefore, the combination between with my painting and game exploration has become for me an immersive process, a interactive experience and one that connects subject with memory.
When my work becomes a game, this work belongs to all of us. This is because people's participation has produced some extra value and meaning. Thus, this is why I want to combine my paintings into a game. I hope that the process of creating my work is not only my memory but also it allows the audience to share this wonderful memory with me during the process of interacting with eachother. I think this is my biggest gain in the creation of this work. Just like the sense of Deja vu, it is not just our memories of one place, it is a phenomenon produced by the interweaving of multiple different memories in our minds. Therefore, the Deja vu perception can be said to be the repeated and shared image in our mind.
Final outcome today
Work in process, Acrylic painting, 170x150cm, 1 April. 2021
Day 5
2 April
Research about the relationship of Repetition and Deja vu.
The repeating image : multiples in French painting from David to Matisse this book has been a key influence on my practice this past year.
Regarding about Repetition of the symbolic form, Eil Kahng mentioned a book in his text, which call "The shape of time" written by George Kubler.
One view, espoused by Kubler"the concept of period" style" introduced a type of art history that suffered from an uncomfortably wide margin of subjective error.
Kahng said "Using his own long experience as a historian of non-Western antiquity, Kuber sought to resurrect the merits of form as a legitimate and more "objective" means of finding the shape of time, which, as he argued, is made visible only through reiteration and rupture: a material syncopation or prolonged rubato still graspable in "The History of Things" (a phrase that he used to qualify the title of his book)."
So "Repetition" allows us to restore an event and provides us with the possibility of comparative analysis and evaluation.
There are one of example is David's Death of Marat. Kahng explain it in this book, “David's recognition of the pretense of movement in any lifelike portrait, captured at the moment that its possibility is stolen by death, not unlike the "there-and-then-ness" of the still photograph, makes the same claim through the copyist/viewer's reenactment, repetition of vision as Deleuze/Péguy commented of Monet's Whreatstacks, it is David's portrait that repeats all its replicas."
It also may be sufficient to simply rely on the helpful explication de texte supplied by Briankle Chang in an essay titled "Deleuze, Monet, and Being Repetitive"."
the claim that "Monet's first water lily ... repeats all the others" also takes on a more precise meaning: it no longer suggests the eristic, counterintuitive proposition that an earlier act repeats later ones; far more radically, it states an architectural rule of timing: the so-called first impression, the first scene seen, the first stroke, in short, the very constitution of firstness as such, is already repeated occurrence. As the Lacanian-Deleuzianrefrains suggest, an event always takes place twice before it really happens, or, as I dare to rephrase it, an event must take place virtually before it occurs effectively. It is this twice-over of an event that consolidates the event's phenomenal integrity, and it is its virtual occurrence before the fact that restores to the event its truth as retroactive happening, the aftermath of a "somber precursor," that delivers what comes henceforth always in the form of déjå pas encore.
Déjå means "already"
Pas encore means "not yet"
Déjå vu means "already seen"
Therefore, I argue that Déjå vu would let us feel the disorder of time by repeating those memories that happened already and those memories happened not yet, thus we can suffer the wonderful experience of Déjå Vu.
Below are some reference images that I found in Pinterest
will use these pictures as the references for the different form of expression of the water surface in my paintings.
I want to express the shape of time by repeating the changes of different changes on the water surface and present it in my painting.
I will use these pictures as the references for the different form of expression of the memory in my paintings.
I want to express "already happened memory" and "not yet happened memory" by using abstract form of expression to narrative these different memories in my painting.
I will use these pictures as references for the different forms of expression of the "repetition" in my paintings.
I want to express the boundary of two different memories("already happened memory" and "not yet happened memory" ) by repetition images of the different portrait.
Day 6
3 April
Practice of water surface
The practice of water surface, iPad procreate 3 April. 2021
Today I try to use procreate to collage and practice how to present water surface in a different way in digital painting.
Because the studio is close, and my painting is still not finished. So I started to try and practice some color blocks and brush strokes to present the water surface by using procreate.
What's more interesting is that the boundary between the water surface and the sky seems to exist visually, but in fact, there is a long distance between them. But actually, the boundary between the sky and the water surface does not exist. Just like our memory and imagination seem to be different, there seems to be a boundary between them, this boundary can clearly distinguish the difference between them, but in fact, this boundary may not exist, just like the boundary between the water surface and the sky does not exist of.
Therefore, the question of "Is it imagination or our memory? It might haven't an answer to this question. Because there may not be a clear boundary between our memory and imagination, we can distinguish both imagination and memory subjectively.
Final Meaningful Sharing
Day 7
4 April
Work in process, Acrylic painting, 170x150cm, 1 April. 2021
Next plan:
After the studio reopens, I will continue to complete my works. I plan that each 170x50cm painting is a painting that combines games. I plan to complete six such paintings from the second unit to the third unit. These six paintings represent six different games, and these six paintings are a series of paintings combined is a big jigsaw puzzle.
The research on games needs to be deepened, and I hope that this project will be completed and gain something from it.
Experience:
This time, the residency experience taught me how to record my fragmentary thoughts in the process of practice and creation. Then follow the ideas of each fragment to start research and thinking. Then integrate the ideas supported by the research point of view into the work.
In the end, I summed up three experiences to promote my creation:
1. Regarding material---The material should be combined with painting techniques to continuously try and explore.
2. Regarding research---I need a lot of reading and constant thinking.
3. Regarding the document and archive---I need to cherish every small, fragmentary idea, they are all very important.
Feedback From Classmates
Feedback from ZeYong Zhang
Picture show I received my feedback from ZeYong Zhang. 11 April. 2021
Hi Bella,
Your artwork and the topic you’re exploring are very attractive. Especially, the persons’ wandering faces, and they are all immersed in the colorful fluid except their heads. It reminds me of a very famous philosophy theory Brain in a Vat when I look at your work for the first time.
You have to pay much attention to the processes of how you develop the work. It’s very explicit. Besides, I want to know more about how do you understand Deja vu?
Do you do some research about it?
And how do you deeply conceive the concept and transfer it into the sketch before you paint it on the canvas?
Why these five persons are female, and their ages are similar? Do you realize them on purpose?
Suggestion:
* I recommend you to take some references to the related psychologists about Deja vu.
* You can interview different people’s experiences about Deja vu, and then you can summarize and extract your interesting points. I suppose this process will solidify your research and practice.
Camberwell
MA Painting
Project Space
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