Swan Song – Reflection and Tilda Swinton

Towards the end of the first term, I am writing this blogpost as the last one before going into the winter break and the next term. It is impossible to separate the process with a hard line, especially when I will continue working on this project in a broader context until the end of the year. Yet for the hand in this would be a necessary evil. This post consist of loose reflection on the prototype project through looking at my own work, and through a podcast by MUBI featuring Tilda Swinton and Apichatpong Weerasethakul about their film Memoria (2021).

The project is now finished in a sense that it served as a taster of the structure in third year. It will be released on tape and digitally and performed live next year, but before that the production of the piece is now concluded. The research process has been very extensive compare to other projects that I have worked on, because of the complexity of the theme, and the necessity for accuracy before creative expression (to get the facts right before messing with it sonically). And instead of pure outward reaching researches, it also pushes me to do practise-based research, with testing synthesiser, the radio broadcast, the script and so on. This duality encourages the research to be something like: I will read something or see an archive picture, then I would create something with sound or write a text. This back and forth really makes this process complex and evolves the conversation actively, like two spiral nailing into the topic and go deeper and deeper, with every round revolving and circulating into the matter.

This process really benefited my thinking, it is like making and thinking at the same time. It opens up possibilities that my own thinking couldn’t reach, and my hands couldn’t automatically do. It breaks stagnation and forces you to act on the spot and react. This also ties into the theatre element of the piece, the constant improvising and composing becomes the ritual and ultimately the concept itself.

While in the second part of the project I focused on editing the piece into a tighter experience, I thought of it as cinema as compared to theatre, the former being editable and heavily rely on the cinema magic and the later being so present and live and un-relivable. I accidentally came across this podcast by MUBI and in it Tilda Swinton talks about cinema and how the director Apichatpong has approached it with the film in a way that the film is almost non-theatrical, that the word ‘character’ seems out of place in the film. She says it in a way that the film has a fictional narrative, yet it is not really a story. It is a cinematic expression which tries to guide you through a certain experience or a trip, with these ‘avatars’ along the way who move through the film.

This is such an interesting way and unheard of way to describe cinema, so unique that it distinct itself from theatre completely from an actor’s perspective. Usually as an actor the only big difference people mention is that you project your energy differently with a camera and a live audience; with the camera you can do the subtlest expression and it would be magnified through the lens, and when it’s live on stage you have to play it bigger than real life for the audience to pick up on. But then Tilda described it in a way that it separate the methods altogether, it completely destroy traditional dramaturgy and formulate the act of ‘performing’ in a completely new way. This is something I can take on in the next term working on the exhibition, to think about all these terminology in a less definitive and deconstructed ways.

One thing that immediately pops up in my head is, what if I do the pop album on sound theories and do the art exhibition on a breakup? How would that theme itself deconstruct my process and forces me to approach it differently that creates a new normal or common sense?

The outcome of the project almost doesn’t matter, there is always going to be the next one. What really fascinates me is these tiny growth I make each step on the way, to challenge myself a bit further and force myself to be even more provocative or creative, not that I am near to both qualities. Rather than taking something physical into next term like a practice or a piece of thing I can hold in my hand, I would much prefer taking away a mental note to self when it comes to making work. Even though I might be working in different projects and different mediums, my work always connects with each other in a chronological way, a flow of consciousness. I have now recognised the importance to leave the outcomes or objects from previous projects behind so every time I can start brand new and be fresh, and not get stuck or pretending to have a personal style that I stick to, I just see it as stagnation that hinders an artist.

I have been very busy in this last term and I barely had time to stop and think for a second. I think it will be even worse when next term comes, but I am also excited to do the work and not think too much. I think these blogs has been good in terms of documenting my process and research, but definitely slowing me down on working and to fit what I am doing into these horribly written learning outcomes. I am very bad at trying to cover all of them in the blogs, but I am confident in my work anyway, even though I really want to get a first when I graduate.

This concludes this prototype project. The next step in the winter break is to create the second piece of work for this exhibition that I really want to do, and to start writing songs for my pop album.