Fantasy has had a lot of bad press. 


but the concept has little to do with those common sense notions of it as an 'escape from reality.' It deconstructs that fantasy/reality opposition by drawing attention to the activity of fantasy in everyday life experience, of which day-dreaming is only one common manifestation. Rather than dismiss this activity as trivial supplements to the real they must be seen as central to any thinking about images for a politics of representation that acknowledges 'physical reality' - the reality in which the human mind is not an objective decoding machine but a physical apparatus that is selective and motivated in its activity. For it must surely be here in the intersection of social identity with fantasy , and the unconscious with cultural identification that Mise-en-scène takes on its full import as the staging of desire.

Not simply a scene for the sight of desire. Desire, not as the 'hidden content' of an image but rather as ' the something' in that work that every spectator does across the 'dialectic of identification' that he or she is caught up in when looking at an(y) image.

Mise-en-scène

Mise-en-scène emphasises more than just adding together elements of staging in any literal, technical sense. As 'mere technique' or 'a question of good composition,' it is rather the basis of what constitutes the actual place and space of image, what it signifies.


In this sense Mise-en-scène offers a concept which recognises the image as a place of work, a site of meaning and production, of precisely staging. It offers, in a manner that does not divide from content, the space in which to think the question - What has been staged here?

Three Fork Road

So I have been scrupulously working towards finishing my exploration into the Beat Generation... I posted a couple of weeks ago the stage I was at. My aim was to give, On The Road, Howl and Naked Lunch, their own sense of a clear definable identity...

Three forks...

---------On The Road---------

----------Naked Lunch ---------

---------- Howl -----------

Still so much to do, but determined to crack this in the next few days

The Denver Doldrums

Last Stanzas in Denver, 1947 Art is illusion, for I do not act -

Dwell or Depart - with faithful merriment

My thoughts, though skeptic, are in sacrament

So I enact the Hope I can create

A lively world around my deadly eyes

Sad Paradise it is I initiate

and fallen angles who lost wings and sighs.

In this unworldly state wherein I move.

My Faith and Hope are hellish currency:

In counterfeit worlds, I coin swell Charity

About myself, and trade my soul for Love.

Allen Ginsberg's poem, part of The Denver Doldrums, handwritten in a letter to Kerouac. The words 'Sad paradise' in the second stanza, appeared to Kerouac as 'Sal Paradise', the name he used for himself in On the Road.

Sarah@OWT creative, travelling sketchbook

I thought I would post up some photographs of some pages I have contributed to Sarah Stapleton's travelling Sketchbook. The idea is to send a sketchbook on a journey and see how different people respond/reject/embrace work within the sketchbook and make their own mark in it before passing it on. Here are my contributions, I have tried to keep the pages quite light and leave lots of space, to encourage others to add to my pages with their work.

If anyone would like to be the next contributor, let me know!

My Life At Present

I decided to pin up all the different aspects of my Beat Generation Project, in order to see where I was with it and assess the next step. So far I have created a book, posters and pamphlets, which amalgamatee my visual responses to Naked Lunch (Burroughs), Howl (Ginsberg) and On The Road (Kerouac). Attempting to throw these three, very different, creations together into one proved very difficult, but I am happy with the imagery I created. I have most certainly succeeded in creating a 'personal' response to the poems, however, now I would like to look upon the material objectively and try to give each piece a unique identity. My final outcome will hopefully express a clear identity for each of the three pieces, allowing the three to be grouped together without causing confusion. For my personal response I like the chaotic, confusing and spontaneous aspect to the work, so I would like to now refine what I have to make something interesting, conceptual and also coherent.

Pina Bausch, Die Klage der Kaiserin

John Walsh is currently running a Flux Magazine brief again for the second years, so for inspiration he showed Pina, Die Klage der Kaiserin, the first film by choreographer Pina Bausch, and I tagged along. After watching this film, I will never look at contemporary dance in the same way again. I found the film wonderfully weird and got really engrossed in the strange mirroring of 'reality' through dance. The movements seemed completely natural, not rehearsed. I became really inspired by the absolute expression of self within the film. Often seeing things on screen can dilute them but when I really thought about what the people were doing in the film I became fascinated by the ever evolving narrative. It is interesting to think that a film which seems so obscure and seemingly sub-cultural could easily be an influence for many big screen, popular films. I could see how Black Swan could have been influenced by this and certain Tarantino films. I like the thought that an idea can start as one thing and evolve into new and changing things until on a fine thread remains between beginning and end, a subtle non-obvious link. Anything can be inspirational and can be a seed of a new idea. I really want to make my own film after watching Pina, so I think I might.

Sam Meech Workshop

I was asked to joined the second year film workshop, which was ran by Sam Meech. I had completed a project in second year which used found film to map out the song, Heroin, the Velvet Underground. I felt like this workshop was ideal for me to return to moving image and get my hands on some archival footage courtesy of the North West Film Archive.

In the first session, Sam wanted to see how we each responded to the same set of ingrediants in different ways. therefore he oddly brought in a wide selection of fruit and veg and asked us all to make our own smoothies, this was really enjoyable (and healthy) and despite my huge aversion to beetroot, my smoothie turned out nicely.

Then it was time to apply this technique to film, Sam gave us each the same set of film clips, selected from the archive, the rest of the workshops were spent manipulating and amalgamating this footage using the skill sets Sam had given us. Each person showed their unique work in progress. I experimented with female and male gaze, here is the film, which I will most likely continue to develop

...

Angelheaded Hipsters

After a critique about my Beat Generation project, I decided to go back to my research phase and try to learn a little bit more around the background and culture of the Beats, hoping this would inspire me further in the project.

What better way than to visit the Angelheaded Hipsters exhibition at the National Theatre in London. the exhibition was an extensive collection of Allen Ginsberg's photography, amongst others, which mapped out, behind the scenes of archetypal Beat characters such as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Carl Soloman, and Herbert Huncke to name a few. I was surprised at the sheer quantity of photographs and found Ginsberg's annotations of the photographs a great insight. It was intriguing to see Ginsberg's photographs of close friends,David Hockney, Madonna, Patti Smith and Roy Lichtenstein as well as the Beat's huge influence on the likes of Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan.

All images courtesy of Corbis.

It was never about “me” or “I,” It is about “we.”

I have just read an interview between Jessica Svendsen and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville for Broad Recognition, A feminist newspaper at Yale. I feel incredibly inspired by this interview, I find Bretteville's articulation of language empowering and her absolute belief and passion for her life's work, completely affirms her as one of my idols. I have posted some extracts and also my own opinions.


"When you look at the word demo­c­ra­tic as a part of fem­i­nism, that equal­ity and that abil­ity to argue with each other, come into fric­tion with each other or come into con­nec­tion with each other, on an equal plane, that is inher­ent in the ideal of democ­racy. If you try to trans­fer that into a fem­i­nist per­spec­tive, it holds that same mean­ing that we can talk with each other, agree or dis­agree, and work it out, as a part of self-criticism, as well as a crit­i­cism of fem­i­nism, as well as a crit­i­cism of mod­ernism, how a demo­c­ra­tic and more equal soci­ety is cre­ated so that what­ever kind of gender—there is as much dif­fer­ence within each gen­der as between the gen­der. You come from that per­spec­tive, it makes it very hard to talk about men and women all the time, around it. But I do think the word fem­i­nism is impor­tant because it car­ries with it an activist buzz. It really belongs to pay­ing atten­tion to how women are being treated, which, until we are treated absolutely equally, then I can­not let go of the word."
I often feel as though the word feminism carries with it certain negative or perhaps cliched connotations and it seems that most, male or female, have their opinion on what feminism means. For me, I feel that feminism is not a word that can be described with one sweeping definition as everyone's opinion differs depending on their experiences and their actions or involvement in feminism. I feel that almost all women are aware feminism in some way whether they proclaim this or not, simply by being a woman, involvement is unavoidable.(I can't imagine how any woman would want to avoid the topic)

JS: Many women design­ers acknowl­edge the glass ceil­ing and every­thing that sur­rounds them being a woman designer, but they are not nec­es­sar­ily fem­i­nist designer. Can you clar­ify the dis­tinc­tion between a female designer and a fem­i­nist designer?

SB: A female designer is often talk­ing about her­self, as many of the women who voted for Hilary in the elec­tion. These women talked about the expe­ri­ence with misog­yny as their rea­son for vot­ing for Hilary, rather than look­ing at what Hilary might do as Pres­i­dent. That was not what they were look­ing at; they were look­ing at their expe­ri­ence, and where they felt dissed. Vot­ing for a woman was acknowl­edg­ing them­selves. That is sim­i­lar to women design­ers who acknowl­edge the glass ceil­ing are really look­ing at.

I think to be fem­i­nist is to really care about women in gen­eral, not only design­ers, not only at priv­i­leged insti­tu­tions like Yale. Think­ing about women who don’t have any­thing, and what are the forces at work in our shared glob­al­ized cul­ture that keep women from actu­al­iz­ing their poten­tial. That is not what those women are talk­ing about. They are talk­ing about their poten­tial and their actu­al­iz­ing. That is the dif­fer­ence between being just a woman designer or being a fem­i­nist designer. It doesn’t mean that you are always work­ing on fem­i­nist con­tent, it means you think about, more broadly, women as a cat­e­gory and how that cat­e­gory is used against women, wher­ever they are, on a socioe­co­nomic level in a glob­al­ized world. That, to me, is fem­i­nism. It was never about me, what­ever “me” or “I” is. It is about “we.”

I find this statement explains an aspect of feminism very well. Being a woman does not make you a feminist (although you may be affected by feminism) in the same way that being a female designer does not make you a feminist designer. This idea of a 'we' instead of I, really rings true for me.

Much of my work centres around feminist attitudes and the portrayal of women, however I create work based on alternative themes too. The fact I make work about women is not what makes me a feminist necessarily, infact if I describe myself, as a designer, feminism is only one dimension and I would not like to narrow the perception of myself in that way. I feel my work does, and will span across a wider platform, therefore, yes I am a feminist designer but also an experimental designer, a concept-driven designer etc. etc.

Certainly as a person (being a designer as part of that) I would absolutely describe myself as a feminist. Although I may get angry about certain issues regarding the treatment of women, this is a level of unrest not designed to be anti-male or to take over the world, but merely to be offered the modest chance of being absolutely equal to men. no more than that. Some may think that equality has been achieved, however the balance is not level (in both directions, I wouldn't claim that men have all the advantages) It is, as Bretteville described, a genuine interest in the well-being of women, not just myself, not just designers, but all women be it those who are deprived of choice, my peers or colleagues.

There is one thing I would like to return to. You men­tioned the Miami poster cam­paign, and many peo­ple asso­ciate fem­i­nist graphic design with more con­fronta­tional or aggres­sive tac­tics, like the Guerilla Girls or Bar­bara Kruger. What alter­na­tives are there for fem­i­nist design?

SB: I am one of the alter­na­tives. I chose to focus on what we don’t have and how to get it, not on what is oppress­ing me or oppress­ing us. Some peo­ple are filled with a tremen­dous amount of anger and the way to express it is through their work and through their work about what is oppress­ing them. I think that that is very impor­tant work. It just hap­pens to not be my work.

Yes, because it is also how the notion of good design has changed. Both have changed. I just felt that Yale was known for good design, which was very much aligned with mod­ernist design at that point. So I was try­ing to open up the design, try­ing to open up the fem­i­nist design. A state­ment, like that, out of con­text, requires a lot of unpack­ing. Both around what is “good” and what is “feminist.”

I had an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with some stu­dents the other day. It wasn’t about fem­i­nism, but it is like this: two stu­dents were doing work that had images of like, kit­tens and sun­sets and palm trees, but they came off of Google images—they were get­ting them off the net. I was try­ing to locate what it is that those images were serv­ing. One of the other stu­dents, who was older than the two stu­dents who were doing it, said, “It’s gen­er­a­tional. The response to that.” I said, “I don’t think that if that’s oper­a­tive, it is not all that’s oper­at­ing.” It turns out that one of the stu­dents was doing it as a reac­tion against good design, clean design. Here we are, 2009, and some­one is choos­ing, what I call trashy, low, images to sig­nify “sweet­ness” as a reac­tion. My com­ment was: “You are here at Yale to do your own work. You don’t have to react against some­thing. Go for some­thing.” Because to spend your time against that now, unless you do it from an extremely informed, thought­ful, broadly-researched base, is a very knee-jerk, against, kind of activ­ity. It is not that you can­not use kitty kats and sun­sets. It is more: Why are you using [these]? I want to here from you, why, some­thing other than “I am against good design, clean design, all that design I learned at RISD.” I want more. I want to hear more. Talk about it more. Tell me more.

Bretteville continuously offers a considered and intelligent insight, Here is the full interview

Anish Kapoor

Always interested in seeing huge great sculptures in the middle of large gallery spaces, I headed down to the Anish Kapoor flashback at Manchester Art Gallery. I have never seen any of Kapoor's work in the flesh before, therefore it was a new visual experience for me.

There were a surprising number of works within quite a small space, perhaps too many. I could hear the familiar mumblings from fellow visitors questioning the integrity of contemporary art and how could what looked like a few piles of exotic spices be art? Others, especially children who were visiting the exhibition seemed fascinated by what they were seeing and rightly so, each piece definitely stirred up a level of puzzlement and caused me to stop and try to work out what it was I was actually looking. I especially enjoyed the piece named 'When I am Pregnant,' which was a huge white convex mound which seamlessly protruded from the gallery wall, from angle it was quite clearly visible, but looking directly at the wall, the bump was barely visible. I found this piece quite beautiful.

I often like to visit things, which are seemingly irrelevant to my practice because you never know how they might inspire you in the future.

MDS Designinit Aftershow

After the Manchester Design Symposium, a bunch of fired up designers headed over the The Deaf Institute for a networking event organised by Designinit. The highlight of this was undoubtedly winding down with a group of fellow D&ADers on the terrace, and getting talking to Angela Gilroy, who happened to work at Dalton Maag, she kindly gave us their promotional catalogue and an ubuntu poster.

It was really interesting talking to Angie and we learnt that if we were to complete a placement at Dalton Mag it would be Angie we would be staying with, so it was her we needed to talk to. She simply said that a passionate email was sufficient and it wouldn't hurt for it to be typeset in Ubuntu.

Later Angie brought out Bruno Maag to talk to us which was encouraging as she must have found us interesting. Bruno was just ask lively off the stage as on and was easy to have a joke with. John Walters followed him out and we began talking to him also, which was really great. Bruno specified that the most likely place to get to know people was here, in the pub and I agree, people are much more relaxed in this situation and much more open to chat and socialise when out of their busy work environment.

As a result I follow up emailed Angie and although I am going to Australia in June and so wouldnt be able to commit to a two month placement she offered me the chance to come and visit Dalton Maag's new studio anytime. And who knows if we keep in touch with John Walters, he might be able to review our degree show in Eye?

this is an exact representation of what bruno looked like on the night

Manchester Design Symposium

There was a great buzz around the first Manchester Design Symposium and I felt really excited that so many creatives had congregated together for the event. It seemed that much of the hype had been generated via Twitter and subsequently any Design Symposium related tweets should be followed by the tag '#mds' Many of the people I interact with on Twitter were attending the event and I wondered if any of them would actually speak to me in 'real life,' away from the safety net of the computer screen, The likelihood of which I found unlikely and was eventually proved right. There were five key speakers at the event; Si Scott, John Walters (Eye Magazine), Bruno Maag (Dalton Maag), Jonathan Barnbrook (Barnbrook) and Tom Dorresteijn (Studio Dumbar) David Crow orchestrated the event, commenting and introducing each new speaker. The theme of the event was 'The Value Of Design' and each speaker had free reign as to how they may interpret this. of course any public speech is an opportunity for self promotion and for some this is exactly what happened, whereas others genuinely offered their slant on the value design had. There were certainly a diverse range of responses. First up was Si- Scott. I have heard a talk from Si-Scott before and I have to say that this talk was not much different really. I didn't think that Scott explained the 'The Value Of Design,' but merely talked us through his career path so far and how he has become successful using his own personal style. I think that Si Scott has an interesting style of work and the direction his more recent work is going in is good. He is a down to earth person and I think many audience members related to him, however I didn't think he offered any interesting opinions and his oration was a bit dull (might have to let him off though slightly, as he was under the influence of strong pain killers)

John Walters, however, offered his opinion about 'The Value Of Design,' from a non-designer perspective, which is exactly what Eye Magazine is base on. It was very engaging and refreshing to hear his opinion. Founded by Rick Poyner, Eye magazine has brought design writing from being, at best, a caption or short summary to an extensive dialogue and interesting discussion. Walters explained his view that Design has Value in five key ways; Editorial, Cultural, Functional, Financial and Educational Value. During the Question and Answer section at the end I asked Walters whether he thought the online accessibility of eye magazine affected the popularity of the print version of the magazine, Walters answered that eye has always had a strong online base, and that eye's online presence is as important as print, and part of what has made eye so popular, it just depends how people prefer to view things, and he had faith in eye as a beautiful printed item as well as an informative online resource. I certainly regard eye as one of my major online, cultural resources.

Probably one of the most entertaining of the speakers was Bruno Maag. Maag is like a firework and jumped straight into his talk with a sparky warning to anyone not paying for font licenses that he would personally hunt them down. Maag has a very craft-based respect for typography and he told us about the return to black and white gouache in drawing typefaces, and that any intern must close their mac and appreciate type non-digitally before they can create type digitally. I was really inspired my Maag and thought it would be enlightening to do a placement at Dalton Maag, a kind of karate kid technique in learning about typography. Maag quite literally talked about the value of design, in that the design of typefaces, which are effective and which work to sell product, can literally lead to cold hard cash, his unashamed discussion of making money was something, some conservative Brits, may have found unusual, but Maag has proved in his own work with huge clients such as Windows and Nokia, that you can make a lot of money from type. (I suppose you would have to be paid a lot to design a typeface that can be read in 3 billion different languages!) Maag has also created a free typeface also called Ubuntu, which has a vastly impressive number of variations, made available to everyone regardless of financial circumstance, location or language or as Maag says "before now typography has mainly been in the domain of the geeks"

Jonathan Barnbrook talked us through his experience as a more unconventional type designer, I couldn't help but think their may have been tensions between Barnbrook and Maag, all in good faith of course. Barnbrook is an extremely likeable and witty character and although I am unsure if he described a value of design as such, it was really interesting to see how he sourced inspiration for his typography and imparted anecdotes from his design experience.

Finally tom Dorresteijn spoke about his interpretation of 'The Value of Design.' For some reason everyone woke up slightly as Dorresteijn began his talk, maybe it was the change in accent. As a design strategist, Dorresteijn believes that the value of design is the 'design of value' in that if you can persuade a client that your design has value, then that is the key to success. In other words if the client is turned on' then they will appreciate the value of design and see how good design can result in business success.

I found that all in all the day was really inspiring and it was great to experience so many discussion about the topic of design, I felt that the day re-affirmed my belief that what I am doing really doe have value and is extremely valid as a vocation. Although I was disappointed at the absence of female representatives at the event. Afterwards the talks continued at The Deaf Institute, with a networking event organised by 'designinnit.' (to be continued)

Björn Soneson

I found this when browsing for inspirational book formats for my current project

Idle Progression

I have been collaborating over the past few weeks with Alice Smith and The Idler Magazine. We have been illustrating an essay by Sarah Boak called 'Idling for Women,' The essay addresses a lot of themes in regards to society's attitudes towards women. Some themes include: health, beauty, fashion, advertising, mass media, social expectations, politics, the essay offers women an idle alternative to the continuous stretching and pulling of feminine identity. More about this to come soon...

courtesy of Captain Geoffrey Spaulding

Elle Interview

When the opportunity arose for a placement at ELLE magazine, I felt it was a chance I couldn't miss. Lewis Cham, an ex-student from the course, offered a four week, paid placement in London. After working with Flux I really enjoyed the process of seeing a magazine develop from start to finish and thought it would be a great experience to do the same with ELLE magazine.

I sent a digital PDF of my work along with my CV and got a callback from Lewis, asking to come to the ELLE office for an interview. The interview was such short notice that I had to overhaul my portfolio and re-photograph my work in 24 hours, ready to take it down to London.

Upon meeting Lewis I felt instantly relaxed as he was very laid back and took hold of my portfolio and began flicking through it. He really engaged with my work and gave me some great feedback. I did feel however that the position wasn't quite right for me, as I got the sense that a huge interest in fashion was a main criteria, and many of my references and inspirations came from outside of fashion, as I explained I felt this was a good way to avoid repeating things that had already been done.

I felt like preparing myself for the interview and meeting Lewis was a positive experience and I learnt a lot about how to present myself, I think it can only be a good thing to show your work to as many people as possible, who may never have seen it, in order to gain confidence in presenting work and refine my presentation technique. It was really encouraging to get good feedback and even though I was unsuccessful in getting the placement, I think that the position was perfect for Phoebe Sing, who did get it, and I'm sure the experience complimented her interests and portfolio immensely, Well done Phoebe!

Greg Quinton: A String Of Pearls

In association with D&AD North and Lost In The Forest, I, along with the rest of my course, was asked to individually design a poster to promote an upcoming D&AD lecture by Greg Quinton of The Partners, entitled, A String Of Pearls.

I expected the talk to be interesting as The Partners are considered to be one of the biggest design agencies in the world, so as well as being good designers, they must surely be able to promote themselves very well also. I found it surprising how down to earth Greg Quinton was, I did find this endearing but not so much engaging. I felt as though Quinton stumbled through the talk somewhat and despite whether this was positive in a 'We're just like you' kind of way, I had expected a more high-powered, well rehearsed talk. Each to their own, however and perhaps the reason why Quinton is so successful is because he is personable rather than egotistical.

As for the String of Pearls I found that many were slightly stating the obvious, I mean of course all were valid, but some i.e 'Word Damn Hard' and 'Love good Clients' were more like common sense rather than wisdom -worthy. Overall I think that a lot of the work Quinton showed was impressive, and certainly portrayed The Partners as versatile, so if nothing else I gained a well-rounded insight into an agency I previously knew of but knew little about.

Howl

I am currently involved in a project based around the Beat generation, I am specifically researching the works of William. S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. I have been creating imagery combining it with typography to eventually create a publication, which is a mixture between horror and paradise. I recently went to see the film Howl, which portrays the culture and obscenity trial surrounding one of Ginsbergs most famous poems of the same name. James Franco leads as Allen Ginsberg, and he is fantastic. Man of the moment Franco, really captures subtle mannerisms and idiosyncracies of Ginsberg and his recital of the poem is a really enjoyable and mesmerising aspect of the film. The portrayal of the obscenity trial was impressive and felt well directed. The poem Howl is split up into 4 parts including a footnote at the end, a series of animation sequences run alongside the poem. Although the animation was very well produced, I felt that in some ways it was far too literal in its portrayal of the poem and there seemed to be a few too many animation styles going on at once. It detracted from Franco's precise engaging recital of the poem in that the poem was portrayed almost word for word, far too many things going on and I didn't think it captured the essence of the poem. Franco was so convincing that the simple reading of the poem was enough, that doesn't mean to say that the animation was completely pointless, there were some very beautiful moments within the animation and perhaps if these were celebrated and given time to breathe and stand in their own right, this could have worked. I did still very much enjoy the film, and it definitely helped with my project to see the poem performed. Especially touching was the slideshow of real photographs alongside descriptions of what the beats went on to do; shown whilst Ginsberg himself spoke and then appeared at the end. Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman

John Stezaker

Whitechapel Gallery, London

04/03/2011

John Stezaker is one of the most renowned collage artists of our time and it was a treat to find that a retrospective of his work had been curated for the Whitechapel Gallery. I first came across Stezaker's work when I visited New York in 2007, whilst studying on my foundation year, at the time I was unaware of how influential Stezaker would come to be. I re-visited a sketchbook from New York whilst studying my degree and noticed a small thumbnail of an intriguing and jarring image, researching further I realised it was Stezaker and began to explore his work further.

Within my wider research for my dissertation I researched Stezaker and found some of his themes very interesting. Stezaker uses film stills an juxtaposes them with disparate or complimentary images, film, stills.

Stezaker explores gender roles in cinema and is often described as a male feminist. It is interesting to wonder whether his work is perceived differently because he is male, compared to if a female generated similar work.

He comments on the idea that women are objects of attention and subjects of the male gaze, a theme prominent within Hollywood cinema. Using collage Stezaker subverts, exaggerates and draws attention to our perception, using what we take for granted and offering the opportunity to re-think what we see by rearranging the way images are ordered and presented. This transformation of images allures the viewer, as collage does so often, into a new sense of reality, a continuous comment and questioning of perception.

I researched Stezaker for my dissertation, I found it interesting to observe a male response to some of the feminist issues I had been exploring. To see the huge retrospective of Stezaker's work was inspiring and overwhelming to see so much of his work in one place, the work has much more resonance in the space of a gallery rather than on screen or in a book, seen at the size which Stezaker intended. What was so impressive is that each of the collages were original works, not re-produced or printed out, the actual fragments were original, and there is something endearing about how two disparate, unedited elements can work together in a strange harmonious chaos.

The idea of male dominance/gender hierarchy and the male/female gaze is something I have explored in a film workshop, with Sam Meech using found footage for the North West Film Archive, and something I will continue to explore in future work.