Sleep
I have chosen to explore the idea of sleeping, the concept
of not being able to control your body. I have mainly focused on photography
and films of people who are close to me and some strangers. I have also done a
few paintings, focusing on how the body moves when subconscious.
I started looking at Ted Spagna; he is an artist who wanted
to investigate the relationship between art and science and to satisfy his own curiosity
about sleep behaviour. To do this he used time lapse in a bird’s eye view, I have
also done this but in a video form.
In my videos I am showing how the subject has no control,
for instance they are not able to keep their heads up. With my videos I have
tried to show an intimate and completely innocent insight into something
totally private. As usually you would not see someone sleep, unless you are
close to them, which is why when watching you would feel as though you are
almost intruding on something personal. It’s a weird experience seeing someone
who you have never seen before, not be able to act anything but honest, how
they are with no inhibitions.
With my sleep videos I have decided to look into Andy
Warhol, specifically his art film “Sleep”. This consists of 6 hours of a man
sleeping, with the camera still, Warhol shows different views of the man
throughout the film. In my final piece I have decided to show a video on a
loop, to get Warhol’s effect. Warhol’s idea behind Sleep was that you lose
track of time and a sense of awareness when asleep, so he wanted to make the
audience feel like this, which he did by making his film so long.
I have also looked into Sophie Calle, one of her projects
was “Sleepers”, where she invited people to sleep in her bed whilst she
photographed them. This gave inspiration for my polaroids, yet I decided to
photograph people in their own environment to make them feel more comfortable.
I wanted to look into sleep as it is such an everyday, banal
action, as everyone does it, it is so familiar and natural we cannot help but
relate.
I have decided to look into the moment when a person wakes
up from sleep, where their face and body completely changes as they suddenly
have control, yet for a moment they have forgotten where they are and what they
were doing. I also looked into people yawning, I liked the fact that it linked
to sleeping as it’s the same idea, when yawning a person has not control over
their face and it is also so interesting to watch.
