Kriah

Kriah

Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea (Fanzine page)

Following the critical studies seminars I’ve been attending on Fandoms and fan economies, I created my own fanzine entry page. I considered rewriting one of my favourite works, Wide Sargasso Sea. I took a 3 of my favourite quotes and expanded them into more lengthy descriptive poems. I also chose to consider the theme that my work has taken and create the poems from the perspective of the house that the book takes place in. I wanted to take a step on from manifesting emotion in objects and locations and completely personify this house and give it an opinion/voice based on the events that are taking place within it. 

The piece was incredibly interesting and helped me consider the voice that my poetry takes and the ways in which I write that are personal to me as a narrator. Ideally I’d love to try and rewrite the entire story from this perspective, then I could play around with the different ways this could be presented or recorded. 

This piece is predominantly angry and I used single words and short phrases to attempt to make the piece structurally quite blunt and aggressive too. While I feel that written down the structure of this piece is incredibly obvious and important, it is somewhat lost in the spoken word. It might be that I need to re-record the piece, or even that I experiment with exhibiting the words from the piece visually. The way it’s structured it would be interesting for someone to attempt to read the piece aloud from a written format, as it’s so sharp and blunt.

In this piece I tried to work on my spoken word; I looked at a lot of different poets reading their work, particularly on the youtube channel Button Poetry. I initially wrote this piece all in one sitting after a therapy appointment where I was asked to describe visually what a lack of control looked like to me. This began quite simply but by the end of the session I was so anxious and paranoid that I’d actually personified and created a visual representation of one of my worst fears and it was all too much for me. I tried to capture the idea of my fear being manifest into this ‘thing’, this monster that I couldn’t bare to describe let alone imagine. Some of the feedback I’ve received is that it’s unclear who is in the poem and who/what is being described. I shift pronouns and I’m glad I managed to create this unidentifiable sense of fear and anxiety within the piece that can’t be placed with any specific character.

I want to work on the way I’m speaking certain sounds and use this poem to develop a spoken piece that has sounds which mimic the words being spoken. I’ve listened a lot to ASMR on youtube and think that it would make this piece a lot more performative and the sounds more interactive as they mimic the words and the tone of the ideas.

Working through a green screen induction led me to these short films of someone wearing my ‘claws’ being pulled through a black hole and floating about in space. They were very immediate and only attempts to begin using the green screen software. The only inspiration I was drawing at the time was from a book I am currently reading called ‘The Subtle Knife’ by Phillip Pullman, about a girl and boy who travel through worlds by cutting doors in the universes and climbing through them. As we recorded the figure footage a few days before the software induction, with a large group of people, so it wasn’t the easiest to creatively focus on ideas I’m exploring right now. 

I am interested in the software and would like to explore it more if I have a more realistic and focussed idea in future. 

In an attempt to link my writing to my initial cloud photos I decided to write about finding the images that my grandfather took and making my own from this. The writing alone I am completely disappointed with, it feels laboured, uninteresting and almost emotional in a really unpleasant way. After being disappointed with the writing, instead of moving on I tried recording the piece as spoken word. As a result of me disliking the initial poem the spoken word doesn’t flow and appears rushed as though I want it to be over (because I did). Setting this spoken piece to an awful film was just made no difference at this point to how bad the piece already was. Despite the aesthetics now looking like a flight commercial that’s been taped over someones home video, I already hated the initial writing behind this piece so feel there’s nothing left to salvage.

It’s made it apparent to me that I don’t need to directly link my work to the idea I’m exploring, sometimes blatantness completely ruins a piece as the work is never as successful as the idea you have in mind. Instead I’m going to try simply working with influences rather than addressing direct concepts, especially in my writing. 

‘Closer’ Claws

Having recently explored the theme of manifesting monstrousness in my work I considered revisiting the claws I created for my ‘Cloud Tableaux’ photoshoot. Taking inspiration from Julie Taymor’s ‘Titus’ I considered the characterisation of Lavinia and the symbolism behind her losing her hands and having them replaced with branches. Mixed ideas about painfulness, disgust, futility, struggle and revenge are symbolised within these branches that protrude from her wrists. 

I considered how the claws I created were symbolic in my shoot as a tool for getting closer to the subject I was addressing. Despite initially intending the hands to depict how a human would be stretched when entering a black hole (a break in time/space continuum) they can be viewed as having purposefully extended fingertips to stretch closer to my grandfather. Through this idea the motion of reaching or stretching is apparent and what arguably look like claws can be viewed as finger extensions to grasp at a lost thing. 

From all of this thought I deemed that the colour of the claws was entirely wrong and forced them into the same strange fantastical land that had done my ‘Cloud Tableaux’ images no good, hence I painted them white. White creates for me a kind of sinister innocence, the structure is obviously much more visible in white, but the shadows are also much more prominent and the sharpness of the tips I feel is more delicate and ominous. My intent for these claws was to create a structure that is perceivably monstrous and sinister while also being a clear symbol for extension and reaching - questioning the purpose of the original object without the manifestation of complex ideas and feelings. 

From this idea of ‘manifesting feelings in locations’ I considered how as humans we manifest feelings in objects and ideas also. I thought about how in earlier work I had forced the concept of being reunited with my late grandfather (or having a sort of telepathic conversation with him through art) into the aesthetic of clouds (heaven, the unknown, time, etc.) 

I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to progress this until I spoke to a cousin who creates and paints small (absolutely tiny) figurines. They were mainly monsters/fantastical beings that looked terrifyingly threatening and he had created small narratives for each, almost giving the figurines personalities. As he explained these to me I realised the strength and power that he was manifesting within these figurines, possibly as an extension of his own fear or feelings of powerlessness. 

As a result of this I decided to begin drawing one of the figurines with the intention to expand the figurine’s power, through creating it as an image that is no longer small. Drawing is arguably an impression of the subject, in this sense giving greater room for the audience to imagine the depth of this character’s terror/monstrosity. 

I am pleased with the outcome of the image, the messy shading and angling of the subject puts my audience in a vulnerable position to the character, hence creating it as this ideal stereotypical ‘monster’ with power and strength. In terms of expanding on this, I’m feeling somewhat uninspired by drawing a creation that is not my own. I also feel that if I attempted to make this monster my own I would be massively taking away from its creator’s intent and hard work. 

James Richards @ The ICA

Notes I took during:

-sex and consumption 

-something about pigs carcasses that links to mundanity of production and consumption.

-no plain faces, only blank eyes, everything is disguised.

-uneasiness in the lack of trust felt towards the film

-disjointed narrative creates an ignorance between all of the characters as to their context.

-panicked eyes almost godly, use of clouds isn’t dreamlike but etherial because of music.  --> musical addition to cloud imagery to subvert meaning if anything??

-bird scene is like bleak solace compared to fire, coal, sparks and umbers

-3rd time round, hate this meat scene.

Cambridge

I’ll treasure it read it rung it feed it until I have nothing left to fill I feel formerly dazed the station I fell into scrambling upwards to meet you wasn’t where I left it I decant not into the features of the road nor the traffic lights not even the right, left, right, right turning I know I came unwanted and attempted to refuse to go It was in the trauma hiding inside each time I burdened all the motionless disapproval the furrowing beneath gritted teeth grabbing at me as I forced on trainers and being followed down the stairs I clung to him; I clung to it I expected beauty to resound but what resounds when no one’s listening It’s so much walking that I gave myself to every inch that listened to me losing you feeding, fending off everything you almost said love I know the room noises from the kitchen the tiny bed surrounded by hanging clothes sink in a cupboard mostly I remember crying holding my knees telling you not to touch me I had a perfect dream and my failure to recreate it fell entirely on me I can’t find it in anything we sat in boats and went nowhere and I know I loved but we knew we were creating a thing to remember it wasn’t unimaginable, uncontrollable there was something beautifully manufactured now I feel manufactured I just dread knowing each of the stops, and every time I cried or nearly did or wanted to while listening to overhead voices list the proximity of our distance I dread remembering the last time I told you all I needed and nothing wavered everything collapsed every time I think it was the last time I saw you when instead it was the last time I offered myself to you knew that you owned every piece of my mind and held on to that perfect image I fabricated from everything I believed this to mean perfectly inside my head but you never knew that image I thought you never wanted to there’s no physicality to this empty questioning I’ll go like before know the roads could break my heart pray you’ll meet me as before and know that as I intertwine myself I’m losing everything I fought to rescue just pray that I’m losing it with reason. 

(Having read Max Porter’s ‘Grief is the thing with feathers’, I decided to attempt to poetically manifest emotion as he does. I didn’t want to immediately jump back to my cloud narrative, so I used a more recent feeling of fear and insecurity and attempted to embed it into the place the feelings took place. I proceeded to write from this attempt and the thoughts/feelings it conjured, creating what I believe to be a really gently bitter piece, that collates my feelings about a situation perfectly to the situations setting. I often fall into a horrible pattern with my poetry where the narcissistic nature of the subject means I repeatedly go over my feelings in response to my own body. The implication of attempting to manifest thoughts and emotions into a location has steered me away from this obvious pattern and made something I feel is equally as profound but less laboriously heavy.)

Some kind of longing

If heaven opened or existed or attested my commitment to destructive behaviour I might behave more but discreetly I fantasise about my inability to commit or adore in totality in purest form I bask as though the ultimate fem when reality assures me that I’m an assault on the painful self loathing nature I attend I’ve never known serenity as much as I’ve known howling under a desk, waiting for recognition that my feelings which existed were allowed to exist by the compromise of your own admittance there was no face behind my eyes I lit candles not to mourn or to enjoy but to continue to endure with a softer vanilla scent than before fatality or totality I can’t believe I didn’t die I longed for you almost as heavily as I breathed in those few seconds before a train hit the platform. You bit into me gentle nothing don’t mask the handprints on my walls that came as you leaned to tie your shoes when you threatened to leave and I wondered if my sleeping body was more like a corpse or a coffin not flowered I don’t know if I ever flowered draped in a different kind of sheet one of both our flesh and tendencies to exasperate ourselves with pleasure rather than thought dying in your arms as I opened myself raw this ode to a love I hated combined with a dependency that forced me outside of myself don’t shriek don’t screech don’t lie- on me beside me or too me my glowing skin residual to my frame a thousand chances to speak instead I cried became a baby at your feet in your hands as you gripped my waist I felt a lift between my bottom rib and what I can only imagine to be my lungs we slept continuously with the TV on now I wake even more overcome feeling something rather than feeling none nice to know where you stand when you constantly question if you’re alive or living or how quickly trains move as they’re stopping Don’t beg for me flatter yourself into thinking this is any kind of chase I truly have abandoned taste beckoning beauty why don’t you recede when you see my ignorance plainly to be pretty but to be bleak or to be full but to be meek what a fucking waste flowers and what else reproduce myself repeatedly in the hope that with one swift peak I might become entirely what I’d hoped I’d be I can’t breathe I never could but even less so with the pressure of 4 extra limbs beside me I could care more for those 10 toes than you care for me but instead i’ll victimise myself until hysterical doesn’t cut it and melodrama doesn’t cut it and I cut it and you tell me to throw all my pain out the window but I know it will lay there on the ground beneath my room waiting for me to beckon it back in eyes blurred grabbing every sharp object in sight to shine a sharp knife, reflecting white light a lighthouse for my sadness to my window it’ll rise tiny unwed fantasies don’t promise me an end in small laughter and friendship when I can’t speak of death like I speak in my head I told a boy I couldn’t understand his will to die but unconvinced by my own lease on life I question whether you forced this reality on me or simply made me aware of it was unhealthiness profound before you made it known aggravated the cut until it seeped and I could no longer control the flow of blood to my muscle cells begin to die revived by a harsh intake of sense what if sensibility is the lie dear warrior woman I see your death as bright as I see your beauty as fearlessness came in your life and not in the ending of it

(As I was reading far more Sylvia Plath, Phillip Larkin and John Betjeman I began to adapt the poetry I’ve been writing into a more artistic and descriptive form, rather than the typically blunt and unpleasant style that I wrote in prior. I never thought that my poetry worked as anything more than an unpleasant and embarrassing diary for me, but revisiting this piece several times and having included parts of it in my photographic work from last year I thought it would be interesting to work from- in terms of exploring my relationship to certain events.)