PHL: Thinking back on your thesis show, it strikes me that recently your prints
have taken on some of the same qualities as your video work. I mean they
are fragmented, digitally cut and layered...Do you think of your videos in
terms of collage? How do they relate to the prints, for you? Do they?
HB: I think the video work stylistically and thematically resemble the Compounds that I
have been work on since late last year. When I construct my videos I tend to look for
things that fit idiosyncratically and not so much formally. I tend to build my videos
around the underlying audio, which is usually a composite of multiple tracks from
varied locations. Most of my work is assembled in this way, collected sounds,
imagery, texts, thoughts from a variety of sources and inspirations and I deposit them
on a timeline, or on a digital canvas or in a journal.
Working on the videos is definitely the place where I can really submerge myself in a
lot of questions and problem solving, my process really hinges on things that don’t
seem to fit together naturally and organically. I like the fact that I am able to break
pieces of my world off and construct them in a way that makes sense to me. For the
video that I have been working on since last summer, I have had to take a break
because it seemed that the pieces weren’t coming together intuitively. I think it had a
lot to do with the pressure I was feeling when I was thinking about the work for my
thesis show.
I also think that video becomes the place where you can really begin to deposit
different voices, places and moods and still have it carry a narrative because of its
temporal capacity. I have to be much more considerate when I am making my prints.
I approach the compilation of my videos much more fearlessly; it is my hope that
through repetition the process and shift will spill over into the assemblages.
PLH: I'm interested in how decisions get made in the computer, in an environment
where the "undo" button is always a keystroke away. Can you take us through
the process of making one of the "collage" prints? What do you start with, how
do you gather the source images, and how do decisions get made along the way?
What about the paper choice?
HB: Firstly the collages are called Compounds. I think I drew this name from the fact that
I have always been interested in the nature of two things colliding; a compound is
also a group of elements that work towards each other in order to become more
stable. This is how it all started for me that necessity to become more grounded and
earthed. Moving to New York and realizing that so many of the things that I were
interested in voicing, their roots were elsewhere. I was beginning to feel really
tortured by the fact that the camera was turning on me, every time I picked it up there
was a failure involved where its representational capacity was drowning my voice. I
became really frustrated, and remembered that I had been scanning bits and pieces of
my families archive. I opened an image one night and spent hours looking, displacing,
fragmenting and obscuring its parts.
It felt relieving to be so intimate with one image again. The process of destroying its
orginal form and making something new out of it was a staggering realization. And
after starting some more that were very didactic in form and content, image and text
separated by equal distance, I realized that the thought of their construction was
beginning to become an obsession. I had a very clear idea in my head so when I went
back home for the holidays I worked on creating work for my thesis show from touch
down to lift off.
I bought a scanner in a dingy shop that sells milk the evening I got home, I didn’t
work so I went back the next day and found a row of hidden 10 year old Epson
scanners I took one home and opened up my parents albums and spent close to 10
days scanning. When I ran out of images there, I left home and asked my extended
family to take their photographs for a couple of hours in promise of return. I sat and
listened to stories of the Grenada invasion, of Sun, of Solider Bynoe and the
Archipelago. One of the more instrumental men on the island Nolly Simmons passed
on a lot of information to me, he has been studying the genealogy, the blood line of
his family and by extension mine as we are all related.
After scanning these images in and thinking about text and writing I approach my
Compounds like there is no undo button. Most of the images are so large and layered
that to work with the files I have to flatten them. I remember making the decision one
night after waiting for the move and select tool to perform a function. It took about 45
minutes. I realized that to work with expedience wasn’t something that I was going to
have the gift of, so I started flattening, loosing my layers and piling other imagery on.
I also grabbed scans from objects, books, skin, faces, dirt, and symbols from the
island as how they are rendered in popular history books.
I think that the undo button is an easy thing to criticize, and I don’t ever hold it in
mind as something natural to the process. I think that working with a digital process
has allowed me to really understand what a canvas and its function is, I think there is
a lot of construction and ideological choices that go into each of them and to pass it
off as something I can undo seems counter productive to my way of working which is
why I am happy that it became something else for me. It became about taking that
risk of applying set layers over different levels of foundations.
As I was saying before I work intuitively my gut makes decisions, if something feels
out of place I hide it until I can find a way to use it. If it does not belong I discard it, I
can tell if I am going wrong almost immediately and it isn’t by feeling discomfort it is
about looking at the entire canvas and really understanding how each of the elements
function. They have to have that stability and not chaos, even though they are
disorienting they make perfect sense to me. And to that end they have become a place
for me to use my history/story and myself efficiently.
Paper choice became an important part of my process as I found photographic papers
so limiting, they were reading as plastic, emulsion, and thick. So inorganic, started
looking for papers in January when I returned and headed down to NY art central and
bought tons of sheets and started testing. I knew that I wanted them to live on
something that wasn’t so static and rigid. I wanted them to flow, to lift off of
mounting and to hang lifelessly. Also it was another way for me to destroy the idea of
proper printing, I wanted the inks to really battle with the printer and the profile. I
wanted to fool them so they could lay down x amount of ink on this foreign paper and
have the paper and its cellulose dictate its color. I wanted the printer to dictate the
print. I found the specific type of paper that I used for the show it is called Aged
Durotone Newsprint and since printing I have found some of its flaws like bending
when the edges have to much ink etc. I started looking two weeks ago for a sturdier
type and I think I have isolated two types. I also think that paper has become an
important factor in the output of the work because it is another way for me to control
and treat the prints as object.
PLH: Geography / place, obviously, plays a large role in your work. Do you find it
easy / hard to make work in New York? How do you find your environment
affects the way you work?
HB: I am afraid of being in one place for to long. It has always been my thing of moving
back and forth trying to find another place other than my home to fit in, New York
has offered herself to me in that way. It is easier for me to work here because of the
distance and because of the social constructs of the metropolitan. I need the distance
in order to look back on my life as objective as possible. One good example about the
crippling nature of trying to create work when I was home was the break we had over
summer. I spent 10 weeks between St. Vincent and St. Lucia and planned this over
ambitious list of projects and books to read.
I rested for about two weeks and became so lazy that it was hard for me to motivate
myself because I didn’t’ know where to start. There was a quiet in my life that had
been missing for such a long time and it was peaceful. I took some photographs and
shot some video but I didn’t’ really question much. I was just happy to be around my
family and loved ones. It was a hard year for me and I figured I should listen. I came
back to up in August for the new-year and realized I didn’t have anything that I
wasn’t sure where my work was heading.
And even for the entirety of last semester I felt lost. So I started walking alone
whenever I had the chance to, I would traipse through Chelsea and Brooklyn I would
find old streets and bury myself in their cobblestone, just be my myself and another
set of wheels start turning for me. That is what I like about being here, I have the
choice to do that to escape and return to the quietude that is an all-encapsulating part
of being on my island.
After trudging through the city streets my mental momentum stabilizes and I am able
to record some hint of how to proceed and what questions to ask myself. I think it is
all about the questions and for some reason it is easier for me to be harder on myself
here than back home, there is more risk involved, especially during the process of
procuring this degree. I am also able to have a clearer voice and not let the anger I
usually feel step between my process and its outcome.
PLH: Do you think it's important that your viewers "get" the whole story (for
example, that they understand your upbringing in the Caribbean, your
relationship to your father, etc...)? Because while those narrative threads are
certainly there in the work, they are also partly obscured...even by the language
in the text piece you've made, which acts as a kind of barrier to a clear read. So
does the quiet voice in your video...the breaking up of the image in the
"collages." You don't make it easy for us to get the whole story, so I'm
wondering to what extent confusion or deliberate obfuscation / hiding plays into
it.
HB: When I am constructing the Compounds, video pieces or writing I rarely think of the
viewer, and how much of the story he or she will understand. I think if I begin
approaching my process like that I will be ground to a halt and not ask myself serious
questions anymore. I know it is important for others to read the work but I think that
the work is embedded with a formal foundation that does tell the story. And yes you
have to look hard and really consider the surface and the broken words but I think it is
the point in which me as creator really enforces my power of voice and narrative.
I remember talking to Moyra Davey when we had a studio visit about this hiding and being
in many ways ashamed of not being able to own up to any side racially. Always in the
middle and always lost, I knew that there was a lot of shame and insecurities
underlying and I think it is only natural for that to be embedded in the work. I think
that the veiled aspect of the work, works on two levels psychologically.
Firstly it is a place for me to respect how I feel and it isn’t a question of being black
or white, or of being the colonizer or the colonized, I am split down the middle and
never really understand my history to well and the social constructs of my society I
was unable to make a clear path of myself so in many ways this instability of position
comes through in the work as a blockage, as the inability to read many of the parts of
the imagery because as a creator I cant tap into it because of my position socially,
historically and as a woman. But there are a start for me, maybe one day I will receive
implicit permission to indeed construct these palimpsests that misbehave.
Secondly I want to viewer to work hard, about as hard as I have. I know most of them
don’t and it doesn’t bother me that the whole story isn’t bleeding on the page. I think
that I have used imagery and text in a delicate way to really give the viewer the idea
that I am working with history and with the social constructs of a place. For example
my image the Fordes’ with its foundation of what may seem to most a male painted
war figure whose face is has been eradicated by countless other who now are
embedded and in friction with his foundation I think reads quite straightforward as a
comment on race, lineage and power.
PLH: Much of your work early on in the program seemed to revolve around fantasy
and femininity -- elements that I feel are still very much present in the "mango"
video. What role do you think this older work has had in terms of informing
your current work? Do you still consider it relevant to your present concerns?
HB: I think that the work I did earlier on, really carried my mark as creator and
collaborator, much of it was a collaborative effort that got me to a place where I was
constantly worrying about ownership, bodies, and representation. I am a woman and I
have a very layered and textured story and I cant help but feel as though these things
never stop interacting being female and writing fiction/fantasy, I think it is a part of
how I am beginning to place myself culturally, of course if there isn’t space for you
and you have to occupy some position then I was left with one option which was to
make it up. I think that it is constantly treading through my work as a motif. Through
the unreliable voice I am able to declare a position and work from there, I think it
offers me more freedom because this position is not static and it is constantly in flux
and changing. It is adaptable and this is where i think and I feel the strength of my
study and practice lies, it is the place I get inspiration from. The freedom for me to
expose different parts of myself and have it change over time as a function that
foundation is crucial to my joy and happiness. It is where i get pleasure.
It isn’t as though I could separate the holly side that is dealing with family, lineage
etc and the holly side that use to play dress up. I think beneath it all my concerns are
carried over and I think much more prevalent in the newer work because of the
politics. It has just found a way to embed itself in something that is serious like
pointing out and tracking my identity and my place, before it was about that
negotiation and sometimes it was just about pure escape. It is painful thinking about
the more serious aspects of my work and life.
PLH: Lately I've been thinking a lot about losing the studio space in LIC, and I'm
moving in order to have a workspace at home. I'm wondering how you
structure your work time -- is it important for you to have a strict "studio
practice" with dedicated time and space for work? Do you set aside time each
day? Or do you allow yourself a more casual relationship to your work, getting
in hours when you can?
HB: I have been thinking a lot about how I will practice after the degree is over. I never
really worked at LIC mostly because it was out of the way for me and I never really
moved into the space. Plus I don’t like being around people or strange locations when
creating, I have to be comfortable with the space. I tend to do a lot of my work alone
or sectioned off at home in my room or at the digital labs. I don’t come from a studio
mentality but I recognize now that it will become an important part of how I will
motivate myself. I think I am constantly working if not directly then indirectly, I
spend a lot of my time reading and researching artists. I don’t have any rigid systems
developed where I get up and create or where I block times to do it. When it calls me
I answer. Which is why I am now getting the itching again to return to the work and
see what it needs as it does always feel like a work in progress.
I get my hours in when I need to, I work with my computer and time. I have begun to
think about how I can bring different mediums into the work and I have been
considering printmaking. I feel as though the Compounds are screaming for it as they
already have such a resemblance to that process. So I hope to have some time in the
near future where I can actually get my hands dirty and really begin another intimate
progressed relationship with my work.
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