Belgrade Art Studio Residency

JEAN CLAIRE DY

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Borders Are Liminal Spaces. We Are All Border People.

(looped video art, work-in-progress)

This work attempts to explore boundaries and thresholds and being in-between and how I react and engage with these spaces and beings. Being in a liminal space is experiencing time between ‘what was’ and the ‘next’. As an artist-on-standby, I occupy a place of transition, a season of waiting, and not knowing. It is transformational because within the borders we learn to wait and let it form us.

I will explore boundaries and thresholds and being in-between and how I react and engage with these spaces and beings, that sometimes translate isolation to entanglements

THE PROCESS

I started with thinking about Turner’s concept of liminality and extended my ideas from there by writing a few phrases. Then I gathered some video materials based on the phrases and experimented on different effects in editing. This work involved so many moments of playing when editing the visuals. Sound came much later.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Tracking Incendiary Traces

(sound art, work-in-progress)

The cover art image that accompanies this sound piece is a composite of different pictures of ruined buildings as a result of the NATO bombings of Belgrade in the 90s. The pictures have been converted into sound files using software and mixed with found audio to create a sound story that reimagines as though the buildings are bomber planes. What if the buildings retain traces of the airstrikes not just through their facades but through sounds? What if the buildings become bombers themselves turning the narrative of war inversely on itself?

THE PROCESS

I first imagined that if I were in Belgrade physically for the residency, one of the things I would do is to look for the buildings that have traces of the bombings. So I gathered photographs online then I converted the photographs into sound files using software. I also gathered found audio in my playlist and also found online a footage of a survivor of the bombings talking about his experience. I extracted the audio from the video footage to just take out the interview. I mixed all the sound files into one sound story basically of an imagined airstrike. Again as in most of my work, there was a lot of experimenting and playing involved.

PHILIPPINES I MULTIMEDIA ARTIST

Jean Claire Dy is a filmmaker, media artist, writer, and educator from the south of the Philippines. She holds a Masters degree in Media Studies and Film and is currently the founder and director of Stories Beyond (www.stories-beyond.com). She also is Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas. Claire’s video works have been exhibited on various platforms. Her films have been screened in international film festivals.

Many stories have retained their timelessness even if they are commenting on a specific social/historical/political-economic context of the time because they resonate universally as a commentary also about humanity