[I just rediscovered a draft of this unpublished post from 7th October 2017. re/reading this today (on 12th July 2026), and with its many problems, it represents a mindset I remember being lost in, with a strange recurrence of of the ideas riewed in retwospect. it subsequently feels fitting to the home movies I made at the time. I'm not sure where this text was intended for, but I'm adding the list of Home Movies here too, as the text for a dedicated Home Movies page]
HOME MOVIES
Fell End/ Mega Ball/ Tuscany 17/ Portugal 16/ Exhibition Road/ Winterwood/ Colour Correction/ Argentina 15/ Arnie Space Race/ The Making of the Hotel Room/ Dam Paris Travelling/ Dam Paris/
My Home Movies are an attempt to source subject matter for montage based cinematic works that are honest responses to actuality. By voiding the more common prerequisite of conceptual subjectivity found in dominant cinema, these movies aim to develop an organic and free flowing approach, in which narrative and drive are generated naturally, through the structure of the editing process. While earlier works use more conventional, filmic editing processes in the trimming, reordering and cutting of video clips through film simulator software such as Final Cut Pro; my more recent videos use a structure of uncut video clips, sequenced chronologically, with edits made in the deleting of videos from this sequence. This selective approach to editing allows for unusual cuts to occur, those that may be unthinkable to the limited potential of the human ego.
Many of the resulting edits are consequential of this process, though some are the result of my active engagement with this process, to which events in reality become structured with the knowledge of the future edit. This is a problem, and for the most part I have avoided including edits that are knowingly contrived to suit the editing structure. For example in Symi, a shot of a table is followed by a series of shots of tables in various configurations, which I removed from the final export. The problem here is two fold. The initial dilemma is to where the honesty of this process lies. Of course, I am making these shorter video clips with the understanding of potential future use, be it as a stand alone clip or montage, and as such it could be argued that I am engaging in the editing process in the act of recording videos in the first place.
Eisenstein proposed that even script writing was a form of editing, and it is in editing that I find a dishonesty. My dishonesty in these videos are based on producing a work that has a rhythm to it, and does not include accidental, failed and/or embarrassing clips. But as my mind projects these videos into their future structure in montage, it is difficult not to apply a subconscious editing process to the work, to which all video making is to engage in a process of editing, and thus an act of dishonesty.
An alternative view is that video is a contemporary social tool, and as a result my use of video in everyday activities—focusing more on the eventful such as holidays and weddings—is the normal approach of the camera enabled tourist/guest/visitor/public, as I tried to example in Tuscany 17. This process of image making is always set in sight of the future application of the image. This is still being defined in popular culture, in the development from images as a way of preserving memories, into a posthistory position of future application, which is currently shifting into systems of value through social media. In light of this, a reluctancy to shooting video would be the truly dishonest act in our current climate.
To structure these clips with the foresight of their future as images, rather than their presence as memories has become the focus of image production. We see this in cinema, to which movies used to push themselves to be successful with the prospect of becoming classics, cult, legendary works of cinema. Today movies are made for the box-office, with entire plots played out in the trailer, spectacle taking precedence over narrative, experimentation becoming a reflexive gimmick, and actors used for their popularity rather than their ability. This may not be accurate, but it seems so, in the present universe of technological images, as fiction takes hold of reality, and the entertainment of the exaggerated truth has become a lie.
These home movies are set to be memories, actively going against the onslaught of speculative image making. Yet, as I write this, as an attempt to rectify some of the potentially dishonest moments in these works, this process of becoming past, becoming history, has itself subverted this into a posthistoric act, as although the works are set to propel the viewer into the past, as a historic act, they are set in their current mode as culturally relevant, and as such to propel myself as human ego into the future, based on some sort of value in this retrograde use of images. Yet, this is an inevitability of revolting against current paradigm, in a dichotomy of the historic and posthistoric in a way that reveals the two—potentially.
Making videos and/or photographs of moments of interest has become as common an act as jotting down a number or launching Netflix on the television. These movies are simply the record of these actions, put into sequence, with the removal of unwanted material in light of potential viewership. This is the dichotomy of the image in action—which is another issue I may have to address—of which the image becomes a projection of the spectator. If a video is made and no one is there to see it, did it ever exist? What is a video if it is not reformed in the mind of the audience into its respective reading, but a series of coloured, flickering dots. I remember looking at the lights of Pleasure Land amusement arcade in Morecambe when I was much younger, and realising that the lights I have initially thought were moving across the edge of the sign, were actually switching on and off. This is no different to a video image, of which Pleasure Land’s lights only move in the interpretation of the conscious mind.
These home movies are not entertainment as it has become for capitalist society. They are a move towards an honest representation of events in a reality grounded in the dishonesty of cinema and the moving image. It could be argued that a more honest representation of reality would be a continuous web cam, or a performance in reality, or simply being in reality. This view is a reality without cinema, without the technological image, and as such this approach of exclusion is the dishonest act. We must find ways of using these images to present the honesty of the actual, from he event, the act of recording, the camera’s mediation, the software algorithms and the editing process throughout.
This is what I aim to achieve in this ongoing series of home movies. They can be watched through sways of boredom, meditation, excitement, humour, passivity, intention, and confusion. They can be in the background of social media scrolling, dating app swiping, or profile updating. They can become or engage with present, as a video playing alongside the birds singing and neighbours arguing. I struggle with the current models of cinema, television, online video in their current pseudo stimulus form. A model that has stuck with me is that of Andrew Kotting’s Christmas entertainment one year, in which he played Brakhage’s Dog Star Man DVD on loop. What a fantastic way to experience work. To have an artwork present for the occasion, at no cost of the viewer other than their existing equipment, as Dog Star Man is now on YouTube for free—albeit in a poor quality digital transfer.
Though as a model to pursue, as something that simply becomes present in a room, rather than requiring the audiences attention, I find quite exciting. This is not a new model in structure, as artists such as Gordon and Marclay have shown in their gallery-only 24hours works. I’d rather see these as watch faces personally, ‘oh, is it that time already, I need to be home before Norman pulls the shower curtain’. These works have made this approach possible, though only for the elitism of the gallery goer, in the fetishism of the gallery and its temporal requirements. But I hope these works can be watched, in any form: eating dinner, in a cinema, falling asleep, in the bath, on the bus; and become present in your experience of reality, through sways of immersion and reflection, highlighting the actuality of the video image and the viewer in the universe of technological images.
HOME MOVIES
Fell End/ Mega Ball/ Tuscany 17/ Portugal 16/ Exhibition Road/ Winterwood/ Colour Correction/ Argentina 15/ Arnie Space Race/ The Making of the Hotel Room/ Dam Paris Travelling/ Dam Paris/
My Home Movies are an attempt to source subject matter for montage based cinematic works that are honest responses to actuality. By voiding the more common prerequisite of conceptual subjectivity found in dominant cinema, these movies aim to develop an organic and free flowing approach, in which narrative and drive are generated naturally, through the structure of the editing process. While earlier works use more conventional, filmic editing processes in the trimming, reordering and cutting of video clips through film simulator software such as Final Cut Pro; my more recent videos use a structure of uncut video clips, sequenced chronologically, with edits made in the deleting of videos from this sequence. This selective approach to editing allows for unusual cuts to occur, those that may be unthinkable to the limited potential of the human ego.
Many of the resulting edits are consequential of this process, though some are the result of my active engagement with this process, to which events in reality become structured with the knowledge of the future edit. This is a problem, and for the most part I have avoided including edits that are knowingly contrived to suit the editing structure. For example in Symi, a shot of a table is followed by a series of shots of tables in various configurations, which I removed from the final export. The problem here is two fold. The initial dilemma is to where the honesty of this process lies. Of course, I am making these shorter video clips with the understanding of potential future use, be it as a stand alone clip or montage, and as such it could be argued that I am engaging in the editing process in the act of recording videos in the first place.
Eisenstein proposed that even script writing was a form of editing, and it is in editing that I find a dishonesty. My dishonesty in these videos are based on producing a work that has a rhythm to it, and does not include accidental, failed and/or embarrassing clips. But as my mind projects these videos into their future structure in montage, it is difficult not to apply a subconscious editing process to the work, to which all video making is to engage in a process of editing, and thus an act of dishonesty.
An alternative view is that video is a contemporary social tool, and as a result my use of video in everyday activities—focusing more on the eventful such as holidays and weddings—is the normal approach of the camera enabled tourist/guest/visitor/public, as I tried to example in Tuscany 17. This process of image making is always set in sight of the future application of the image. This is still being defined in popular culture, in the development from images as a way of preserving memories, into a posthistory position of future application, which is currently shifting into systems of value through social media. In light of this, a reluctancy to shooting video would be the truly dishonest act in our current climate.
To structure these clips with the foresight of their future as images, rather than their presence as memories has become the focus of image production. We see this in cinema, to which movies used to push themselves to be successful with the prospect of becoming classics, cult, legendary works of cinema. Today movies are made for the box-office, with entire plots played out in the trailer, spectacle taking precedence over narrative, experimentation becoming a reflexive gimmick, and actors used for their popularity rather than their ability. This may not be accurate, but it seems so, in the present universe of technological images, as fiction takes hold of reality, and the entertainment of the exaggerated truth has become a lie.
These home movies are set to be memories, actively going against the onslaught of speculative image making. Yet, as I write this, as an attempt to rectify some of the potentially dishonest moments in these works, this process of becoming past, becoming history, has itself subverted this into a posthistoric act, as although the works are set to propel the viewer into the past, as a historic act, they are set in their current mode as culturally relevant, and as such to propel myself as human ego into the future, based on some sort of value in this retrograde use of images. Yet, this is an inevitability of revolting against current paradigm, in a dichotomy of the historic and posthistoric in a way that reveals the two—potentially.
Making videos and/or photographs of moments of interest has become as common an act as jotting down a number or launching Netflix on the television. These movies are simply the record of these actions, put into sequence, with the removal of unwanted material in light of potential viewership. This is the dichotomy of the image in action—which is another issue I may have to address—of which the image becomes a projection of the spectator. If a video is made and no one is there to see it, did it ever exist? What is a video if it is not reformed in the mind of the audience into its respective reading, but a series of coloured, flickering dots. I remember looking at the lights of Pleasure Land amusement arcade in Morecambe when I was much younger, and realising that the lights I have initially thought were moving across the edge of the sign, were actually switching on and off. This is no different to a video image, of which Pleasure Land’s lights only move in the interpretation of the conscious mind.
These home movies are not entertainment as it has become for capitalist society. They are a move towards an honest representation of events in a reality grounded in the dishonesty of cinema and the moving image. It could be argued that a more honest representation of reality would be a continuous web cam, or a performance in reality, or simply being in reality. This view is a reality without cinema, without the technological image, and as such this approach of exclusion is the dishonest act. We must find ways of using these images to present the honesty of the actual, from he event, the act of recording, the camera’s mediation, the software algorithms and the editing process throughout.
This is what I aim to achieve in this ongoing series of home movies. They can be watched through sways of boredom, meditation, excitement, humour, passivity, intention, and confusion. They can be in the background of social media scrolling, dating app swiping, or profile updating. They can become or engage with present, as a video playing alongside the birds singing and neighbours arguing. I struggle with the current models of cinema, television, online video in their current pseudo stimulus form. A model that has stuck with me is that of Andrew Kotting’s Christmas entertainment one year, in which he played Brakhage’s Dog Star Man DVD on loop. What a fantastic way to experience work. To have an artwork present for the occasion, at no cost of the viewer other than their existing equipment, as Dog Star Man is now on YouTube for free—albeit in a poor quality digital transfer.
Though as a model to pursue, as something that simply becomes present in a room, rather than requiring the audiences attention, I find quite exciting. This is not a new model in structure, as artists such as Gordon and Marclay have shown in their gallery-only 24hours works. I’d rather see these as watch faces personally, ‘oh, is it that time already, I need to be home before Norman pulls the shower curtain’. These works have made this approach possible, though only for the elitism of the gallery goer, in the fetishism of the gallery and its temporal requirements. But I hope these works can be watched, in any form: eating dinner, in a cinema, falling asleep, in the bath, on the bus; and become present in your experience of reality, through sways of immersion and reflection, highlighting the actuality of the video image and the viewer in the universe of technological images.