Theme: DREAM DEFIANCE

11.01.2021

I dreamt of derelict farm houses and animals and clever horses playing, retrieving footballs out of trees.

And farmers.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Companies withhold commodities on purpose in order to raise the value, the price consumers are willing to pay, to make them believe there is a lack of supply.

Flood the market and value declines because there is no perceived lack anymore.

Exclusivity is the perception of lack we value. We adore the tension.

Abundance does not create as such.

We at the same time love and hate the idea of both lack and abundance. When it comes to consuming.

What are things?

Colours give us associations.

Green healthy, red hot.

Milk in a red carton would not work, commercially.

Even strawberry milk is pink.

Making everything black and white is taking out the association with it’s primary aspect.

Primary colours. Kindergarten association.

Devaluation, solely relying on texture and composition.

Black and white is how babies perceive in the first few months of their life.

Taking out colour bias.

Perceiving free of bias.

Bias comes with colour? And with colour comes valuation?

Is that why I’m not into colour so much but love the lack of?

It makes it more valuable to me. Texture and composition.

Colour makes blind.

Colourblindness is a different angle of perception.

I love the colour gold.

How would gold look like without colour?

Would I still be partial?

I shall investigate my feeling towards it.

To savour the denial of gratification = Pleasure

Sexy

The intensity of pleasure when not indulgent.

Wanting to give in but holding back.

Creates tension.

How is tension expressed in algebra?

It is not plus nor minus nor divided nor multiplied … does it have a symbol?

It’s opposites combined.

So something like plus-minus and multiplied-divided?

What about plus-divided and minus-multiplied?

Going diagonal?

MORE BERLIN

“Is film the only way to reconcile historical trauma?” (Lav Dias)

“To understand is often not better than to wonder” (Maya Deren)

“Cinema as a weapon of revolution” (Glauber Rocha)

Hunger is both need and desire

A force

Neo-Documentarism

portraying, cataloguing and documenting reality

Manipulate textures and colours

Hyper-reality

Using Iconography

Juxtaposition

(Matsumoto Toshio)

“Negative space in juxtaposition to uncomfortable closeness to protagonists” (Larisa Sheptiko)

Adventures of perception

Free visual cognition

Childlike wonder

The moment we categorise, we don’t see freely anymore

Moving visual thinking

The act of seeing is subjective, disconnected

Scratching the celluloid

(Stan Brakhage)

Sound montage, sound preceding the image

“Tactile cinematography” (Djibril Diop Mambéty)

THE ACT OF DEFIANCE

I hear somebody hoovering.

It sounds angry.

Why is it angry?

The sound of a Hoover could be soothing.

The soothing sound of a machine.

The act of hoovering could be soothing.

The sound of a machine defying dirt.

Is dirt something to be angry at?

Why is there anger in defiance?

It feels Berlin is angry.

At its dirt.

At its blemish.

Cleaning is defying dirt.

Could defiance be loving instead?

Is anger necessary for cleansing?

No matter how much we clean, dirt re-occurs almost instantly. With existence.

We cannot win fighting like this.

Yet we do not cease to.

Dust to Dust.

If we stop fighting, do we cease to exist?

Can we learn to love dirt?

We know we cannot win, no matter how sophisticated the machine is.

Isn’t it interesting how, with the progressive sophistication of the machine, the amount of dirt becomes progressively sophisticated?

Perfect symmetry

If we embrace dirt instead, will the outcome be different?

Embrace it as part of who we are?

As inevitable?

Is death dirt?

Inevitable?

Ashes to Ashes.

To feel juxtaposition, makes us feel alive.

Will we understand reality more through juxtatension?

To understand something one needs to get lost first … and find/be found

It feels necessary.

In order to fully understand Berlin, do I need to get lost here?

However, is it absolutely necessary?

Immersing in the experience

“Leaving space to breathe” (František Vláčil / Valley of the Bees/ Marquetta …)

Dedication

Never underestimating the audience

Bound to both reality and fantasy

Cinematographers create collages of frames, creating and combining symbols of emotions

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Art of Visual Storytelling

Focus on the emotionality of the protagonist

The size of the subject in the frame should equal the size of its importance in the film

(Alfred Hitchcock)

Frame within a frame

Balanced

Centre frame

Geometry and composition

Designing a look

Lighting

Lenses

Camera movement

Focussing the eye

Roger Deakins — True Grit, Blade Runner 2049, No Country, Fargo, The Big Lebowski

Creating caustics

Chivo — The Revenant

Hoyte van Hoytema — Her

(Film Notes)