Zine project work in progress

As our zines were meant to be related to our personal projects, I decided that some of the content of mine should be made up of photographs of my dream heart cages, as I had begun over summer (see previous post here). I managed to create three in total. Initially the obvious option for photographing them was to use the studio at college, as I have done for previous projects, but it seemed like quite a sterile environment to put the objects in. I asked for my friend Tom (a photography student) to help me go out and take pictures of them in an environment where I could hang them from tree branches. This background helps to create a more dreamy atmosphere for the hearts; coordinates with the flower pattern on the fabric; and in my mind helps to symbolise that the dreams themselves are a natural and mysterious phenomenon.

Due to time restraints on both sides, we ended up with very limited time to go out and get the photos done. We also found that it was very difficult to stop the hearts from spinning round once I had hung them up! Tom managed to get some good shots though. It was slightly problematic photographing the hearts to look good as objects, as well as making sure that the angle revealed the images inside them. As this project is still not officially assessed until our module deadline at Christmas, I'm keen to experiment more with some close-ups that focus on the drawings inside, as well as more of the hearts from a distance.

I will also need time to add further content to the zine itself, so that it doesn't simply become a book full of photos...but it would still be nice to keep a little side-project booklet of the photos on their own, seeing as the sculptures took a lot of time and effort to complete!

'Potential Dream Subjects'

The content of our zine for this brief is meant to be inspired by our personal projects. Initially I got a little carried away with my ideas for how I'd love to fill a zine...veering off from the dream theme that I need to focus on. So, I'm reigning in my excitement and trying to produce content that is a little more focused and appropriate...

Using one of the blank books I have made, I've started to create a zine of portraits. The portraits will be a mixture of life/memory and from photos I've taken- in other words, people through my eyes. Either people I know well, or the ones I will (hopefully be brave enough to) draw sneakily from a distance are part of my everyday experiences...and the extent that they affect me won't be evident until I dream. All the people I see are potentially dream subjects, so this is the theme of the zine. If it's successful, I hope the drawings themselves may even be a vague indicator of how these people might appear to me in dreams- perhaps the people I take the attention to draw in more detail are in turn more significant in dreams, and more vivid in appearance.

Here is my first page, a sketch of my housemate Bryony, sitting in the sofa room at college:

Personal Project

Our summer brief this year (which will be extended over the 3rd year term time) is a self directed project.

'In short this is your time to create and work on your dream project.'

I couldn't be happier to have this opportunity!
My dream project is in fact, on dreams.
I've been looking a lot at Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. Far from being the daunting read I thought it was going to be, after years of lurking on my bookshelf, it has provided some fascinating insight into the de-coding of the human mind's (arguably) deepest mystery.
Helpfully, the book has not been written self-indulgently at all. Freud draws from a range of other figures and beliefs when examining different aspects of his dream theories, which has provided me with a great range of quotes and particularly interesting points to focus on.

For example, I've been finding it particularly interesting to look at the theories behind the source of dream content. Freud, and mostly all modern theorists have declared dreams are a psychological activity- the mental images of the sleeper. Yet, in complete contrast, it was previously common belief that dreams were an experience introduced by a divine agency, to either help or hinder the dreamer. It would be interesting to look at dream theories from times when a less scientific view was applied, and note any connections that are still relevant to modern psychology today...

At the moment I am working on a piece which has developed from a Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich Maass quote:

Experience confirms our view that we dream most frequently of the things on which our warmest passions are centred...the lover is busied in his dreams with the object of his sweet hopes...All the sensual desires and repulsions that slumber in the heart can if anything sets them in motion, cause a dream to arise from the ideas that are associated with them or cause those ideas to intervene in a dream that is already present.

It is a wire heart framework which I'm stitching scraps of fabric over. It's quite a translucent fabric so I think it will be quite interesting to see how it will photograph when placed in front of a light source. It will allow me to place images and words inside the heart that will be visible through the fabric...but still slighty hidden. Like the mysteries of the heart can be hidden, until they are illuminated, perhaps, through a dream...