The project will use a number of research
techniques in the process of gathering material.
The intention is to approach the project, and
initial stages of the research, by collecting
recipes for Baking Ukrainian bread. Exploring, if
the exchange, ideas, food and communication,
can assist in sharing, an exchange, or dialogue,
building relationships with the Ukrainian
community.


The metaphor, and the use, of food, is important in
the film. The subject material, the famines,
were caused by the lack of bread, through
collectivisation, farmers where given wheat quotas,
the wheat, the food supply, was rationed,
collectivised, by the Soviet government.

I would like to use food, baking, in the production
of the work. Referencing artists, sculptors, and
designers, and the use of food, and production
with interesting materials.

Jane Cheadle - a designer who shows, demonstrates,
understands, with a delicacy, slight, intimate
handling of the production methods used. Exploring
the boundaries of animation, scale, and stop
motion practice. The work is about the artist,
in her studio. An intimate relationship emerges
between the artist and her practice, and the
forms used. An understanding, or true knowledge
of the material.

flow from jane cheadle on Vimeo.

Visually, I want to reference Soviet design,
communist propoganda, and the 'no name' -
utilitarian aesthetic that has, and did emerge
from communism.

The intention, is to use stencils, flour,
rye, bread, crumbs, dough, and baking
ingredients. Visual styling, with baking.
Stationary, meets food.


Individual and Collective Vanishing Lines.

Exploring the point, or points, at which a story,
or collection of stories, emerges, and forms. A
vanishing point, or perspective. Or - a starting
point, or focus.
Interlocking, intersecting, the separate, the
shared, converging lines.

The quote above comes from Relational
Aesthetics, by Nicolas Bourriaud [1]. He talks
about a moment (M) [2] art, as a document
to, and of, a moment, a point in time.

The worst years of the Ukrainian famines, were
the winter, between 1932-1933. After the first
five year plan, collectivisation at it's worst.
The film will focus on this winter.


"What I'm concerned with is what I would
call the 'missing history', the invisible imprint
of our story on earth or in time".

— Svetlana Alexievich
Chernobyl Prayer [3]

I love this approach.
In Svetlana Alexievich's book, exploring stories
from Chernobyl, she talks about the human,
the humanity. I want to explore the delicate,
the personal. The everyday. The things that
mean something to us all, and yet are rarely
shared. Understanding, in the very day,
across cultures, and in time.

Chernobyl Prayer uses a series of monologues.
Individuals, and groups of people, talking together.
3 sections. Each ending with a choir. A
collective song.

The work is beautiful, hauntinf, tender,
moving. Tragic. Painful, and raw. Present.
The author exists, in the material and the work.
Pointedly, there is an exchange in the book
where she shares a radioactive lunch
with a participant [4]

The stories are terrible, and unbelievable, and
real, and moving, and tender. A world away.
And - real, ordinary too.

Can, and exchange of food, and dialogue around
baking, help me to find, and uncover the stories, to
connect, and share?

Exploring recipes, rebirth, family recipes, secret
and the public and shared, discovering,
amending, exchanging. The practical. An exchange
of information. The modern, the old, and the new.

"Every person bears the reflection of history. On
some it glows with a hot and fearsome light, on
others it is barely visible, barely warm, but
it is there on everyone. History blazes like a
huge bonfire, and each of us throws into it
our own brushwood."

(Yuri Trifonov, Fireglow, 1965) [5]

The work is about the personal. Intimate.
Family histories, individual recollections and
stories. And - beyond, and beneath that,
it is about stories. About uncovering. The past.
Personally, collectively. The things that we
all don't. or - do, know, about ourselves.
Identifying, in a story, or an absence or one.
Where our histories meetm the places and
times at which we are together and apart.
Physically and emotionally.

Production -
Tower Bawher, an approach to motion graphics
and storytelling.

https://www.nfb.ca/film/tower_bawher/

This work is incredible. One director's vision,
visualisation, of a memory, re-created, using
motion graphics, editing, typography.

The work is fast, and highly produced. Short,
cuts, text abstract form. This is the area
of practice that I want to explore.

Draft (flow)
by Jane Cheadle

Salt Packaging
Photograph

Exercise Book
Ukrainian Stationery

One of a series of Soviet matchbox
labels, found on a collection on Flickr, here
https://www.flickr.com/photos/maraid/sets/72157594234429063/

Tower Bawher
by Theodore Ushev