Enough Similarity to Connect

On short films, plants and what a form tells us

The model lying on the worktable

It has been quite some time since I wrote my last blog post. Suddenly, the inspiration was gone. Not only to write, but also to make. I wanted to clear everything out. It could all go, really, and sometimes I even thought I wanted to give up my creative work altogether.

When I said out loud that perhaps everything could go, I realised that I had secretly hoped someone would immediately contradict me. That didn’t happen the way I expected. In my uncertainty, I quickly translated this as: apparently, no one cares. But others could not possibly decide for me what the work meant or what place it might still have in my life.

I did start clearing things out, but it only made me sadder.

I thought of my mother, who, at the same stage of life, organised exhibitions for IVN, a Dutch nature education organisation. She took great pleasure in it: a wonderful, unpaid full-time job, with companionship, freedom and appreciation. When we visited, we mainly saw how much space her work occupied. The house was sometimes so cluttered that we worried. From the outside, we saw a passionate and chaotic life; she experienced her development from within.

Now I am about the same age as my mother was then, and I recognise both points of view. Someone walking in sees piles, materials and unfinished projects. I also see possibilities and work that has yet to emerge. These are different positions in relation to the same reality.

Eventually, I started working again. Not because the doubt had disappeared, or because I suddenly knew what my work was worth. At first the ideas returned quickly; later, the doubt returned as well. So the answer is not a wholehearted yes. But apparently, it is still not no.

Starting Again

Over the past few weeks, I have made films lasting from a few seconds to no more than half a minute. They are Shorts, which I collect on my own YouTube channel. The images emerge from objects and materials that I arrange and film.

So far, the films have found only a small audience online. I consider some genuinely successful; others I see mainly as studies. YouTube has also revealed itself as a kind of slot machine: sometimes nothing happens, while at other times something is viewed far more often than expected. This says something about their reach at that moment, but not necessarily about the value of the work.

Although film is a new form for me, I am still essentially doing the same thing. First I drew and painted, then I made mosaics, collages and assemblages. I used to connect found objects literally with wire and glue. Now I connect images, viewpoints and moments through the camera and editing.

From Posture to Story

I readily see a posture in a shape or object. As soon as something assumes a posture, a character almost automatically appears. But posture never exists separately from place. Something always stands, lies, hangs or leans somewhere — beside, opposite, between, above or below something else.

External tension to imitate the turgor of a plant

A place is where something is located. A position arises through its relationship to its surroundings. Posture makes that relationship visible. Standing upright can suggest strength or vigilance; hanging can suggest sadness or surrender. Bending towards something becomes attention, while turning away becomes rejection. These interpretations are very accessible, sometimes almost clichéd. That is precisely why they work so readily.

Posture invites interpretation.

Position creates a relationship.

Sequence turns it into a story.

A Grid Full of Relationships

During my studies, I once staged a presentation in a hall. I imagined the floor divided into a rectangular grid and placed an object in each square. As soon as we saw one object, we saw another beside it. When two things appear side by side, apparently we first recognise enough similarity to connect them. That very recognition makes their differences visible — and those differences set our imagination to work.

In that presentation, all the relationships were present simultaneously, and visitors chose their own route. In a film, I can guide that route. Each subsequent image can confirm, alter or contradict our initial perception. In a sense, I now film what I once spread across the floor. The assemblage comes into being not only between the objects, but also between the images and, ultimately, in the viewer’s mind.

Three Short Studies

The films are not definitive explanations of posture and position. They are small experiments in which I observe what movement, direction, or a change of context does to an image.

In Fitting Proof, several arrangements are put to the test on a turntable. The longer something remains in place as it travels around, the better it seems to fit. Eventually, they all fall. Only the cat appears to have found her niche. ( https://youtube.com/shorts/MhAQXG-TTIY?si=eidwVW3HR4ZZWW87)

In Flight Direction, the feathers form a vehicle with no single, clear direction of flight. When the separate little bird faces left, we imagine the vehicle flying left as well. As soon as the bird faces right, the whole construction seems to change course. The posture of one small element gives direction to the whole. (https://youtube.com/shorts/WaTt092LZi8?si=X1xVD6Kw5zeVhN3A)

In Two Fishes, the two glass fish themselves do not change. Yet they both change when I place a cloth behind them or put something on top of one of the fish. Only the context changes — and with it their relationship to one another and the story we read into them. (https://youtube.com/shorts/s55wU_4AT5Q?si=RLZ_W6cXVZIkRMl3)

The Garden as a Moving Image

I read books about perception. They offer new perspectives, but I do not want to explain my work entirely through theory. Above all, I want to keep looking. Ideas, coincidences and accidents often take me further than a preconceived story.

Since I started filming, I see posture and movement everywhere. Plants reach upwards, sway, hang, crawl, twist, straighten up and hold on. Their posture may be characteristic of their species, but it can also tell us something about the moment. A weeping birch, Betula pendula ‘Tristis’, hangs because this is its natural growth habit. A hydrangea may hang in exactly the same way because it lacks water. The same visible posture tells two different stories.

In Narcissus poeticus, the flower head bends downwards. The posture and the name Narcissus invite us to read self-absorption or self-contemplation into that posture. A Thunbergia twines and raises itself with the aid of a support. Its posture arises from its own growth strategy and from what its surroundings make available. Together, plant, support and place determine its position.

The model mounted on a platform with angle adjustment

The Inimitable Plant

Over the past few days, my attention has shifted from the story we read in a posture to the plant’s posture itself. I tried to reconstruct a passionflower. The flower looks almost industrially designed: radial, layered, symmetrical and full of separate components. But as soon as I attempt to reconstruct it by human means, I need blocks, elastic bands, strips and a metal joint. The result is not a flower, but an assembled prototype.

My first plant model was too limp. This was more than a technical problem. A living plant possesses tension; without turgor, it loses its posture. I therefore used a technical solution to put the model under tension as well. That visible intervention makes clear what the plant itself seems to achieve effortlessly.

The model hanging from above

It is precisely the inadequacy of my imitation that makes this interesting. As soon as the model resembles a plant or a passionflower closely enough for us to recognise it, the differences become visible: construction versus growth, separate components versus living coherence. The imitation reveals something of the flower’s construction and, at the same time, of its inimitable beauty.

I photographed the same model lying, standing, and hanging: on the worktable, on a vase, and from a hook, among patterned fabrics, bowls, and other objects. The images are far more colourful than my work usually is. Above all, they show that posture never belongs to the object alone. Each form of support changes its position, tension and relationship to its surroundings.

Possibilities for Stories

The perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson writes about affordances: the possibilities for action that we perceive immediately in our surroundings. We see where we can walk, sit, grasp or take shelter. Summarised: at first, our perception seems to be full of verbs.

I see my films and models as affordances for stories: possibilities for stories. They do not dictate what the viewer should think, but offer something for the imagination to hold on to.

My question remains: how little does it take before we begin to see a world or a story?

I still do not know whether this is a new direction, and not every film or model holds up for me. The doubt with which I began has not disappeared.

Among other books, I am reading Rudolf Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception and James J. Gibson’s The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.

Thank you for reading:)