Whenever you get to the end of a feature film, there is always a part which reads something like this:
The characters in this teleplay are fictitious. Any similarity between actual persons, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental... etc
This indicates that the film companies are unsettled by the fact that people can sometimes look like other people; even if they are entirely made up, as the tone of the statement reveals, any apparent resemblance could lead to an image rights problem or something similar. However, it also indicates that any said producer is unwilling take responsibility for a pure coincidence. If, as many think, a coincidence is just a coincidence, then this brings up some interesting questions about falsity and characterisation.
Surely you must look like someone in a film somewhere? Is everything a coincidence? It just depends on where you are and who you're talking to etc? Is something still coincidental even if it's staged?
Overall, this project is about the last question. I think it would be interesting to fabricate exactly what the film people have warned against and provide 'evidence' of yourself as being that coincidental resemblance.
How to take part:
I would like you to take a photograph/record a short clip of a scene that you've made up .
It could be any film genre; thriller, comedy, period drama, sports...
Dress up
Use props
Do a group shot
Go on location
Make sure you’re in it
As long as the image could credibly pass as being from a random film
DON’T simply re-create something you've already seen however. It would, ironically, shatter the illusion of whether you are a coincidence or not. -----------------------------------------------------
Send your image to samvickersart@gmail.com
Essays / Exhibition news / Publications
Predictable monumentalism
Recent indecision and the seemingly unending problems regarding Brexit has given me the impression that the EU's days are most certainly numbered. The "Monument to the European Union" is a political work that represents my prediction of the future; that the EU will no longer exist and, at some point, architects will be invited to immortalize what it stood for. I have taken my cues from seeing other proposals for Public works in their documentative form. Photographs, sketches, written explanations etc. The successful proposals exist somewhere in the real world and have become part of the urban population's everyday experience. The failures on the other hand, rejected for whatever reason, give off the feeling of what could been, the possible alternative or if 'the grass is greener'. I have found this notion to be systematic of how many feel about Brexit and especially the contemporary opinion on the subject of nationalism.
The sculpture itself is a collection of twenty five plaster casts. Each being a representation of a motorway junction in and around Bruxelles. These stand for the very literal confusion and the list of potential outcomes that we now find ourselves in. In addition, by experimenting with the scale and digitally rendering a model into a realistic image, the question of how 'monumental' or 'substantial' it is comes to the fore.