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  • Writer's pictureLaks

Imperial War Museum/Tate Modern

Part of this term we went on a trip to the Imperial war museum and the Tate Modern, to think about propaganda for our next project and also different media methods.


Whilst I was at the Imperial war museum as well as doing research on the different propaganda I look at different projections throughout both museums and how they worked as projection is something that interests me and something I want to experiment with.



At the Imperial war museum there was sections on the destruction war has done on different countries such as Germany and Syria. To represent some of the damages caused, projections were used to give a sense of being in the place that was being described. From this I decided that placing a person in front of these images would be interesting as the image would come distorted and will project on a person. On the left hand side shows the first image I toon in front of a projection that was on a wall showing the damages after world war one, For this photo, I wanted the focus to be the background with the person turned away so that they are not the focus. From this, I decided to develop this idea more to create better images.





After this, I found another Projection in which I got a different person to stand in front of, this time making sure to have them standing so that the projection goes onto them, distorting it unlike the last photo shown above.



As you can see in the photo on the right hand side, the image is projecting onto the person to give a feeling of the person being involved in the image being projected, the remains of war in Syria, giving a surreal feel that this is what people witnessed and were a part of.





as well as looking at projections in The imperial war museum, I was interested on the showing about the holocaust and Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, due to rules from the Museum, I was not able to photograph anything in this section, but I was amazed by what was presented. I am extremely interested on the holocaust and what happened and therefore was extremely interested to see how the growth of the holocaust happened and also to see real examples of objects such the Nazi Uniforms such as the brown shirts and also shoes and other objects that were taken away from the Jews when they arrived to the concentration camps. One thing that caught my eye that I found extremely upsetting was a doll that was presented in the cabinet of shoes that had been taken by a Jew, the doll was burned over it's face. This made me want to look more into the profiling of the Jews that carried at the camps and present how much their lives changed for the worse.

It extremely interests me how people try to convince themselves and others that the Holocaust did not actually happen and was a conspiracy so it was interesting to see actual evidence that counter argues this statement.



Once I got to the Tate modern, I wanted to again, look for more projections to carry on with my Idea of playing around with different projections and people standing in front of them.


The most interesting Art piece that stood out for me at Tate was a projection called 'Triolets' by 'Dora Maurer' produced in 1981. The projection is in lack and white and focuses on different view points and movement thoughout the 12 minute long video. The video is cut up into three parts which are all showing different things at once and demonstrates different moments in time. on the Tate modern website it states, ' the title of the film refers to a type of rigidly structured poem involving the repetition of lines in a prescribed order, Triolets follows no such structure, unfolding more as a puzzle. It is, however, nevertheless characterised by a structured form of repetition typical of Maurer’s practice at the time' I had a personal interest in this piece as I was interested by the atmosphere this projection gave, and also how it was constructed, with a voice over of a person some what morning or groaning a bit like the universal noise that a ghost makes.

I experimented taking photos of a different person in front of this art so play around again, with this idea of projection.




I carried on to play around with projections whilst at Tate, here are some other examples.










Also, whilst at the Tate, I couldn't stop myself from experiencing the street life by Tate, to find any street art as this is my favourite form of art. I felt that as we were at an art Museum there must have been street art around.


Luckily, right by Tate, on the lamp posts, there were tons of street stickers that caught my eye. They ranged from political, to funny to promoting different brands such as skaters etc.




As well as this, I experimented with some street fashion photography as that is something that I have been interested in recently and I am considering possibly following down the fashion documenting path. I found spots around Tate and took some photographs of my friend to try and create a theme. I tried to look for a simple background so that the clothing was a bigger focus.





Overall, the trip was very useful and interesting as I not only learned a lot about context to do with history, But I also got to develop an Idea in my head about methods of media I want to develop on, such as projection.

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