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ellmttws · 5 years ago

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STEPHEN SUTCLIFFE

27.11.19

Today's lecture started a bit late (10:40) because Stephen's train got delayed.

He started by telling us he's "not an academic" he's an artist, from a working class background in Yorkshire. He explained that there wasn't many books in his household growing up, but he did gain education from the TV instead. Sutcliffe said he has many inspirations and influences, and becomes "obsessive" about them. For the lecture, he'd alphabetically ordered influences he has by name, and worked through the list.

I'm not sure whether it was because of the late start, but I struggled to stay engaged during this lecture. I find it interesting to hear about where artist's get their inspiration from, but Sutcliffe basically just listed these off for the whole lecture, and there was a lack of his own work actually shown. I also found that when he did mention his own work, he skipped over them quickly, or only shown really short segments of his films. He seemed more comfortable talking about his influences opposed to himself.

A specific time this happened was when he shown a piece about Dirk Bogarde, which featured Sutcliffe's love of nervousness. When he shown us this, it started with a trailer that he'd made for the video which featured lots of imagery. Then, Sutcliffe skipped through this and went to the interview with Bogarde in, instead. I found this quite disappointing as, I know it's his style, but the majority of work he shown us was repetitive; interviews and lots of talking. This one was a bit better, though, because he was drawing a moustache onto Bogarde during the film.

I did like his position on "found" objects in art. He said that due to his work being film, he calls it "found footage", which is taking clips that already exist, and using them to create his work. A lot of these consisted of old interviews, usually by someone he's interested in already. I think that the interviews link to his enjoyment of "nervousness".

There was a film called Sex Symbols in Sandwich Signs which I enjoyed. It highlighted the relationship between the characters, and the filming was really interesting. The camera would spin around, capturing the same two people continuously but they'd change scene as the camera panned. Sutcliffe told us that this was projected into the space for the showing, which would've been really interesting to see. Since the lecture I've actually researched Sutcliffe's work, and learning more about this one has made me like it a lot.

Sutcliffe shown us a piece which merged together The Sound of Music, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I really liked this film. The juxtaposition was weird yet perfect and the abruptness of the scenes made it strangely humorous and confusing. There was monologue-style talking from TSOM, overlayed onto the scenes from TCM. I loved it.

There was another film, called Inhale Exhale, but again Sutcliffe skipped past a dancing scene which I would've loved to see. Nearer the end of the lecture I was commenting more on features in the films which I liked (font, transition, colour, etc) than the actual films themselves.

Finally, we were shown a film/sound piece which Sutcliffe made as a "revenge" response to an interview he did on the radio. He explained that he didn't like the interviewer, but did the interview anyway, and the interviewer continuously interrupted him and cut him off. I really liked this, as I think in a weird way it's relatable to everyone. Everyone's had that moment of being cut off by someone and it's super annoying; and him editing it so that he was interrupted non-stop made it really funny, while also feeling his annoyance.

Overall, I did really enjoy some aspects of Sutcliffe's work, but I think that the way the lecture was done wasn't very engaging. I'm definitely going to look into Sutcliffe's work more, as I think that I'd be able to see some of the stuff I feel like we missed out on.

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