Project Proposal

I will investigate the emotional and conceptual aspects of letters by diving into the regrets, emotional archive and wishful thinking that comes with the silent narrative of written words. I will be researching things from the present and past and hearing people’s stories and thoughts. When thinking about this topic, I thought about my dad who had a severe stroke in 2021, leaving him with limited words and therefore writing a lot of things down. As a big part of my life and feeling like it affected me massively, I want to take aspects of this.

For this project, I am deterring from my previous work in a large way. I want to work closely with the public to gain stories, thoughts and feelings that people have felt and not said. I can then use elements of these conversations, rather than producing everything from my perspective. As much as I like the idea of an installation as a final outcome, this isn’t something I have set in stone as I need to see where my exploration takes me.

As a part of my primary research, I am planning on visiting the Imperial War Museum in London. Here they have access to letters, diaries, sound recordings et. I am hoping it will inspire me and make me have a deeper understanding of the things they may have been going through. I will also be having conversations with the people around me to gain outside stories and listening to things they may regret never saying or alternatively things they wish they didn’t say. Due to the fact I am conducting this on the people I know, it will be done in a casual location. As a response, I will write down what they say and will create a visual piece based on the feelings they have conveyed. This will be a natural piece of art based on first emotions.

In terms of media, I will explore a variety of things. I want to use coal and Ink for that older look as well as wanting to use collage, stitching, and wax. I am planning on making my own paper.

I am going to look at artists such as Christian Boltanski and Susan Stockwell. Boltanski creates installations, a lot of which are based around memory. I like how he pieces together images and manipulates lighting to create a strong emotion. I will look into Stockwell because she created garments out of things such as maps. Looking into her deeper could give me ideas of things I could make out of letters.

Overall, I don’t intend on using AI much in my project. I may use it to create a letter from the war etc but this won’t be a prominent aspect in my work. I prefer to physically make my work opposed to getting it generated for me, however, I do like it to give me ideas and further inspire me.