Matt White
I frequently act as the protagonist in my own work, devising working processes that explore how personal and moral conflicts are sited within a wider socio-political landscape. These processes or projects revolve around simple objectives that can either initiate or derive from extensive research methodologies. A specific area of interest is gradually teased from the research to become the central focus, it is then documented with text photographs and video. These tasks, or experiments, become the starting point for a series of processes that pose questions about self, place, the nature of belief and the way in which the mind can be manipulated. !
From the mumbled confession of rape and murder brought forward by past-life hypnosis, (Past Lies, 2003) or the re-enactment of a composer’s divinely inspired journey to a chapel in Rocamadour, (Voyage, 2007) or the identification of the geographical midpoint between right and wrong, (This is the Place, 2008) or the attempt to use hypnosis to remove gravity, (Weightless, 2008), these seemingly simple objectives offer up a complicated relationship between the artist, the characters presented and the viewer who experiences them. ! By using specific emotional triggers as well as narrative structural techniques borrowed from printed fiction and cinema, an attempt is made to create a polarised position for the viewer. Their emotional and physical responses are subjectively interlinked with the protagonist’s while at the same time held at an objective distance by the character’s non-specificities. I am inviting them to observe the work from outside as well as from a position within. !
A recent Arts Council England research and development award has supported my most recently completed project, From the Wing of a Fly. The initial objective was to locate the first tulip, still in existence, to be cultivated for human pleasure. Using material gathered form historical research as well as my own experiential journey to Istanbul and the surrounding areas of the North Eastern Turkish town, Erzurum, I have created a thirty nine minute single screen video work. !
This work presents a sultan as the central protagonist. His subtitled narration, gives a fractured and temporally displaced account of his contemplative journey away from Istanbul as he questions his own power, actions, authority, and relationship to the landscape. Intertwined with this is a more contemporary voiceover that charts encounters with local people while on a search for a specific tulip variety. These two ‘voices’ mingle with lingering images of the Turkish landscape and ask questions about place, belonging, love, tourism, power and economics. !!
For my latest project, I am studying to become an actor. !! Matt White was born in Oxford, England in 1968. He lives and works in Bristol, England.
http://matt-white.org/headshotgallery.htm www.matt-white.org
I frequently act as the protagonist in my own work, devising working processes that explore how personal and moral conflicts are sited within a wider socio-political landscape. These processes or projects revolve around simple objectives that can either initiate or derive from extensive research methodologies. A specific area of interest is gradually teased from the research to become the central focus, it is then documented with text photographs and video. These tasks, or experiments, become the starting point for a series of processes that pose questions about self, place, the nature of belief and the way in which the mind can be manipulated. !
From the mumbled confession of rape and murder brought forward by past-life hypnosis, (Past Lies, 2003) or the re-enactment of a composer’s divinely inspired journey to a chapel in Rocamadour, (Voyage, 2007) or the identification of the geographical midpoint between right and wrong, (This is the Place, 2008) or the attempt to use hypnosis to remove gravity, (Weightless, 2008), these seemingly simple objectives offer up a complicated relationship between the artist, the characters presented and the viewer who experiences them. ! By using specific emotional triggers as well as narrative structural techniques borrowed from printed fiction and cinema, an attempt is made to create a polarised position for the viewer. Their emotional and physical responses are subjectively interlinked with the protagonist’s while at the same time held at an objective distance by the character’s non-specificities. I am inviting them to observe the work from outside as well as from a position within. !
A recent Arts Council England research and development award has supported my most recently completed project, From the Wing of a Fly. The initial objective was to locate the first tulip, still in existence, to be cultivated for human pleasure. Using material gathered form historical research as well as my own experiential journey to Istanbul and the surrounding areas of the North Eastern Turkish town, Erzurum, I have created a thirty nine minute single screen video work. !
This work presents a sultan as the central protagonist. His subtitled narration, gives a fractured and temporally displaced account of his contemplative journey away from Istanbul as he questions his own power, actions, authority, and relationship to the landscape. Intertwined with this is a more contemporary voiceover that charts encounters with local people while on a search for a specific tulip variety. These two ‘voices’ mingle with lingering images of the Turkish landscape and ask questions about place, belonging, love, tourism, power and economics. !!
For my latest project, I am studying to become an actor. !! Matt White was born in Oxford, England in 1968. He lives and works in Bristol, England.
http://matt-white.org/headshotgallery.htm www.matt-white.org
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Here is a 2012 piece entitled EKREM SWAY |
