SIN OBJETIVO (Without aim, Without a Lens)

• Main Author: Cohen, Carly Faith
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Bard Digital Commons 2016
• Subjects: Experimental Documentary; Blue Lagoon; Iceland
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2016/231; https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1310&context=senproj_s2016

ARTIST STATEMENT When my parents told me we were taking a family trip to Iceland last summer, I knew it was an incredible opportunity to make a documentary for my senior project. I had always been interested in how to represent landscape within film, and how to do that experimentally. I was also interested in how to advance the “family travelogue film.” The results of my footage from this trip were sub-par. However, I ended up with a few incredible, usable shots. These were the shots of the blue lagoon, in which I put my camera down on a rock not to make it obvious that I was filming, and captured the essence of my entire senior project without even knowing it. I spent the first semester rummaging through mostly hand held, shaky footage, and slowly realized that they were not going to make a successful project, for nothing stood up to “THE SHOT.” Luckily, I had the opportunity to travel again, this time going to Mexico. I have always traveled, and have always been very aware of the effect that traveling has on the human mind, body, and soul. I realized after watching the Lagoon footage over and over that these people are sacrifices to the space around them. When you travel, you are moving through space and time faster than you humanly should be able to. Once you arrive, you are stuck. We take these moments, in the car or in the plane, as moments to sit back, relax, and dismiss the space around us. I represent this in the sequence of car shots in my film, where everything passing the window is different, but the space feels the same because we are within the vehicle. The moving vehicle is a purgatory of travel and aim. People don't care to watch the world passing by around us, no matter how beautiful, due to the mundanity of the travel space. Once we as travelers arrive at our destination, our goal, we then become part of the landscape, surrendered to what is going on around us. We walk, watch, absorb, reflect, and that is our only purpose. When space is your purpose, what do you do? I titled this piece SIN ...