Minute 31

Minute 31 (by Ella Brunßen)

 

For this minute, I decided to work with clay. I wanted to build a statue that resembled the way the minute made me feel, while at the same time resembling the minute itself. The minute gave me a strong feeling of danger, of being watched, exposed, and followed. This was invoked by the music as well as the images seen in the minute. My statue has its ribcage and some organs on the outside of the body, which is meant to represent the exposure I felt when I watched the minute. The first part of the minute looks like negative film material, which also fits being ‘inside out’, or, having one’s bones and organs on the outside of the body. The arms and legs of the statue represent the music that can be heard in minute 31.  The first sound that can be heard is a peaceful, light sound that disappears when the other sounds take over later on, which is why I painted the first arm in a light yellow and made it disappear into the base. The second sound is a light sound as well, but one that does not disappear and instead intermingles with the other sounds when they are added. I made the second arm really long, because the sound stays audible throughout the rest of the minute, and made it entangled with the legs. I decided to paint it in a light blue because it is still a peaceful sound. The third and fourth sounds resemble the rhythm of the second, start at the same time and are entangled with each other; one is a dark, threatening sound and the other sounds like bells, which is why I chose the colors of a dark purple and a rich yellow for the legs. They twist around each other and the long arm winds around them. The body and the base are both green and look a bit moldy with blobs all over the body and a few rusty looking parts on the base. This represents the decayed state of the video material. Lastly, the statue’s head is completely white. This alludes both to the uneasy feeling I had while watching the minute, and the lost content of the original film. The face of a person is the part of the body that one looks to for connecting with them or getting an idea of how they feel. By erasing the statue’s face, I have tried to erase its personality as well; just as we will likely never know the content and story of the original film, we will never know what is going on inside of the statue.