New Leaf ~ Part 1, 2022
[11/05, 08:37] xviix: Hi Emily, Thanks for sharing your new video! Watching this alongside your previous videos, there are a lot of recurring elements and methods that bring your practice together. How have these interests informed this collection of videos?
[12/05, 16:26] Emily: Hi Amy thanks for watching! I guess some of the recurring elements are food/ food prep/ processes, nature, jarring sounds, splicing images, memory, language, and time
Recently, I’ve been interested in the relationship between digital and human memory and in general how we as humans consume information/ food/ images.
[12/05, 16:42] Emily: I think I have a sort of searching way of shooting, sometimes a bit like a magnifying glass. When I edit I try to not eliminate the camera from seeming present to the viewer if that makes sense.. Sometimes I want the viewer to feel as though they are investigating or discovering or watching an investigation or discovery..
[12/05, 16:42] Emily: I think I have a sort of searching way of shooting, sometimes a bit like a magnifying glass. When I edit I try to not eliminate the camera from seeming present to the viewer if that makes sense.. Sometimes I want the viewer to feel as though they are investigating or discovering or watching an investigation or discovery..
Field, 2019
Full 14/07/20
[14/05, 09:30] xviix: Yes, that makes a lot of sense, I feel conscious as a viewer of watching, but the presence of the camera and operator feels gentle, natural in the space. Something that sticks is what you call “jarring sounds” in what is otherwise a calm event. Are you trying to shake up the romantic preconceptions around food and nature through ideas of
consumption and information?
consumption and information?
[16/05, 15:17] Emily: Yes exactly! I suppose I try and stop the viewer from settling into any scene containing food and nature, in a way to disrupt how we consume food/ information. I feel like I don’t really offer an alternative or better way to think or act, but rather to make familiar things seem unfamiliar and I guess create a sense of distance when the origins of things around us are so often untraceable after a certain point.
[16/05, 15:27] This desire to create distance, which previously I have tried to convey by regrowing vegetables past the point when they have already been used, growing new shoots from the scraps and offcuts left behind — past the point of familiarity.
I think this familiar/ unfamiliar duality stems from the experience of being in Japan, a place which I had previously perceived as one I knew well, was comfortable in, and could explain, speak and exist in. My mum is English, and my Dad Japanese, and I think similarly for a lot of people with mixed parentage I experience an inside/outside duality. So I guess I’ve been trying to translate this feeling of feeling out of place into a 'human to landscape/ nature/ food/ time/ technology’ way rather than a cultural/ ethnic/ linguistic way.
[16/05, 15:27] This desire to create distance, which previously I have tried to convey by regrowing vegetables past the point when they have already been used, growing new shoots from the scraps and offcuts left behind — past the point of familiarity.
I think this familiar/ unfamiliar duality stems from the experience of being in Japan, a place which I had previously perceived as one I knew well, was comfortable in, and could explain, speak and exist in. My mum is English, and my Dad Japanese, and I think similarly for a lot of people with mixed parentage I experience an inside/outside duality. So I guess I’ve been trying to translate this feeling of feeling out of place into a 'human to landscape/ nature/ food/ time/ technology’ way rather than a cultural/ ethnic/ linguistic way.
Rice Cooking, 2019
[18/05, 10:02] xviix: That's really interesting Emily, it feels important not to get too comfortable, reconsidering and broadening our relationships with/to everything around us. Also your desire to create feelings of the unfamiliar through physical processes - nurturing food scraps to produce new forms. Could you elaborate on that process? And how you also bring in the familiar, of family and friends; memory and personal life. How you navigate those tensions of the un/familiar, un/comfortable, and the natural/technological?
[18/05, 10:36] Emily: Re creating feelings of the unfamiliar through physical process. I guess as humans we are so accustomed to both subconscious and conscious attempts to fit in and adjust to new people/ environments/ habits. Humans are very squishy, especially when we're younger, and can adapt, (although sometimes we deliberately don't) to language, food (can be surface level), work environments, technology etc .. Actually, we are also unable to adapt to a lot of things ahah.
But we're used to this very quick kind of evolving, sometimes physically adjusting behaviours, language, fashion - or at least younger generations are ...
But what if there is no way of adjusting, because the difference is in time - which is the feeling I was going with the vegetables. That we as humans can have all these different ways of being different to each other, yet we can share difference to so much as well -
[18/05, 10:39] Emily: I think there's a kind of sci-fi aspect to this - idealising a world where humans are a global population who have realised there's massive problems to solve as one species together --- maybe that's a bit wishy/washy idealistic ..
[18/05, 11:58] Emily: Bringing in family and friends, memory and personal life- I think for me these relationships (with Japanese family and friends) have seemed both incredibly familiar, yet very unfamiliar and difficult to navigate. It's a learning thing, when you have family you want to talk to but technically can't because you don't speak the same language, yet inevitably have a shared history and memories, sometimes common interests, and hopefully each other's best interests at heart. - spending time, eating, and going places with friends who there is a language barrier with, is still talking, and can be far more meaningful than a conversation purely based on words. Going for a walk by the sea vs talking about going for a walk by the sea. Physically tangible memories in memorable spaces.. where you can have your untranslatable emotional reaction to an experience..
Sorry very waffly --!
But we're used to this very quick kind of evolving, sometimes physically adjusting behaviours, language, fashion - or at least younger generations are ...
But what if there is no way of adjusting, because the difference is in time - which is the feeling I was going with the vegetables. That we as humans can have all these different ways of being different to each other, yet we can share difference to so much as well -
[18/05, 10:39] Emily: I think there's a kind of sci-fi aspect to this - idealising a world where humans are a global population who have realised there's massive problems to solve as one species together --- maybe that's a bit wishy/washy idealistic ..
[18/05, 11:58] Emily: Bringing in family and friends, memory and personal life- I think for me these relationships (with Japanese family and friends) have seemed both incredibly familiar, yet very unfamiliar and difficult to navigate. It's a learning thing, when you have family you want to talk to but technically can't because you don't speak the same language, yet inevitably have a shared history and memories, sometimes common interests, and hopefully each other's best interests at heart. - spending time, eating, and going places with friends who there is a language barrier with, is still talking, and can be far more meaningful than a conversation purely based on words. Going for a walk by the sea vs talking about going for a walk by the sea. Physically tangible memories in memorable spaces.. where you can have your untranslatable emotional reaction to an experience..
Sorry very waffly --!
Midnight Snack 1, 2020
Going Right, 2019
[23/05, 17:23] xviix: Good waffly! Lots of intriguing ideas of shared connections and differences, temporal displacements and presentnesses. Do you think your ideas of time, memory, relations, nature and tangibility might also be informed by your career as a florist? Flowers hold a lot of the qualities you raise: symbolising an occasion or relationship; being a hands-on, tangible process; and existing in a known state of change/decomposition.
[25/05,10:27] Emily: That's a really interesting question! I've thought a lot about the symbolism of flowers - not so much in the way assigned by I think the Victorians, but more how they can fill a blank in expression or words. They often would be just a show of wealth and luxury - but they appear at times of celebration, loss, apology, sickness - they are like an injection of beauty (most of the time).
I'd find too, when taking flowers to fancy rooms in hotels to repot or being let in through many rounds of security to get into offices or private suites, the flowers would lead the way, they would be the celebrity and VIP. I often thought I could get into so many places if I were to just wear the right clothes and be simply carrying a bucket of flowers and a pair of scissors.
In a more delicate way I guess, yes, the temporal theme in my work is influenced by the flowers/ experience working with flowers. I think I try and hold onto experiences and recreate them so they are repeatable and repeatable, cut flowers, with their short lives contrast to that - although a lot of my job was to maintain continuity week to week in certain shops and offices who would want the same arrangements every single week, regardless of the season.
So -- maybe contrasted rather than influenced ..
I'd find too, when taking flowers to fancy rooms in hotels to repot or being let in through many rounds of security to get into offices or private suites, the flowers would lead the way, they would be the celebrity and VIP. I often thought I could get into so many places if I were to just wear the right clothes and be simply carrying a bucket of flowers and a pair of scissors.
In a more delicate way I guess, yes, the temporal theme in my work is influenced by the flowers/ experience working with flowers. I think I try and hold onto experiences and recreate them so they are repeatable and repeatable, cut flowers, with their short lives contrast to that - although a lot of my job was to maintain continuity week to week in certain shops and offices who would want the same arrangements every single week, regardless of the season.
So -- maybe contrasted rather than influenced ..
Name: Nowhere