Mirrors

This project was all about our Home. For me my home is where I live, and for the past 4 years that's changed each year. Some people make this big deal about how somewhere else they arn't living is their home, but I think they're idiots. My mom and dad's house is my mom and dad's house, their home. It used to be mine, but I have my own house now, and that's my home. This information upsets my parents, but the thing is, where do you draw the line? Why say that Birmingham's my home when I was born in Croydon and spent the first few years of my life growing up there? I haven't lived at my parents for 3 years now, I just don't get why that'd be my home.

Anyway, so I based my project around my current house. I started off by trying to make a book that catalogued all of the objects in my house in a Victorian style . This is because I've got quite a good memory when it comes to attaching stories to items and with my 3 flat mates I'd learnt the history of the items they'd brought with them, and knew the history of all the things that had been bought whilst we'd been living here. However, after tea staining all of the pages of this book and doing a few items I decided that this book was development work at best, and it felt like such an insurmountable task that it ceased to be fun, so I stopped doing it about 10 objects in. The reason I was going for a Victorian style is because my house is Victorian. This book has since gone missing unfortunately, one thing that I didn't get across was how filthy my house can be. Here is an example of the living room at the moment:

And that's how things like my catalogue of objects book go missing. I tend to be pretty on top of tidying the place up, but we had a party last week and since then I've been too busy to sort the place out, Jack's always hidden in his room, Grace doesn't believe she has any responsibility to the mess (she doesn't, it is mine and Chloe's) and Chloe's too busy to tidy too, she does fashion design and that's why there's fabric shit everywhere.

So I needed a fun way of documenting my house, and I thought what would be better than a video? But what sort of video is good for explaining things? Childrens' tv! So using the puppet Rabbitpuss (a fantasy creature made out of a real rabbit that me and Grace imagined was our cat once cause we missed not having a cat each, it's also an odd way of allowing us to touch one another because my 17th century morals forbid me from touching people or something in my brain isn't wired up quite right) I filmed the kitchen, with descriptions of all the things that stand out in the kitchen to me as well as an interview with Grace. I started with the kitchen because where the dinner's made is sort of where the heart is, Chloe only cooks for her boyfriend (/ex-boyfriend? she doesn't know either, silly girl's just being mugged off by him if you ask me) and he isn't round that much any more and Jack only eats cereal and take away pizza, so the kitchen always kinda felt like mine and Grace's space anyway, and that's why there's an interview with Grace in there.

It was aimed at about 4-5 year olds, with a few tongue in cheek moments (like Gracey with her knife) because I like to pervert things.

After putting this video together and seeing that it totalled about 6 mins I thought to myself, this is already a long amount of footage to watch considering it's me talking to a puppet about objects in my house. Would I really be adding anything other than just filler content by doing the rest of the rooms? Would anyone want to watch another 25 minutes of this? I didn't think so, so here is "My Home", because Grace making dinner for me is my favourite part this home anyway (she's a good cook amongst other things).


One thing a lot of people forget when it comes to video is that editing things out is the most important part (by this I mean those people from the first year project near the end, the public drawing one. Go back in time on my blog a bit and you'll a more detailed account of my thoughts regarding those idiots). Editing all the video of my house down to just one specific room is good editing in my opinion, I couldn't have had it any shorter than this I feel, and the video is quite a good descriptor of my stance on the people I live with as well I'd say.

There's a lot of extraneous information here to the untrained eye, but really it's all about my home and my outlooks on life, so it makes sense as a Mirror in my mind at least, just quite a text-y reflection!