# data[].attributes.body
In my work I have explored hair before, as well as memory, with all of my outcomes being about different personal experiences. I created a performance looking at times when I have hurt other people, forcing myself to relive these as a way to publicly shame myself. This performance was based around Victorian hair art, and I brushed my hair to collect it as I listened to these painful memories.

# data[].attributes.body
Feels like an account of a night spent in desperarion trying to find the way to write a letter to a lover but not being able to. The dialogue feels like it is addressing both his lover and himself, which makes it feel like he is just speaking his thoughts aloud. The repeated drumming keeps the rhythm of the spoken piece, and also reminds me of a heartbeat, feels like we are very close to him. Repetition of "where did the night go" to me conveys a feeling of being stuck in a thought pattern.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gil Scott-Heron -  'Where Did The Night Go'

# data[].attributes.body
Feels like a really pure manifestation of love, wanting to serve someone, and not asking for anything in return. This reminds me of Chungking Express, and this feeling of being happy to quietly show your love for someone through acts of service and not needing to verbally communicate with them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space (I've Got A Brand New) Track Suit 23rd 36 hours A Distant Relation Action Man Apart From The Revolution Are You The Business Arts N' Crafts Beasley Street Belladonna Bronze Adonis Bunch Of Twigs Burnley Concussion Conditional Discharge Cycle Accident Day My Pad

# data[].attributes.body
I am interested in researching memory through the material hair. I would like to explore my experiences and how I have connected with others through this material. Some of my most intimate memories with people in my life have been in relation to hair; throughout my life my mum has looked after my hair, washing it and combing it, and even now that I am older and able to do this myself, I still want my mum to do it for me. In romantic relationships washing my partners hair is something that feels very loving, and a way of connecting without words. Often in relationships I find it difficult to show affection and speak about my emotions, and I have often found that playing with a partners hair or washing it for them in the bath is a way to show that I care about them and reassure them. I have often asked a romantic partner to stroke my hair when I am feeling down and need to be looked after, it is a way for me to let them know I need them without having to say anything.  Similarly with my mum, I dislike physical contact and don’t hug her very often, so letting her stroke my hair and asking her to plait it is a way I can show her that I love her.

Hair is a human material, suggestive of a human presence. Even when viewed separately to the body it conjures questions about the person that it came from. Hair left behind is a reminder of the person who it belongs to, hair left on clothes or in your bed are small traces of the people who were there. Hair also marks our passage through life; “as you lose it, you lose the life it represents” and even plays a role at the end of a relationship; people often make drastic changes to their hair to symbolise a change in their life. Hair will keep its colour for centuries. It will long outlive the person who’s head it comes from, keeping a part of them alive.

In my research I have been looking into memory and mourning the loss of relationships, and discovered how Victorians treasured the hair of those close to them. During the Victorian era, the hair of loved ones was kept and used as a way to memorialise them. This type of memento mori is known as ‘Hair Art’ and came about due to the high infant mortality rates. Death was all around, and extremely present in the home. Preserving the hair of a friend or family member was a way to keep them close to your heart. This hair was often woven, as finely as lace, into jewellery or used to create wreathes put into frames to be displayed around the home. Keeping the hair of a loved one was seen as an intimate way to remember them. From this research hair has become a common motif in my work to represent memory, in particular the memory of those who are no longer in my life. Much of my work with hair so far has involved using my own hair, which I have been collecting, as a material. I think that hair has become a way in many of my relationships for me to express my feelings of love and things that I struggle to vocalise, and I would like to explore this idea that there are always things that keep from those we love and the non-verbal ways that we communicate, and how we preserve memories. In my further exploration of this subject matter I want to delve more into what hair symbolises, and how it plays a part in my relationships and the way in which the memory of people lives on.

# data[].attributes.body
Women in Iran are cutting their hair in public to challenge the countries strict morality laws, risking imprisonment. This was sparked by the death of Jina Amini who was detained by the morality police for allegedly violating its dress code on the 13th of September. She collapsed at the police station and died 3 days later.
Iran requires women to wear the hijab so that it covers their hair completely.
Mortality police - known as the Guidance Patrol - routinely detain women who they say are not wearing a hijab.
Women have played a prominent role in the recent demonstrations, burning their veils and cutting their hair in public.
Cutting hair has symbolic meanings in Iran. In some regions of Iran, eastern Kurdistan and Lorestan, women cut their hair as a sign of their mourning.
"I am cutting the ropes that you have made from my hair in order to chain me"
Fendousi's Persian epic, Shahnameh, dates back 1000 years and is familiar to many modern Iranians. When the hero of the tale is killed his wide cuts her hair, as do the women with her.

# data[].attributes.body
Separation from a mothering object, castration, reparation.
New beginning, letting go.
"The decision to cut your hair during a transitional period, wether it be a positive or negative transition, symbolises to the individual themselves a new start."
"When we cut our hair for the purposes of change, psychologically we are experiencing a rebirth, symbolic of hope that they can ttract different circumstances and heal from past hope."

# data[].attributes.body
"Now the dark soaks into my skin"
"My own presence is the only thing with a distinct outline now, an outline that quivers and undulates, and in so doing, hurts."
"to call forth family photos from the depths of someone's thoughts"
I really like Tokarczuk's use of imagery of nature, flesh and preservation to explore memories, and how people are connected to eachother, as well as the cycle of live to show the passage of time.
"curl back up into an embryo and repeat the process of maturation and death."

# data[].attributes.body
I also wrote a piece of text following my relationship with my mother through my life and how the way she has tended to my hair has changed as I have gotten older, which I used a voice over in a short film of me plaiting my hair.

# data[].attributes.body
Looks like a real mattress, old and mouldy, very eerie, looks like there was once a pattern, but can't see it because of stains. Feels used and has a sinister quality to it. There is a feeling that something bad has happened here, like the mattress has preserved some memory in it, that it has been dirtied by, but we are not sure exactly what that is.

# data[].attributes.headline
Carolee Schneeman, Body Politics, Barbican

# data[].attributes.subject
Carolee Schneeman, Body Politics, Barbican

# data[].attributes.body
Interior Scroll, 1975 and 1977
Performance in which Carolee Schneeman drew a narrow scroll of paper from her vagina. The scroll feels like an extension of her, reminds me of childbirth. The performance feels both powerful and vulnerable, as do vaginas, they are both delicate, the soft interior of a woman's body, yet they have the ability to grow a human, it is where we have all come from.
Water Light / Water Needle, 1966
A series of performances 'kinetic theatre'. Carolee Schneeman set up two ropes in a space, a low one and a high one. Performers worked their way around the ropes relying on each other for support. Looking at social interactions and how bodies move in spaces, creates an image of a collective of people reliant on one another. They communicate with eachother through their bodies, and support eachother through their bodies, rather than words.

# data[].attributes.body
When on the body, hair is seen as beautiful, a sign of health and youth, often sexualised in the media, yet when separated from the body it becomes disgusting, unhygienic. A stray hair in your hotel room leading to a bad review on trip advisor, a hair in your soup causing it to be sent back. We obsess over our hair, cutting it, styling it, dyeing it different colours, yet the minute it leaves our body it becomes completely foreign, something no one wants to see. I find these images of hair in hotel rooms really interesting, as they show our collective disdain towards stray hair, not even worth photographing properly. The photos are often at strange angles, out of focus, and you can see that they have been taken quickly, the person not wanting to spend long looking at it.

# data[].attributes.body
This performance carries contradictions within it, the same way I feel hair does. Antoni becomes both the artist and the muse; the model and the maker; the subject and the object of the work. Antoni dips her hair into black Loving Care hair dye, and mops the floor of the gallery on her hands and knees. As she mops, the audience are pushed out of the room, and this seemingly submissive act becomes powerful, as she controls the people who are watching her. It is Antoni’s long hair that fits within the beauty standards and is objectified, that she makes the object of her making. Her hair becomes a symbol of her taking back ownership over the objectification of her hair.

# data[].attributes.body
"In most ways he bored her. Yet when she touched him she felt a sensitivity in his body, a sense of receptivity she rarely encountered in men. When he held her against his chest, she felt secure and protected in a way that had nothing to do with his muscular body. She felt that they were nourishing each other in some important, invisible way. But they could barely hold a conversation."
This text really shows the way in which we can connect with people and feel an intimacy that cannot be conveyed with words. It is sometimes difficult to explain this feeling because it is communicated only through bodies and touch. The short sentences at the beginning and the end of this extract feel like they frame it. Her unexplained feelings of tenderness towards him spill out into longer sentences, and these more rational visible interactions keep them supressed.

# data[].attributes.headline
All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras

# data[].attributes.subject
All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras

# data[].attributes.body
I particularly liked the parts where Nan Goldin was talking about her childhood and growing up, especially the use of photo slideshows, and how they didn't add any backing music and left all of the long silences, as it felt really honest and raw. I think it is really interesting how Nan Goldin speaks about the way in which her parents played a role in her sisters' suicide by sending her away, yet there is a feeling of tenderness and forgiveness in the way she speeks about her parents towards the end of the film. I think that as we grow up we begin to see our parents for what they really are, instead of the invincible people who are always right that we view them as when we are children. This can be really uncomfortable. I have found especially in my relationship with my mother that as I get older I begin to see more and more the way in which her behaviours have affected me, and this is something that can be hard to come to terms with.

# data[].attributes.body
"I never let you down but you did lousy things to me."
The combination of short clips and old footage with spoken text make this film feel like a diary. A lot of the text is addressing a specific person, especially towards the end it feels like he is talking to a lover, and this makes the text feel really personal because as the viewer we are listening to him speak to someone. This also brings up a question of wether what he is saying is a string of consciousness or a real interaction with this person, as in all relationships there are many things that you do not tell the other person.

# data[].attributes.body
I love the metaphor with the expiry date of the cans and the expiry date of their relationship. I really liked the use of colour grading, everything has a soft melancholy about it, because all of the shots have a blue tone.
"If memories could be canned would they also have an expiry date?"
In the second half I thought the portrayal of love felt really sweet and pure, as she would go to his house every day and clean for him, without him every knowing. This was a way of her showing her love without ever telling him, just by secretly doing things for him.

# data[].attributes.body
The matter of factness of how life events are told is extremely jarring over the sweet music and old photos.  Feels like we are living inside his head, as he recounts his life through the memories he has of his mother. It feels so intrusive when he starts questioning his grandad at the end and his mum gets really upset the shot is so long it begins to feel really uncomfortable to be watching his mothers discomfort for so long, it feels like we are complicit by watching. I liked how there is no voice over, the text is shown on the screen which forces you to be really attentive, and also makes the film quite isolating to watch as you cannot attach yourself to a narrators voice, you are alone in watching the events of his life play out. At the beginning of the film, the narrative is completely from his perspective, and towards the end we see him interacting with his mother and looking after her. We are observing their relationship from an outsiders perspective and we can see all of the complexities of their relationship. The last text of the film is addressed directly towards us, and really shows how we can never really escape our parents, especially our mothers as we are a part of them, and they are a part of us.
"I can't escape her, she lives inside of me. She's in my hair, she's behind my eyes. She's under my skin."

# data[].attributes.body
After she first meets him the colour grading shifts from blue tones to a warmer yellow tone, which may be representative of a shift now that she has found a companion. I also really liked how every time she has a flash back there is a soft ringing, like that feeling of zoning out completely when you are thinking back in memories and everything around you seems to go quiet.

# data[].attributes.body
The use of old footage makes it clear that you are looking back in time, and the pixelation of the footage really conveys how memories feel a lot of the time, where you have a general feeling about it, but the details of the memory are hazy. In some of the shots you are watching the father and daughter talk to each other through the shadows that they create on the TV screen in their room, and this creates a feeling that we are intruding into their relationship and watching something that we shouldn't be, the harsher side. I really liked how this film showed both the ups and downs of a parental relationship, all of the tensions and disagreements, which are present in my own relationship with my mother.

# data[].attributes.body
Feeling of being isolated in a big city, letters from her mother breaking through this feeling of isolation, lots of long clips of the city with a voice over. There is a sense of comfort in the repetition of how her mum ends her letters, which reflects the comfort that we get from the mundanity of our family lives.

# data[].attributes.body
Hair jewellery and trinkets used in Victorian times for mourning rituals. The gift of a person's hair is the offering of the body and that is singular and completely unique. A piece of the person you love.

# data[].attributes.body
Using medical imaging to explore her body, based around the idea of surveillance. The camera acts as an eye invading the body's boundaries. Hair acts as the boundary between the inside and outside of the body.

# data[].attributes.body
I have also been working with hair physically, and have learnt how to tuft hair and how to sew it together. Furthermore, I have also used a lot of moving image in my work, and have learnt how to convert VHS to a video file, and how to use premier pro which will help me in my FMP as a lot of my outcomes are film.