ccdn 231 | presentation of auto ethnography

Thursday 1st August - tutorial

A short presentation documenting three auto ethnographies (6 slides maximum).

These ethnographies must also be documented in more detail on a blog.

Each auto ethnography must include at least two images or one short video and description/analysis of at least 100 words.

I wanted to have my research revolve around the use of the toilet. I produced a video for this purpose that depicted my own personal use of my toilet at home. For privacy reasons I will not be posting this video. You are welcome to contact me directly if you would like to request the pass-code for this clip.*

toilet from luckiest_woman_alive on Vimeo.

Sensory ethnography G rated from Helen Williams

The whole ritual of performing one's ablutions can be broken down into many different actions. I decided to explore the actions around the use of toilet paper, liquid soap and the tap.

Warning: It is hard for me to experience these things from anything but a personal perspective which usually relates to my former powder rooms for events supply business: Oh de Toilette.

Toilet paper - removal and preparation for use - use of 3 layered images in Photoshop

The first thing I noticed about this was the sound the roll makes as it turns on the holder. It reminds me that some bathrooms (like our own en suite) don’t even have a holder which irritates me each time I use that bathroom. I like order and it annoys me that the toilet roll seems to around the room and is sometimes hard to find.
Touching toilet paper is a highly tactile experience. It is pleasing to find it soft and disappointing if it is rough. I do not like recycled toilet paper for this reason. I prefer my bathrooms to always exhibit signs of luxury. I have also found that some budget toilet paper has an unpleasant odour, like urine, which strikes me as ironic.

Liquid soap - dispensed and used to wash hands - use of 2 layered images in Photoshop

Liquid soap has come to play a starring role in my bathrooms. Our guest bathroom at home always has expensive French soap in a dispenser available for our guests’ use. It is a matter of honour for me.  I favour liquid soaps that are rich, fresh-smelling and leave my hands feeling soft and not dried out. When I use soap like this blue one I cannot help feeling a little sad. Once again the importance of luxury and the finer things comes into play. I push the dispenser down, it works. I wash my hands with the blue then foamy soap. But it is not French. It is not up to standard.

Running water - tap turned on and hands rinsed  - use of 2 layered images in Photoshop

The act of turning on a tap can be the opening step in a multitude of actions. When it is after using the toilet it feels like a climax has been reached and the washing represents a calming period afterward. For me it is positive. Well performed it leaves me feeling refreshed and ready to move on with my day. I like the sound of rushing water and unless it is a particularly cold day, I prefer the water to be cold. I like to be thorough and find it makes me feel anxious if I am rushed through this part of the toilet ritual.

* All requests considered but not guaranteed of fulfillment.

dsdn 144 | a little bit of inspiration

This is a quick nod to a photographer whose blog I follow because of a mate of mine in Sydney. She recommended Tom Williams (no relation) via Facebook and I've followed his blog ever since. The areas he shoots in most are very familiar to me - Redfern in Sydney and greater Wollongong (south of Sydney). Interestingly, these two places are also forever linked in my own personal history.

Redfern 

I have lived in Redfern and passed through it almost every day of the 14 - 15 years I lived in Sydney. I have fallen in love there and have been mugged there too. Literally the best and worst of times. This photographer shoots portraits of everyday Redfern people that colour its streets. The real Redfern (whatever that is). There are some interesting urban street-scapes among the images as well. Empathy and respect are evident in all the work of his I have seen. I do not find any of it condescending or judging. It is raw and intimidating and it is exactly what you see when you go there.

These are the images among his recent postings that effectively summarise how I feel about this part of Sydney.

Bleak and threatening high-rise public housing in neighbouring Waterloo that reminds me of les cités in Paris.

...contrasting with the sense of community and belonging that is evident in this image taken in the same place

Wollongong

I have a very complicated relationship with this city and its various suburbs. For me it represents my very complicated family history. Even though I grew up in the Snowy Mountains this is where my parents met and married before I was born. I have family on both sides that still live there and I have been reminded on many occasions throughout my life that I am related to 'half Wollongong'. Still I don't know it all that well and really only got to find out a bit more about the city when my parents retired there in the nineties.

My lord, I loathed taking the train to my parents' house when they moved there. The whole experience left me feeling sad and depleted. It is not a very dynamic place to be (though I suspect this is more apparent to the outsider than the locals) and when my mum recently moved away, my sister and I were collectively relieved. 

But it is not a one-dimensional place and neither are my feelings about it. It is where my beloved father is buried. It is where most of my favourite cousins and sole aunty still reside. It is where some of my fondest childhood memories were made - learning to body-surf in the clean, clear waves of North Beach with my dad. Playing in my grandparents' back yard with my extended family at Christmas...

Anyway, Tom Williams is really good at showing us the people we'd rather not look at in Wollongong. This image is the 'space' version of those people. Even the fact that it is in colour de-romanticises the subject matter. (Rendering it in black and white would have somehow disguised the area's undesirability). I know exactly how this place smells and sounds. The smog from the steelworks' chimneys mixing with the clouds. The red tiled roof. The Holden ute in the driveway.

It is extremely evocative of this strange city. 

The omnipresent Port Kembla steelworks

dsdn 144 | first shoot and proposal

I have decided to focus on bathrooms... AKA restrooms... and toilets. Plus a multitude of other monikers.

A little background: I have a long history with toilets. The business which I founded in 2003 and ran until I sold it in 2010 provided 'powder room' services to high-end/high profile events in NSW, Victoria and Queensland in Australia. It continues to run successfully today and its website can be seen here

Proposal:

In my time running OdT I learnt a lot about toilet spaces and people's behaviour around them. I have also been forever changed in terms of how I perceive each toilet space I enter and consequently have developed a unique perspective of this subject matter. Given that I have allowed enough time to lapse since ceasing my involvement with the day to day running of the biz, I have decided to devote this trimester to evaluating this experience through my assignments in DSDN 144 and CCDN 231.

The objective of my work will be to show the viewer what I see and, more importantly, what I feel when I enter a toilet space - be it private or public and irrespective of size.

I will experient with a few different aesthetics. I feel like each space can lend itself to its own feel. I favour a clean and crisp visual. But I enjoy the ornate and find what each person considers to be a touch of glamour to be really interesting.

For precedents and inspiration I have been looking at the work of Nan Goldin who is widely known for an enormous body of work that consists of her personal experiences captured by means of photography and text. These have included studies of people in their own intimate spaces such as bedrooms and bathrooms. I have found that even though I really like her work the look of it is a little too 'dirty' for me - I think the point I am trying to make revolves around comfort and considered design ...even a touch of glamour.

Kthe in the Bath, Berlin (1998)

Source

 By way of explanation: I really appreciate it when a relatively down-market restaurant maintains a really clean toilet and even places a box of tissues on a shelf near the sink or offers a really nice liquid soap. This leads me to ask questions like

• A lot of people may pass through the space on any given day, what can the owner or caretaker of the room do to ensure that there is no tangible evidence of the rooms (over)use? 
• What are the positive experiences one can have in a toilet? 
• Is it possible to find beauty in even the most banal or mundane of public toilets? 

These are the questions I would constantly ask myself with OdT and they are the ones I want to answer with my photographs.


The first shoot:

Armed with a friend's camera I entered the female toilets on level three in Wigan and shot 52 images. The aim was to shoot with my 'critical eye' which is to say I looked for the room's faults and shortcomings as well as its positive attributes, much as I would have when conducting site inspections for clients with my business.

I was handicapped by not having my own camera and having limited time to work. I don't know this camera very well so I am not confident with it.  I have just bought a Canon 600D which is what I am used to and it just awaits the memory card to be fully operational.

Here are the contact sheets:

Sheet One

Sheet Two

The images I felt worked best are:

©2013 helenkwilliams

©2013 helenkwilliams

©2013 helenkwilliams

©2013 helenkwilliams

ccdn 231 | week 1

We've been assigned tutors - I am in Kath Foster's tutorial again.

The usual intro's ensued and we did a quick excercise based on our movement in a one hour period in the past 24 hours and using a chart to represent the movement as well as a corresponding emotion.

Here's mine:

Pattern Excercise

I think this was useful in getting us to think about being conscious of everyday acts.

When telling the class about one of the 10 minute periods I talked about taking a shower (third from left). I used purple patches arranged in an ordered pattern to describethe movement which for me is very routine and since it's a daily ritual that I can go into an auto-pilot mode to complete, I use this time to collect my thoughts and plan my day ahead, so the purple groups also represent that process. I find this deeply relaxing hence my emotional state which is uncomplicated and easy - like the blue stripes.

Second Year | BDI C + C and BA Majoring in Art History

Just when I thought things were under control...

I have changed my BDI specialisation from Media to Culture & Context and added a BA (majoring in Art History with une toute petite tranche de Français...)

Bring it on...

Here's my inspiration for the week: