WELCOME TO MY STUDIO

Leah crouching down next to a very large dibond photograph. She's a white woman with dark blonde hair up in a bun, wearing all black. The photograph is 2metres tall and 3metres wide, and rests on white foam blocks. It is mostly darkness and shade, but at its left side glows into a warm red flare, over rippling sunlit water. The room might be a studio or domestic dating, with wooden floors and a closed door, framed photo on the wall, and a door buzzer phone on the left.

Hi, I’m Leah Clements, an artist from and based in East London. 

I’m really interested in moments of transcendence – these might be near death or out of body experiences, or profound shifts in psychology or physicality. Sometimes this is very scientific, sometimes it veers towards the paranormal. I want to get to these moments where you have one foot in this world and the other in another.

A lot of this comes from being chronically ill myself, but this point of departure usually expands outwards into other people’s experiences, with an intent to re-collectivise.

During the residency I’m planning to work on a new moving image scene where icons from ancient, medieval, and contemporary sites will come together to forge a new symbol. This is growing out of my research into apopheny vs epiphany (more on that later!)  and thinking about how we look for meaning when it feels lacking, and whether we can know if we’re looking for it in the right or wrong places. It will give me a chance to try (and play about with) a new technique of animation in film editing. 

Comment any thoughts you have, or ask me questions – I look forward to sharing some of my research into this and talking with you about it…

View post >

Lullaby

Rebekah Ubuntu has been encouraging us to consider the process of this residency to be ‘the thing’. A big part of my process has been working around looking after my son, so to mark this here is a lullaby that I’ve been singing to him since he was born, recorded on my phone a while ago so he can hear it even on the rare occasion I’m not there.

Video Description: The subtitles of the song are in white text at the bottom of the screen. They overlay a background of refracted light ripples moving leisurely across sand at the bottom of the ocean. Occasionally they bounce backwards and reverse their direction.

Audio Caption: Leah sings in a bathroom – slightly echoey but small-sounding. The mic is just a phone, and sometimes distorts with the sound of breathing. The song is slow, with lots of space in between lines.

Song to the Siren | Tim Buckley

(Lyrics are slightly altered by Leah from the original)

All afloat on the shipless ocean

I did all my best to smile

‘Til your singing eyes and fingers

Drew me loving to your isle

For you sang

Sail to me

Sail to me let me unfold you

Here I am

Here I am

Waiting to hold you

Did I dream 

You dreamed about me?

Were you hare while I was fox?

Now my foolish boat is leaning

Torn lovelorn on your rocks

For you sang

Touch me not

Touch me not come back tomorrow

Oh my heart

Oh my heart

Shies from the sorrow

I’m as puzzled as a newborn child

I’m as riddled as the tide

Should I stand amid the breakers?

Should I lie with death for my bride?

And you sang

Swim to me

Swim to me let me unfold you

Here I am

Here I am

Waiting to hold you.

View post >

Experimenting…

Today I’ve been testing out an experimental way of filming, which I’ll use to make part of the work. Here is a little peek at what’s to come…

ID: Out of the darkness appears a stream of white light. It refracts into rainbow colours, then reassembles its original colour, slipping in and out of pink yellow and blue and back to white again. Waves of more defined lines flow like ripples, but smokey – lighter than water.

View post >

At the Altar

‘Those seeking divine help for an illness or affliction might rest overnight in special temple buildings. On waking, priests of the Roman god of healing, Aesculapius, helped them interpret their dreams or visions’

I made it to the temple.

A museum banner in a pillared 18th century interior. On it is a Roman sculpted face, obscured on shadow and picked out on dramatic light. It reads ‘the goddess awaits you at the temple of Sulis Minerva’
A stone sculpted head in a dark space. It’s on a plinth and its mouth and nose have eroded away, leaving blank eyes and and impressive plaited hair arrangement like a crown over her head.
A coffin underfoot, under glass. It is small and yellowish, made of an unknown material. It is enclosed at one end, and warped by its two thousand years.
Behind a statue, its cape hanging in folds, we look down upon the green bath from a height. The statue’s counterparts face it opposite, along the walkway which follows around the edge of the bath. Each of them is permanently posed, guarding or adorning the watery centre.
Up close at the corner of the bath. The cut stone corner descends in steps, the water consumes them in its milky green opacity.
A central view of the bath from the bathside: a green rectangular body of water, Roman pillars surrounding it. A small walkway runs behind the pillars, ending at ancient walls. Above, statues line a balcony, and the windows of other old (but perhaps less ancient) buildings surround it.

Image IDs in Alt Text, Video IDs here:

  1. A green body of water, edged in stone. At this corner, a flat rock – perhaps an ancient seat – is laid over a stream trickling underneath it, from a source behind, into the milky green pool. We zoom out and see more of the walkway behind, and the length of the bath. Pillars surround the edge of the pool, receding into darkness behind. We zoom back in to the gentle trickling. 
  2. Hot steaming water gushes out of an arched hole. Dark and underground, its surfaces stained orange by sulphur or some mysterious element.
  3. A hot, bubbling green thermal spring. It is contained by straight stone edges, cut into a square with a corner lopped off where the wall of a building in the same material meets it.  We zoom into the bubbles, becoming consumed by it.
  4. Water rippling gently in the sun, down its shallow stone path. The surface underneath is stained orange by something, something invisible in the clear water. It flows underneath a stone slab, and into its destination: the large body of green water. We follow its small journey.

View post >

Sound

I’ve started experimenting with some sound for the work. Here’s a little sneak preview…

Image Description: A spectral, bouncing waveform in pale lilac shakes with the sound, on a black background. It’s like a hundred extremely thin horizontal lines zigzagging across the screen, slowly changing formation.

Audio Description: An echoey hum pulses in and out, as if a hundred people with the same voice are all humming the same thing at the same time in an underground cave. A kind of haunting wind flows throughout.

View post >

Join our mailing list

Click here to subscribe for news about Vital Capacities

Follow us