Fine Line is a video collaboration I wrote that was filmed with artist Katie Ness in 2011 and produced in 2012; making it a very wonderful collaborative experience that has brought a lot of things I'd been working on together into one recorded piece that is very special and important to me.
Now it will be making its debut at the Art8 festival for 3 days running in a studio cinema at 'Tall Trees' (on Tolcarne Rd) : Friday 12th - Sunday 14th April.
I would love to get as many people as possible to come and have a look and tell me their feedback, so if you are free and fancy a couple of days seeing some art in a beautiful creative area....come to this!
You can preview the film here to get a sneaky preview
http://youtu.be/aHik8i3F8cc
Here are our statements that go with the piece for you to get an idea of how and why it was made:
Nicola Hardman:
"Fine Line started out as a casual conversation between creative friends. I am a performance artist/musician and my friend Katie Ness who is the other part of this collaboration is a mixed media artist/dance performer. I had written a short piece of theatre that I intended for stage that eventually became the screenplay for this piece. Katie had just exhibited her most recent project entitled "Maya's Rapture" which in short, is a video installation including physical dimensions set for a gallery space. It is based around the theme of alter ego's and psyche, which interests me greatly and happened to be some of the main themes that inspired my stage piece I had written previously. As we talked about working together and topics that interested us both as artists and human beings, we agreed that I would adapt the stage piece for a screenplay continuing to explore alter ego's and psyche and Katie would film and produce it as a video installation. I came to name it Fine Line because when I question psyche it draws parallel lines in the psychology of the soul and I question desire, which leads me to questioning my ambitions, love and sexuality. I purposefully wanted Fine Line to be interdisciplinary not only as a way to incorporate other dimensions of performance like the type of work that inspires me, but also as an invisible metaphor for the main inspirations of this piece which are; alter ego's, multiple personality disorder, sexuality and of course psyche. My wish is not to make a preaching statement to the spectator, but to share a personal exploration using my own experiences and understanding of the factors that have inspired Fine Line in collaboration with another artist providing an interpretation of the same concepts through art direction of my script. I would like the spectator to experience the psychology of the video, the interpretation of the script, the text, sound and musical composition that is included in the piece and connect to their own psyche questioning their own experiences of alter ego's, multiple personality disorder sexuality and psyche."
Katie Ness:
After the production of 'Maya's Rapture' a video/performance installation exploring my Alter-ego I wanted to Analyze another artist's second self. Knowing that the actress Nicola Hardman already had a second persona within her identity it seemed natural to work with her to bring both her characters together in a video/performance. Surprisingly she already had a script written based on the same concept when I pitched the idea for a collaboration. The script was originally for a stage performance and so we had to adapt it to work in a video setting. I am a person who reads extensively about many topics and my style has foundations in Persian Mysticism, Indian Philosophy and Jungian dream analysis. Everything that I am as an Artist and as an Oriental Dancer is fueled by these teachings. So in Fine line you can see references to concepts of Magic Realism, reincarnation and exploring the subconscious mind. I edited the film in such a way that likened it to vintage silent movies and to the chaos and that play on imperfections that dreams bring. I integrated concepts of eternal opposites through out 'Fine Line" from Legendary Persian stories of the garden of paradise versus modern, enclosed walled structures, Dante's Inferno aspects of Hell and the state of Limbo and archetypal dream symbolisms like Water, the pocket watch, the mannequin and the spider. I'd like the spectator to perhaps see a part of themselves in these Personas Nicola has inside her as well as relate to and explore the dreamscape created via editing techniques.
I hope to see you all there...last time I visited Newquay I was trying to surf...somehow I don't think that will be possible this time, but I'm taking my wetsuit all the same ;)
Thank you for reading
<3
