#majorprojectproposal

BA (Hons) Photographic Arts                                        

MAJOR PROJECT PROPOSAL

Name

Sofia Topchishvili

Project Title (or working title)

Don’t Call Me Vodka

Subject / Concept

The subject for this project is to explore retrospective nostalgia from my Russian childhood. Taking photojournalistic approach, the concept for this project is to recollect memory from my hometown by photographing and conducting interviews with Russian people that share similar experience living in Saratov but who come from different backgrounds, age and class. This project is a continuation for the DON’T CALL ME VODKA, a journey that started for me back in 2017. Continuing this project, I would want to focus more on post-Soviet social groups in Russia such as working class, convicts, and elderly. The other subject change would be shifting from political angles to more social and personal approach.

Aims

This time there are two main aims for this project, personal – aiming to photograph and recollect memory from the time that I used to live in Russia and to record and conduct interviews with Russian people from different backgrounds around Saratov. Through this on-going project I want to highlight the notion how people live in my city and the change that happened since 90s. Aiming to depict that the majority of Russian people really struggle to survive because of the political oppression that comes from the never-ending external sanctions and never changing presidency. The aim is to explore and revisit sites around Saratov that I have shot before as well as extending and perfecting quality of film prints. Thus, the most important aim is to do justice to my people through my art.

Context / Audience

Through this on-going project I want to depict real life of people that live in Russian Federation. Growing up in Russia I never paid much attention towards life that we as Russian’s live, until I moved to Western World. As this project will be exhibited in London and knowing this from day one I wanted to show true survival that people go through on daily basis in Russia by conducting interviews with them about their life in Saratov, about political and social dilemmas that affect their daily life. The aim for my viewers to have their own “punctum” experience while they engage with prints and installation – to have that nostalgic recollections with objects that on their own do not mean much but for each viewer represent something more.

Proposed form, medium, presentation

BA (Hons) Photographic Arts

MAJOR PROJECT PROPOSAL

Name       Zhilan Zheng(w1553183)

Project Title (or working title)

“Social Rebound” – The morality-trampling behaviour of someone is bound to cause stinging social response and arouse public anger to a great extent. At that time, there must be someone standing out to give punishments. Such punishments are unpredictable, uncontrollable and even illegal and cannot be dominated or incited by a single person. Such punishments may pose threats to your personal and property safety. It is likely that the damage you have suffered may even outweighs the rascality itself. This is an objective presence of self-protection mechanism of the moral system and is also the general rule of human society.

Subject / Concept (What the project is about?)

This work intends to reveal a social issue that is just around us or a humanity fact. There are also open questions to all of us: how do we balance legal sanction and moral sanction in our cognition? Which one is more authoritative and more powerful? As is known to all of us, law is the most authoritative. Certainly, it should be equipped with stronger power and ability correspondingly. However, under some circumstances, legal punishments are not as effective as moral punishments even compare with its commensurate enforcement and punitive measures. My work is originated from my one-year following and investigations to a real criminal case that happened in both Japan and China (for details, please refer to my blog). This work also comes from a continuous doubt in my mind, that is, can we say that moral punishments are of greater power if a person has violated the social moral baseline without violating the law and hence suffers from moral punishments that are far more detrimental to the person himself or herself compared with severe legal punishments to a murder and will be brought with unimaginable and long-lasting harm for his or her whole life. Through my creation of the work, I tried to understand the two characters from my personal perspective and imagine my reaction if I come across similar situation through the scene construction in my mind. Gradually, I have had some understandings to the environment and atmosphere they were in as well as their mental activities. I settled down two different scenes and character images step by step. Moreover, I have had some command of the way of applying different colored lights to illustrate character’s mental activities and create sharp character contrasts.

Aims (What do you want to achieve?)

I want to apply photography as a carrier to express my understandings to current society. I hope I can inspire everyone in the era to think seriously about the relationship between humanity and morality in the modern society and the direct interaction of legal system and public supervision under the Internet era through my works.

Context / Audience (Where will it be seen / who is it for?

My work will be shown in exhibition hall through videos. My audience is every person who shares the same doubt with me and every person who lives in the same era with me.

Proposed form, medium, presentation (How will you execute it and present it?)