Kylsonjagan’s Waking

Collaborative Artists’ Statement

The “Kylsonjagan” in our title is a portmanteau of our names, the whole an homage to James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Our film essay is a meditation on the daily ritual of waking up and the process of transitioning into the public world, explored through each member’s individual experiences. We drew from entries we agreed to write in our class journals each morning, which took on lyrical and essayistic qualities and so became interesting, viable sources for our text and inspiring vehicles of personal discovery. In our script we arranged our pieces of essayistic and poetic writing alternating between writers according to thematic or tonal sense. To assure that each member’s “voice” was present and evident in their scenes, each person shot stills and recorded the audio for their scenes independently. We hope that the overarching themes of the film unite what may seem visually disparate.

Technical work took some getting used to; using audio equipment and working with the software was laborious and more time-consuming than planned. We also faced the challenge of “killing our darlings” by tossing segments of our writings to make our video more coherent. Sometimes we ended up improvising, as hearing our writings recorded would change our attitudes towards them. Overall the collaborative working process exceeded our expectations; in spite of our apprehensions, we quickly found we had similar artistic tastes and bonded. Occasionally this was distracting, but it also motivated us to work longer hours as we enjoyed each-other’s company.

 Credits

Sonja Bobotek, Kylie Dervaes, Megan Luke