Tar Pit

Our Vision

A short film inspired by the works of Shirley Clarke and Yoko Ono

In our practical creative research experience Tar Pit, we intend to implement four key artistic mechanisms inspired by two influential filmmakers. As exemplified by Yoko Ono and Shirley Clarke, we operate with participatory audience, social commentary, structuralist avantgarde, and cinema verite to discuss the persistent issue of sexism in the college environment.

Yoko Ono

Our first influence Yoko Ono is a performative/visual artist, musician, filmmaker and outspoken pacifist. Ono grew up in Tokyo, Japan and later moved to New York City where her passion for art started to flourish. She married three times, the third time to John Lennon, singer and songwriter for The Beatles (Zoladz). Majority of Yoko’s works was commentary on the social atmosphere of the time and sought to involve some performative aspect, which either included some form of audience participation or involved her own physical actions. She was a well-known member of the Fluxus art scene, a movement that focused more on the process of the artist rather than the finished product. Works that came out of the Fluxus “events” were anti-elite and experimental.

Inspired by Yoko Ono, our film will employ two of her artistic mechanisms: a participatory audience and social justice/change. Ono’s work Grapefruit (Instructions) created in 1964 was the epitome of audience engagement in an artistic work. The piece was a mass-created booklet filled with instructions on how users could change their day in various ways through simple tasks (Gotthardt). Yoko’s intention of this piece was to allow for her art to become personal and reflective for each person. We hope to achieve this through our film by adding a QR code at the beginning of the film linked to reflective questions about our film content. Viewers can consider the questions, add their answers, and see other viewers' responses. We will explore the concept of social justice/change through our filmed audio conversation about sexism at KU. We took inspiration from Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece and Bed-In which were performance-based installments commenting on or protesting the Vietnam War and The Feminism Movement(Gotthardt,Ono). Like the installments, we hope to produce organic content based on a concept we will feel needs more exposure, especially as a relevant topic for our peers.

Shirley Clarke

Our second influence Shirley Clarke is an experimental filmmaker who has even been known to collaborate with Yoko Ono and other New York artists (Brody). Clarke was born and raised in New York to a well off Jewish family. She first took interest in dancing and choreography at a young age, becoming highly esteemed and accomplished. It wasn’t until she started recording dance performances from her peers that Clarke realized her fascination in film. As an ametuer filmmaker, Clarke was inspired by Maya Deren’s avant garde works and used her ideas to guide her development in the craft. Clarke’s early works were focused on structuralism and imagination, but later she shifted gears by utilizing experimental documentary as a means for social commentary.

Inspired by Shirley Clarke, our film will employ two additional artistic mechanisms being Cinema Verite and Structuralist Avantgarde. In her later works like Ornette: Made in America and Portrait of Jason Clarke employed realistic documentary footage in various pieces to highlight racial issues in America. In our film we will explore this Cinema Verite in relation to sexism in college. We will host an authentic conversation among four students, including ourselves, about the general theme of sexism at KU. Although we will be there to help guide the conversation when necessary, we aim for this encounter to be organic. We will record the discussion with consent from participants. Evaluating the final audio, we will extract the central themes from the discussion and use these ideas to further develop our other production elements including shotlists, locations, and wardrobe. The recordings from this conversation will be the primary source of audio throughout the final film. We will employ Clarke’s Structuralist Avantgardism by the visuals of our film. As exemplified by her Butterfly and Bridges Go Round, Clarke was fascinated by the ability of film to capture a moment in reality while allowing the space for viewer imagination (Cohen). Her use of bipacking in both of these films speak to her structuralist view, acknowledging the uniqueness of film as an artistic mode unlike any other. In our film we will employ digital bipacking to connect the ideas from our audio conversations to the specific shots. Symbolic actions by the film subjects will be overlaid by footage of physically written quotes from the conversation as the audio plays.

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