Concept – Qtiewhale

For Fashion Media Lab, I was thinking of creating something related to my research and final project. I wanted to treat this unit as a practice or trial and error ground before making the final product next year. But honestly, I’ve been stuck on what to make for the MA final project so I decided to do something different.

At first, I wanted to apply the stereoscopic technic and make (as I discussed with Vicky before) a visual narrative of photographic setups with high styling. I love fairy tales and fantasy characters, especially about deities. I have this one idea that hasn’t been executed since a year ago: a series of triplets Gods photography.

Reference:
Rosalia’s El Mal Querer Album Animation Cover
Filip Custic (2018)

Reference: The Color of Pomegranates – The Poet’s Childhood
Sergei Parajanov (1986)
If turned into a film, the work would be a more photographic movie without dialogue like this.

The Moirai are the three fates that decide human destiny. Clotho decides who will be born, Lachesis help measures the length of a person’s life, and Atropos decides how one will pass on.

The Erinyes are deities of vengeance, they are the punisher of wrongdoings. Not only God, but victims too can call on the Erinyes and pray for their curse. The worst curse in the eyes of Erinyes came from the parents–if the child is wicked, they can wish for the Erinyes to fall their curse upon the child.

Black-winged daemons, children of Nyx. They’re the personification of dreams that appear differently according to the dream.

The idea is to have the three in each set design with a different colour palette. The colour was chosen to further emphasize the mood of each deity’s existence. The Moirai will be white since it represents life, which is pure, sincere and innocent. As it signifies passion, strength and desire, red is chosen for the Erinyes. Black will be the Oneiroi’s colour for it represents mysterious, authority and fear.

After the first tutorial, I was doing further research about the three pairs and discovered that The Moirai actually have agents. When Atropos decide how an individual die, it will notify a certain agent to do the job. A cruel and violent death means The Keres, blood-thirst spirits, will do the job. Peaceful or nonviolent death will require Thanatos, a God of death that will guide the soul to the underworld. I found the story more intriguing than the Erinyes and thinking of changing them into Keres. So the story would be around life/death or conscious/unconscious–and they’re all the children of Nyx, the Goddess of night.

But the deeper I dig into the stories, the more I become confused about how to change this idea into a film. Especially when I created this idea, the output that I thought of are still images. That is why I decided to ditch this idea and try to find another one that is similar and more doable.

Notes from the first tutorial with Vicky.

While thinking about this, I can’t help but feel a sense of panic. I couldn’t sleep, thinking that I wouldn’t make it this unit. Then I remember my own experience. On the first weeks in London, I had nightmares. Sometimes the story continues from one dream to another. The feeling of not doing good enough, overwhelmed, being chased, pressured, and rushed all together haunted me. I think the occurrence can be a good starting point. I will explore the idea more for the concept and output.

For our object story, Yve and I borrowed clothes from CSM graduate Jojo, but we ended up not using it. To make it up for the designer, I tried to create an idea for a shoot. The clothes remind me a lot to childhood and fairy tales–especially fairies.

Courtesy of
Jojo Ruiji Zhou

I got the idea to link the clothes with a fairy tale story. I remember Thumbelina, a story about a girl who was born from a flower, went on an adventure and wedded the fairy prince. But for the clothes, I wanted to twist the story so it won’t appear to be dreamy and sweet. The mood I aimed at was eerie and dark. Fortunately, I found surrealism paintings by Michael Cheval and Michael Hutter that I thought would help develop the story further.

We were thinking of having 4 models for the day. One as Thumbelina and the rest as fairies. Yve, the photographer Yichen (from MA Photography), and I had a meeting to decide the place and props that we needed. We decided to shoot at Crystal Palace Park, as it has gardens and maze that befitted with the concept.

Along the way, it was hard to get a model because the concept is too ‘weird’. Most agencies are more willing to give their models if we offer them a more commercial, simpler concept that emphasizes the model’s face so we ended up with none from agencies. Long story short, we only got two models on the shooting day.