Sam's Freedom Video

SAM'S FREEDOM VIDEO

RITUAL

Two things make up The Design for Living - power and love. Success, as in a pursuit of something you love doing - doing something that makes you feel fulfilled. And love, as in loving someone and being loved in return. Or to put it more simply The Design for Living is loving people and loving what you do day to day!

The Rivers of Clarity By Almada Groen

“Shall I be able to express, one day, my love of work – my desire to be a better writer – my longing to take greater pains. And the passion i feel. It takes the place of religion – it is my religion” (Groen).

The girl in this video is called Sam; she is an art student and creating art is what she loves doing day to day. It gives her purpose and therefore power. This video is a representation of how that makes her feel. She is away physically and mentally from the exterior world, in an environment making art with other artists - she feels free. The song choice to the video is Back to Freedom by Bellylove.

She works with nature and then re structures it into different forms. In the video she shows us some of the materials she is planning on using, one of which is a bundle of sticks. The video follows what Sam does with the sticks as she tries to find a brush to sweep them up and find a storage space for them. The reason this is shown in detail is to show the 'behind the scenes' of her work, the process behind the creation. Looking at a beautiful piece of work strung up in a furnished and decadent gallery grabs the attention of many, but personally I am more interested in the person who made the work. 

Sam is currently at Duncan and Jordanstone Art College in Dundee and that is where the this video was filmed. The interior shots are of the university studio spaces and corridors. The reason I filmed the video here is because of its large open and white spaces - they scream sanctuary and freedom. One shot is of a long corridor lined with statues and with a black and white tiled floor which reminded me of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and the threshold you have to cross to get into a liminal space i.e. Alice goes down the rabbit hole and Sam goes down the corridor.

All the shots in the building are in chronological order of Sam during the day. The shots outside are of her with her mum working backwards to their meeting at the end of Sam's day at university. The reason her mum is in the video is because she represents Sam's love of a person - the other part of her Design - and therefore the two parts of her design come together at the end. The shot of the leaves swirling around the ground is shown twice - this shot represents the beauty in the outside world through nature. Nature will always be there and is always a power that is a part of everyone's Design.