Atmospheric Diary: Exploration of Diaristic Practice in Experimental Moving Image

Abstract

Diaristic practice in various modes of expression permeates the online environment with textual, visual, and aural documents of memories and life, including social media and writing platforms. Inspired by Jonas Mekas’s performative and reflective relationship between the artist and hand-held camera, this article examines three aspects of my moving image experiment, the Diary Project (2022-ongoing), in the concept of atmosphere that fluctuates sensational and poetic expression to the spatial formation and mental structure in moving image and physical space. Therefore, three parallel processes will be discussed: methods in Mekas’s practice, poetic expression in multi-frame editing, and finally, the atmospheric expansion to the physical exhibition space. My project explores different styles and forms, such as slow and fixed perspectives or rapid and shaky images in fragments of short footage collecting videos since 2019. Those fragments of times, places, and self in daily life are presented through multi-frame editing in the concept of the atmosphere. The sensation of the fragments of life amplifies the atmospheric sensation to the viewer and can be expanded to the active participation of creating an atmosphere in the exhibition space. As this is an ongoing project, this paper speculates the possible structure of the space in relation to the ambulation, both mental and physical, to generate further discussion on the expansion of the recording and editing processes to the poetic expression of the spatialisation, challenging the fixed and linear narrative to reconnect and remerge vibratory oscillation and mutual transformation between mental and bodily force.