All the Things I Did While I Was Here ~ Selina Vicenzino

(working title)

Time Based Making ~ Semester 1, 2025.

About the piece:

When I lived in Meanjin, particularly just before I left, I was focusing a lot on the feeling of home and what makes home. An excerpt from a previous journal entry reads:

‘The concept of home is very sacred to me. Imagining people who once occupied the spaces around you, especially if those are people you have loved or have lost, makes me feel so peaceful… It makes me feel safe to know their love is around me. In the walls. In the streets and footpaths around here, their ghosts linger.’

Now after moving, I am excited to continue focusing on these feelings within my practice. Obviously I am not in Meanjin and I cannot create work surrounding the exact places that have sentimental value to myself. Instead I am going to create a work about the gentle familiarity that settles and grows when you live somewhere ~ how even the smallest routines root you in a place. I’m also interested in the soft ache of transition from one place to another ~ the subtle, lingering grief of leaving, and the quiet anticipation of arriving somewhere new. This work will trace the in-between space of movement—how home can feel like a rhythm, and how that rhythm shifts when you begin again.

These ideas will be realised through notions of rituals and repetition, focusing on methodical, often unnoticed cyclical tasks that we use to structure our days. Like locking the door, making dinner or tea, doing facial masks or skincare routines, folding laundry ~ these acts become sacred in their constancy. Through creating a ‘day in the life’ shaped by these rituals, I want to reflect on how they become markers of time and belonging, even in temporary places.

This piece will act as a kind of emotional map—one that charts both the comfort of the everyday and the quiet disorientation of change.

Inspirations:

Particularly I am interested in Phillip Brophy, specifically ‘Evaporated Music 1’. I hope to take from this piece, the abstract, distorted noises compared to the tasks being completed. I am also interested in this piece as the editing is fast and sudden, echoing the matching abstract noises. I think it would be interesting experiment within the speed of the piece as well.

Other Visual References:

The photographer Ladyist often depicts soft house scenes, specifically involving women and suburban routines.

In the same vein, routines depicted in film & tv, girlhood depicted within magazines.

Wes Anderson, Greta Gerwig ~ Lady Bird, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Little Miss Sunshine.

Rookie Magazine ~ Tavi Gevieson, Petra Collins.

Juno Calypso, Petrina Hicks, Maisie Cousins, Lilia Li-Mi-Yan, Rania Matar, Molly Soda, Alexandra Marzella.

More visual inspiration at this link

Potential tasks & shots:

Lying in the bath ~ playing with the perspective of going under the water, distorted plopping noises within the water.

Eating spaghetti (or something messy) ~ slurping and biting, mess created.

Drinking tea ~ in the same vein, slurping.

Skincare routines ~ inspired by the scenes in American Psycho of Christian Bale peeling off the facial mask. The ripping of a face mask off the skin.

Folding laundry ~ gentle and soft noises

Dishes ~ similar to my loop, crashing noises.

Capturing the streets around my house ~ walking around, footsteps, birds, lying in the afternoon sun.

Noises I am interested in:

Crickets, locking the door, sounds of someone showering, gentle hum of someone watching tv.

Interest in ASMR:

The goal of ASMR is to use auditory and visual stimulation to create a tingly sensation up your back, spine & scalp. Similar to the feeling of someone touching your neck, or whispering in your ear. Although I have never listened to ASMR in anyway for my own enjoyment, I have been exposed to it through the internet and through media I consume.

For the audio of my piece, I think it’s interesting to play with these tingly feelings, juxtaposed from louder distorted noises & beats, to create something that is equally comedic and sensitive to consume.

Reflection on my test footage:

This is quite a condensed version of my test footage, specifically involving my routine involving showering, washing my hair and doing my hair routine. Although I think that there will be similar shots within my final work, these are a lot less considered and careful than my finals would be. For example, the auto focus being left on, the camera being visible in one of the mirrors, the pacing of the clips and audio, etc. It is just a lot less intentional than I vision the final being. Although I am interested in the footage that’s been shot here, and the contents, I just think it could be a whole lot better. I am interested now in creating audio on top of similar imagery, and splicing it together with other rituals, to create the final piece.

After shooting test footage and reviewing artists I’ve sited as inspiration, I realise I am quite interested in these tasks as a feminist meditation within domestic space as well as documenting the soft familiarity of home. It feels that I am unable to make this work, living as a feminine presenting person, with myself completing mundane tasks around the house, previously culturally relegated to being ‘women’s work’, without having commentary about the domestic space and my gender. It feels important to touch on! Maybe I would need more time to iron these ideas slowly into my initial writings, but it could potentially be myself using the domestic space as a quiet space for selfhood. Perhaps reclaiming domesticity as a place of gentle care and ritual? My body is the home?

Timeline of shooting:

Next week:

I’ll be hiring the zoom recorder and beginning to warp and distort my audio attempts. I also want to attempt recording different regular noises, specifically with the recorder you can attach to your skin. I rewatched Marina Abramovic’s Rest Energy and I really love the quiet, distorted heartbeat noises that echo through this piece. It would be interesting to experiment with bodily sounds as well. I also want to begin recording some ASMR type noises and distorting them also.

Week 7: Mid Semester Break

During this week I will have created a storyboard surrounding my shots that I’m interesting in recording. I am really interested in the domestic wardrobe and this will be another large part of this week is experimenting with different clothes. There will be many scenes recorded within this week as it’s the week before the WIP presentation and I want there to be at least scenes and audio to show in class, even if it isn’t edited together.

Week 8: WIP Due