Dear Darkness...

So, it’s not all about communities and travels for me, I’m also trying to pull of a few projects of my own. I left Melbourne having one group show still on and another one opening a few days later. (I do hate not attending my own openings, but in this case the choice was easy.) The images from the last one, the Siemens Fine Art scholarship exhibition, are going to the Siemens headquarters in Bayswater for a year. I didn’t get the much-needed scholarship, but being short-listed is still pretty good. All exposure is good exposure, right?  Though the money would have come in handy to help cover the 4000 dollars my mum was nice enough to lend me to do this trip... I love my mum. Preparations for my honours year is ongoing and I reckon I’ll be good to go by the time I hit Melbourne again.

I didn’t have the time to fix my website properly before heading off, but ‘Down A Rabbit Hole” can be found on www.didasundet.com. The blog will still be there, but I am stripping it of a few entries due to wanting to keep my secrets just that, Secret. Don’t ask, ‘cause I’m not telling.

 ‘Down A Rabbit Hole’ still needs 4 more images to be complete, and so far I reckon I have one new one, possibly two. Post-production will have to wait as most of the equipment to that properly is still in Melbourne. Anyone who knows me well enough will know that I do not take any short cuts and will only settle for best when it comes to my work. 

 As well as finishing off that, I have started a new body of work, working title “De Døde Fuglers Sang”. This series will be based more on fear and desire in relation to reality and fantasy, but still remains rooted in the same technique and visual/conceptual borderland as ‘Down A Rabbit Hole’.

As well as all this, I am doing a portrait series of all of us. One (casual) head shot every day. This will (hopefully) end up as 4 large collages, one for each of us, as well as 4 separate video pieces Ben will put together. I am thinking of getting each face up to about an A4 size so that each collage will be able to cover a wall. This project ties back to my 2006 collage series “Ghost In a Shell” (93 self-portraits) and “You Looking at Me Looking At You” and explores, amongst other things, the diversity of individual appearance as well as photography’s futility in trying to capture a personality in a split second.

So far it has been hard to find time to do my own work, especially research. My work has always had a strong conceptual foundation and this takes both time and effort to suss out. I did one shoot in Coober Pedy and another one in Wycliffe Wells. My aim, optimistic as it may be, is to have “Rabbit” finished by the time we get back (minus post and printing, of course) and have 3-4 new images for the new body of work.

Honours starts a few days after we get back, so no rest for the wicked. If anything I am struggling more with the fact that I can’t do all the work I want when I want.

Another aspect proving difficult is the fact that the Australian bush is full of things that can kill you. These things do not care about art or photoshoots at all. During the shoot in Wycliffe Wells I had a very close visit from one of the biggest spiders I have ever seen in the wild. All of a sudden he’s hanging right in front of my face. I do not like spiders. So, needless to say this changes the way and where I work at night quite a bit. I have no need to have another close encounter with a deadly snake, though the last one was due to own stupidity.

But then again... I am curious enough to get myself into all kinds of trouble, so who knows?