This artwork by Jan Van De Velds II, Sorceress made in 1626 is incredibly intriguing to me mainly through the way the witch's hair seems to be defying the flow of the wind which can be detected by the way the powder is being thrown into her cauldron.

I specifically adore the intensity and sardonic approach depicted as Van de Velde was influenced by the melancholic dark manner of painting in which Hendrik Goudt used for his nocturnal paintings.

This makes me believe that night time is key factor for witches to use their power. In my project, I want to use the idea of night-time in a direct manner, mainly through my performance art piece.

For my project, I'll include the use of rope and hair, in which witches use to manifest their spells.

The following spell, is chanted along the making of nine knots along rope.

By knot of one, the spell's begun.

By knot of two, the magic comes true.

By knot of three, so shall it be.

By knot of four, this power is stored.

By knot of five, my will shall drive.

By knot of six, the spell I fix.

By knot of seven, the future I leaven.

By knot of eight, my will be fate.

By knot of nine, what is done is mine.

I was captivated by John Amaral, a body-worker and chiropractor, whose work was recently in the docu-series "The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow".

The Double Slit Experiment is a concept of Quantum Phycics, used to observe the behaviour of subatomic particles.

John Amaral uses that principle of unseen energy as a type of wellness therapy that involves manipulating the flow of energy in and around your body. One popular form of energy healing, called reiki, aims to remove "blockages" of energy that have built up where physical and emotional pain have occurred.

"If you just change the frequency of vibration of the body itself, it changes the way the cells regrow, it changes the way the sensory system processes." John Amaral.

Many people underwent through emotional, and spiritually-attached physical experiences such as loud moaning, crying, orgasming and even exorcism-like movements and feelings which is why I wanted to make a link between Amaral's work and my research the iconic forward movement of the hair in witchcraft possession.

I was very inspired by his work because it even relates to my initial research on sex being a spiritual and bonding experience as Amaral's work, focuses on the unseen energy surrounding and restricting the body, which is what I wanted to express through my research onto sex and connection.

Screenshot from the Docs-Series: "The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow", Episode 5, Season 1.

Witches have a really magical, dark and bizarre visual appearance that I want my project's final piece to exude.

In the first painting by David Teniers, the use of food such as mushrooms and olives in decoration of the frame is quite delicate and rustic at the same time. Teniers' vision was to always ornament his vision of witches and portray them in the most harmonious way possible.

In the second painting by an unknown painter, Guldenmann was a mother of four as well as a 16th century witch. She was raised by her aunt whom was burnt at stake for witchcraft.

Katharina supported herself, concocting herbal potions for common ailments, “augmented” by spells and charms. Combined with her bad temper and family history, it is small wonder that town gossips soon labeled her a suspected witch.

During her adult life, she was witch-hunted by Lutherus Einhorn, a local magistrate of  Germany.

Her relationship with her husband didn't help the prosecution as Kepler himself wrote in his allegory called Somnium (The Dream) where a character very similar to Katharina was portrayed as wise woman named Fiolxhilde who sells magic charms and communes with a demon in the moon.

I found that aesthetically, these pictures respresent very clearly how I want to take my project forward. During my Progress Tutorial with Alice, she recommended me to look more into aesthetics and the visual side of my research so that I don't get too hung up on the concept. I found that the backstory of these photographs are actually quite interesting but I chose them purely for visual purposes.

Book: Witch by Candace Savage

Picture #1: Witches Scene by David Teniers the Younger, 1640-1650

Picture #2: Katharina Guldenmann's Portrait by unknown painter, 16th century

Kagero and Colors by Daido Moriyama

Book: Araki by Araki

Interview Extract below, taken from the Interview: Crossing Boundaries with Nobuyoshi Araki

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0001.205/--crossing-boundaries-an-interview-with-nobuyoshi-araki?rgn=main;view=fulltext

Araki only uses film cameras to shoot his photography as he says that digital cameras remove the magic from the photographs.

"Pictures taken by a digital camera only show the instant moment. However, there may be something added to the frame during the process of developing or printing when it comes to gelatin silver print. There could be sentimental feelings in those photographs. This kind of “mysterious secret” goes into the process of using a film camera. It is humane, so it is appropriate for photographic expression. I do not feel the body temperature of the subject in digital image. There is no physicality."

Araki's photography is definitely seen as taboo for many people through intimate nude portraits. I adore the way he portrays women as goddesses: He empowers women through the way their passionate yet vulnerable facial and body expressions.

In the last shot, the model has paint dripped on her body, which creates an interesting pattern resembling lightning bolts, which could be interpreted as women's powerfulness. I want to portray a similar sensuality and energy through my own photographic and experimental work.

Through these digital collage edits, I'll be trying to portray sex as a spiritual and healing experience. 

The close up of the bondage knot in the center of the pictures represents unity and strength as it resembles the different chakras points.

The reflection of Ella merging together represents the physical aspect of sex as well as a bonding experience that it is.

I feel like these edits will definitely inspire the physical experimentation I'll produce in the following week, on ways I can bond/intertwine body parts together: For example, through the knotting of our hair together, the use of materials to connect us together or the simple twisting of the bodies with one another.

I'll also want to look into forms in which I can demonstrate that bond within a fashion context.

After experimenting with various types of bondage knots, I've realized that the details of the actual knots are really interesting so I want to create my own knot that has lesbian sexual connotations.

For this photoshoot, I had to learn how to make bondage knots such as the single column tie and the box tie.

The two most basic ties are the single-column tie, where the "column" could be the end of a limb or an attachment point, and the double column tie which could be used to bind two limbs. They all start with a basic knot and finish with securing the loose ends.

The poem Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning revolves around the story of a man who chokes his lover to death with her own long blonde hair in order to preserve her love for him forever. The macabre way of thinking that is presented in this poem could be a great way for me to look into death and love/sex.

The extract: "Perfectly pure and good: I found / A thing to do, and all her hair / In one long yellow string I wound / Three times her little throat around, / And strangled her." inspired me to develop samples/photographic research of bondage knots using blonde hair. I'm interested in Browning's idea that death is the ultimate way to preserve a moment forever and I'm also intrigued in how I can visually communicate people's need to hurt the ones they love the most, in pleasurable or simply painful manners.

Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!

The silver crescent-moon-like hook evokes the lunar feminine current of witchcraft and the idea of periodicity and movement.

I'm fascinated by the relationship between sex and pain and in Suspiria, Guadagnino blurs the lines between eroticism and gore really well through the art of dance and the glorification of sacrifice for the main star Suzie, to star and peak within her career.

The sickle is a great way to represent that gratification upon receiving pain during sex because it is both aesthetically pleasing yet deathly.

Still from the film Suspiria by Luca Guadagnino, 2018:

These are the photographs from the bondage test photoshoot, in which I tied Ella with red rope, as a way of researching on the skill and art that bondage is.

Through this experience, we were very surprised at the detail that each knot required, as if the act of tieing someone up is seen as teasing the other party as their body gets more and more restricted with every knot that is tied.

Some of these photographs will be used simply as a template for me to come up with draping and collage ideas but I'll research further into different types of knots and how I could develop them to create my own knot structure.

I'm going to analyze the clip below which is a scene from the "5th Act - In the Mutterhaus" from the film, Suspiria.

I was moved by the relationship between the choreography, the clothes and the sounds within this extract.

The costumes worn by the dancers are very similar to the bondage knots I've experimented on Ella, which in relation to the dance movements, become even more interesting to me. When the dancers' movements are slow, the flowing rope contrasts with the tight knots laid accurately all throughout their bodies although, in the majority of the scene, they dance in very rigid and geometric slashing-like movements which makes the flowing rope look and sound stiff, almost like blades, inflicting pain on the dancers.

I was also very intrigued by the use of sighs in this extract as well as all throughout the film; It feels as if the dancers have a real relationship with the dance movements and they express it through their heavy sighs as a form of expression of exhaustion. pleasure and feeling very much like the sighs during sexual activities.

This scene is a great way for me to analyze the relationship between pain and sex or even sex and death.

Birth Trays are twelve-sided painted wooden boards, known in Italian as a Desco da Parto.

The serving platters were a standard-issue household item among the grand families to celebrate the birth of an heir, and they functioned to bear fruit and other refreshments to the bedbound mother who had just delivered herself of a living child.

I believe there is beauty to the function of this object because of its purpose to take care of the mother's needs.

Fertility and birth are something that I could delve into if I ever feel stuck on the concepts of sex and its avenues, however, for now, I'll be using the historic research of Borth Plates to guide me into a more lustful way of thinking rather than the motherly aspect of the object.

I'll be experimenting with collaging fruit on the birth plate in order to portray the plate as a visual representation of longing, teasing, admiration and sexual tension and even orgasms as the painting itself reveals Venus being worshipped by six of her lovers (Achilles, Tristan, Lancelot, Samson, Paris and Troilus)

Master of Charles of Durazzo, Birth Tray (Desco da Parto) with the Triumph of Venus,1400, Louvre Museum.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/55/burnett_geller.php

This is the most recent Hand Study video of mine, which I edited and uploaded some days ago.

For this video, I used the same "heartbeat" interlude as a motif, to embody the need for someone to love, which is Ella.

I think I can introduce rhythm and movement into my project through the use of sounds like the heartbeat, sighs and moans as well as the movement of hands or bodies; For example, through the Suspiria Volk Dance Scene.

Hands Study pt1 is a short video, filmed and edited by me, back in May of 2019 that explores the hands in my surroundings. I was inspired to make this video because of a poem I made (below) in which I talk about my need for a lover as a "second pair of hands".

I've recently made a second video, in which I film not only the hands that I find in interesting positions but the hands of Ella, which is the person I yearned for so much a year ago.

hands study:

May someone’s hands
wrap me up in bubble wrap.
May someone’s hands
tape me “fragile”.

May someone’s hands have faith
in my insecurities, me and my dreams.

Old threats that I can’t and won’t repeat.

May someone remind me of something deeper
than dried cuts and people’s eyes,
deeper than the hearts that I idealize.

May someone prick me with needles of ink,
next time you’ll see me, my hands will be prettier,
“Nine” then later on life, “Siegfried”.

May I forever live in my prime
as the mourn of death is the rebirth of a new life,
an ever-growing existential fight. sublime.

Someone’s hands shouldn’t act my big part
when I’ve got two that are literal art.

I went to the British Baroque: Power and Illusion Exhibition at Tate Britain with Ella this week and was inspired by the delicate and romantic hand gestures, mainly captured on the female hands, to research and explore the different types of hand penetration in sapphic sex.

I made various drawings analyzing the curves and positioning of the fingers that made the paintings so dramatic and passionate. I realised that in a lot of my favourite paintings the women would hold fruit, leaves or even their dresses and clothing items and that usually made the hand gesturing far more interesting because the hand is interacting with something.

I believe that I can take this aspect of my project further if I  make 3D experiments of the separation of the hands: From what is inside the vagina during penetration and what isn't.

For the sake of my project, I sexualised the use of the fruit as there are sexual connotations in between fruit and vaginas although most times, the women in these paintings would hold fruit to express purity, youth and wealth.

The video below is an extract from a show called Twin Peaks by David Lynch.

In the extract, Audrey eats a cherry and makes a loose knot on the cherry stem, in a sensuous and daring manner to incite the woman in front of her.

I'll be examining the scene and exploring why the knotting of the stem makes the scene so much more sexual.

Twin Peaks, S1E6 by David Lynch:

For my project, I want to portray the female hymen as its most common societal term, the cherry.

I'll be experimenting with cherries in various different ways to portray the stretching of the hymen (popping your cherry) and sex:

I'll be using the cherries to illustrate the blood drawn from the experience of getting your hymen broken as well as to convey other sexual terms such as orgasms, kinks to inflict pain and restraint such as biting and bondage through its stem's knot, etc. 

INCLUDE PIC OF HYMEN AND CHERRY PRIMARY RESEARCH OF CHERRY? CHERRY STUDY?

Book: Boyd Webb, VIII Indian Triennale

Webb's work can be affiliated with the female body in a celebratory way as he always portrays it as very sentimental and delicate manner.

In this piece, he uses the folded duvet to portray the women's lower body and her vagina, in between the folded legs, represented by the fresh pink-patterned flowers. Personally, I find that the background used in this piece resembles the flowers' print which reinforces the power and divinity of the female body; It also reminds me of stretch marks and tree roots which has an interesting link between women, purity, and nature. 

On my project, I'd like to explore the female body in detail but not in an obvious way, I found that Webb does this in a very sophisticated way.

Photograph: Untitled, 1992

Sarah Lucas, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 2000

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lucas-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-t07820

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sarah Lucas', there are various sexual connotations available for the viewer, for example,  vaginal penetration is clearly seen through the perforation of the pink mattress with the fluorescent tube, a women's chest can also be seen by the two-round lightbulbs hanging on the hanger and lower, the vagina is represented by the dimmed light bulb, centred in the bucket. I was intrigued by this section of the piece as it led me to think about the vagina as an area of the body that is invigorating, private yet when in comforting presence can show how powerful it really is.

I believe that this piece reflects my first sexual experience with Ella really well, as it conveys the connection and passion we have, effectively. In response to this piece, I'll be draping on the body and in my surroundings using bedsheets and other items that I find represent our relationship well. I'm hoping that will spark ideas to concentrate my project on how I can make sexual connotations that aren't as obvious as cliché.

I find this piece extremely comforting and sensual through the use of the white cables laid across the floor and use of light bulbs which makes me think of energy travelling from one body to another; I also envision the cables to be the clothes that are scattered across the floor as a journey of the experience itself.