Home-Maker 2006 - Jeanie Finlay

An Interview with Jeanie Finlay - Jess Lacetti (from Furtherfield)

Jeanie Finlay’s Home-Maker begins with the questions “what makes a house a home, and how does this change if you can’t leave?” Entering the domestic spaces of seven people living in Tokyo or Derbyshire, Finlay centres in on the household as a way of uncovering individual interaction with public and private selves. Telling personal stories with the aid of house-hold objects, fragments of narrative, and new media technologies is a new way of thinking about portraiture. The successful blending of new media with Finlay’s key questions makes each reader feel as though she or he is a guest, sitting down for a cup of tea, immersed the detail of each room and voice.

Jess: Why concentrate on the home?

Jeanie: With Home-Maker I always thought that “the home” was a starting point for wider discussion, it’s a tool for talking about other things. For example if I went into each home and I asked the participants to “tell me all about their life” I would probably draw a full stop. As a stranger entering a space I think people found it easier to talk to me about their taste in ornaments and the possessions they surround themselves with. The elderly people I met were surrounded by a lifetime’s worth of accumulated stuff. Each item usually was a memento of a past experience or person.

Jess: I'm looking at the section on “Aiko-San - Home for 26 years” and am thinking of how the images seem to tell a slightly different story from the textual narrative. Whereas the written narrative seems more or less linear, documenting her home, and ending with her fear of the move to the nursing home, the images seem to zoom in and out of the story. Do you use image and text to oppose each other or perhaps to elucidate each other...or does it depend on the project/theme?

Jeanie: I think that every element in the film can and should help to tell the story, so sometimes I use images to reinforce the dialogue, sometimes to contradict it or sometimes to provide additional information that isn’t present in the interview. It also leaves some space for an audience to make their own connections between what I’m showing you and what I’m telling you. It does also depend on what I want to say!

Jess: I am especially interested in the images of Aiko-San; the one portrait-type shot and then a zoomed in image of her hands and her eyes. Does this imply an importance on the visual and tactile senses?

Jeanie: In all of the films I was trying to contribute to a 360 degree portrait of each person. The panoramic image and interface don’t allow you to see the whole room at any one time and I kept the idea of ‘reveal’ in my head the whole time I was making the work. The panorama reveals the room, the interviews reveal more and the cutaway images show in close up additional details about their lives. In all my work I try and create a sense of intimacy and one way of conveying this is to put the camera closer. That is why the objects in the room are filmed in close up, as if they were an extension of the person. Each person was also filmed as if they were an object in the room. I put the camera so close to Aiko-San as I wanted the opportunity to look at her in more detail, and hopefully reveal more. In my new film Teenland I use a macro lens and jib so that I can film objects and subjects in extreme close up. I also feel this approach helps me to tell a small story that make up a whole – home can be seen as a microcosm of living, tiny stories can give an impression of a whole life, close up details can contribute to the bigger picture.

Jess: Most of the images in this section seem to be cropped, making me feel like I don't have a full perspective of the scene, is this intentional to illustrate the proximity of Aiko-San's space?

Jeanie: I think that I used these as I wanted to look more closely. Aiko-San’s hands made me think of all the hard work she had done in her life, of her age and how they were less reliable than they were 20 years ago. Again with her eyes, partly it was to show more of Aiko -San, how her age was shown in her face, partly as I was thinking about all that she had seen. The cropping is all to do with the framing and putting the camera closer, no material was cropped in the edit, it is shown as filmed. I was very aware when I was filming that I was in an extremely small space and it was a way of isolating details to look at.

Jess: You say you were interested in creating a 360 degree portrait of someone...is this something specifically achievable with new media resources?
I'm also drawn to your use of the word "portrait." I suppose I'm thinking of a two dimensional representation of someone (as in a painting) so does new media give something other than a 2-Dness?

Jeanie: A painting that I visited just prior to developing Home-maker was the Ambassadors by Holbein. As a child I had always loved the work as it initially appears to be a traditional painting, then on closer inspection additional narratives – personal and political are slowly uncovered. When developing the project I kept thinking back to the painting, I wanted to create a high quality, intriguing panoramic image (the images are made up of 18 photographs seamlessly stitched together which create an odd ‘photograph’. When viewed as a flat everything is in focus and I sneak into some of the images as a reflection) but also offer an opportunity for the viewer to trigger and uncover hidden narratives linked to objects in the room, the stories that are maybe bubbling under the surface of the image. I guess in that way, the ability to add additional narratives and details is a characteristic of using new media in this way but I would suggest that a painting or photograph CAN be a full portrait of a person – the audience is just offered less information to work with. I particularly like the photographs of Rineke Dijkstra of teenagers on the coastline, although I know very little about the individuals in the shots I am drawn to a sense of personality, vulnerability, character. I hope in Home-Maker the panoramic images stand up on their own as portraits and that the additional video offers a different view.

Jess: In terms of post-modern subjectivity, (always becoming identities), is it possible to create a 360 degree portrait of someone, or is it that as we navigate through each person's room/life we are given one object at a time which we (as readers) accumulate into a whole?

Jeanie: I’m not sure whether it is possible, my approach was always to concentrate on the smaller details and in doing so the larger picture, becomes clearer. It was always my aim to create an impression of character rather than tell any large story.

Jess: You've said that each of the seven people you were with had objects which represented memories for them. Is Home-maker, existing in cyberspace, a testament to the ethereal nature of memories?

Jeanie: Since I completed filming Home-Maker in 2003 four of the seven Home-makers have died. I have kept in touch with Roy, Monji-san and Emi-san and they contributed to the Home-Maker publication, describing how their rooms and their lives had changed since I last met them. Since Aiko-san, Florrie, Betty and Lilian have died it’s made me feel quite differently about the work – I am so used to their voices and image in making and editing the work and touring the installation to 4 venues, and I did find it very difficult to comprehend that they had died as in the work they are alive and well.

One of the reasons people gave for taking part was to “leave a testimony, to tell their story.” I was always aware that each portrait was very much a capturing of a moment in time. Aiko-san left her home of 26 years 2 days after I filmed her so that she could move into an old people’s home. When she came to the exhibition in Tokyo she was very moved to see her home projected in the installation as it now only existed in boxes and memories.

With the House Clearance event at the end of the tour (Heaton Used furniture came in and conducted a house clearance at Hatton Gallery in the same way they would if someone had died) I wanted the work to ‘live on’ on the web. I was surprisingly upset to say goodbye to the set and props as it felt much more like I had created a home for the work, and now with the dismantling it was just ‘stuff’ again.

Jeanie Finlay
Jeanie makes interactive artworks which incorporate digital media and documentary. She often works in collaboration with members of the public, gathering opinions and stories through interviews and online-questionnaires. Often exploring emotive themes, her recent work has examined such subjects as beauty, the home and love - with passionate and personal results.
Over three years, Jeanie photographed and filmed in the living rooms of housebound older people in Derbyshire and Tokyo to make Home-Maker. Through developing close relationships with her subjects, she created a series of highly personal and intimate portraits of a range of people and the places they call home.

Her latest project is a 60 min documentary for BBC4. Teenland which takes the audience behind the closed bedroom door of four British teenagers, revealing the small details that make up the wider narratives of their lives, infiltrating and exploring their spaces to find the stories hidden within.

Jeanie has made and presented artworks at key national gallery venues including Tate Britain, Hatton Gallery, Aberdeen Art gallery, Lakeside Arts and Angel Row Gallery as well as establishing a strong presence on the Internet. She has shown and made work in 3 different continents - including shows and screenings in Tokyo, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Amsterdam, Berlin and Stuttgart.

To find out more about Jeanie's work please visit: www.ruby-online.co.uk or contact jeanie “at” ruby-online.co.uk
Reviewer: Jess Laccetti