Monday, January 23, 2012

My Five Obstructions

Underground Reflections

Underground Reflections

The picture above is the one chosen for me by my project partner from Flickr to do my "Five Obstructions" on. But let me back up a bit and explain....
Recently, I started (for the first time) a Flickr group based on the concept presented in the documentary "The Five Obstructions" by the controversial movie director Lars Von Trier.
In summary, Lars challenged his friend and mentor film maker, Jorgen Leth, who made Lars' favorite short film "The Perfect Human" (1967), to recreate that film five times, each time with a different obstruction (or obstacle) given by Von Trier. The results were really fascinating. I would recommend seeing this movie to anyone who is interested in the creative process even if you are not into documentaries or reading subtitles (the movie is in Danish).
I always wanted to try to do this myself. Of course I needed a partner. I suggested the idea on a message board for my current 52 weeks group (which had a lot of my 2011/365 group members) and I found a few people who are willing to give it a shot so I started a new Flickr group.
The group is still new--only a few members are currently active. I hope it will grow in activity and membership. After pairing everybody who was interested in trying this, leaving myself out, I finally found a partner this weekend. She picked this photo for me to recreate 5 times with 5 different obstruction, coming one at a time.
At first, I thought it would be impossible. This photo was taken on the tube in London, and I live in Houston, a city that does not have any public transportation to speak of. I have never used the buses or the short metro rail that connects the medical center area to downtown, which is more than 30 miles away from where I live.
Then I thought to myself, this might be a much more interesting challenge. After all, the first obstruction made by Lars Von Trier made to Leth is to remake the movie in Cuba.
I already received my first obstruction. The results will be posted on this blog (in addition to Flickr) as they come out.

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