Diana Bechmann (She/her )
I am a multidisciplinary Illustrator with Fine Art background, My work explores different avenues, with environmental themes being at the core of my projects created during my time at GSA. Throughout my degree I have been supported By the John Hamilton Scholarship programme supported by Penguin Random House.
I enjoy experimenting with different mediums which include, film, animation, sculpture and ink drawings, I have also used my time during my masters to explore writing and developing narratives, which have helped me with the developments of my comics. My hope is to explore these themes in more depth in future, along with finding out new ways to discuss and engage people with environmental conversations through creative media.
ARRET
This was a collaborative project between myself and Christina Nadeau (Phd Researcher at the University of Oslo).
The project itself concluded with four conceptual books which I created in response to each article written by Christina Nadeau; exploring the sculptural elements as well as challenging the functionality of books, thus creating them into visual objects conveying a message.
The first article discusses our legacy and mark on our planet, and this prompted me to create my own paper, using natural and synthetic materials that explored those themes within the article. The pages were then bound together into a small booklet and buried.
The second article discusses our collective push for productivity, resulting in fast paced lives, quickly using up resources as well as resulting in our own burnout. For this I wanted to explore an interactive piece using heat sensitive inks, screen printed onto white acrylic sheets and placing them under hot lights during the filming process. The book was filmed over a period of time, as the inks slowly disappears.
The fourth article deals with water, looking into the rising sea temperatures and how coral has been reacting to this. The conceptual book made as a response to this, was created out of sheets of ice, that captured elements of the sea, such as micro plastics and debris. It also contained the neon and inky colours that the coral turns as it slowly dies away, before becoming completely bleached.
Our last and final article, dived into the predictions of our future skies discusses the change of our atmosphere and what our future could look like if things continue the way they are. For this book, the I wanted to focus on steam and water vapours that make up the clouds. Using this I filmed the steam interacting with text printed on clear acrylic and recorded the text as it emerges and quickly disappears.
I have provided a short trailer showing you sections of each video, which will be shown in full later this month at Salt-Space for our group show with my fellow peers on this Masters Course.
Goldfin
The construction of “Goldfin”, began with my interest in exploring an eco-dystopian world set in the future; a place that was bleak and with little or no hope for survival. Goldfin was very much a sterile and controlled environment, ran by robots who had been abandoned by humans who could no longer survive on the planet they destroyed. My reason for creating such a place lie in my observations of the current climate that we exist within; ecosystems and loss of nature or on the brink of extinction, along with human destruction of the environment we live in. My reflections on this, lie within the realm of humanity being complacent, but also, I wanted to pose a warning of the consequences of our current actions and how they could affect our future.
This project was an exploration of comics, challenging my technical drawing skills, as well as writing skills, and I enjoyed developing the narrative for this project which is why I decided to expand it further through two semesters.
My hope with this, is potentially develop and complete the second comic as well as get this published. I also wanted to explore discussions around future imagings and how creative and scientific minds can come together to think of ways of communicating climate change in numerous ways.
Complex Dessert Zine
During my time on this course, my peers and I wanted to find different ways of collaborating, Sally Mairs lead the Complex Dessert Zine, and this allowed me to explore different ways of working, as well as collaborating remotely during the pandemic.
For the first issue I wanted to be more playful with my entry, and for the second issue, I decided to explore more narrative works, including writing.
