Steve Coogan as Steve Coogan

The persona that is Steve Coogan, that he has created and exudes as a celebrity figure, includes and demonstrates a sense of self-mockery.

In the recent BBC2 comedy The Trip Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon played 'loose versions' of themselves, improvising their dialogue, to a simple plot structure of a trip reviewing restaurants in North England. Coogan, or rather Coogan's character of Coogan, was in a continual state of petty competition with Brydon's (an excellent example can be seen below). They duelled mostly over voice impersonations, but also athletic ability, vocal range, even comedic prowess. Coogan remained harshly and childishly critical of Brydon's performances, always seeking to prove himself as the more talented, the more knowledgeable, and the funnier. In these attempts he ultimately fails. Brydon trumps unwillingly - content with his career, family, and achievements. Coogan struggles on - frustrated with his self-implied shortcomings: in one scene, he whines to his agent about wanting to star in 'good films'; in another he attempts to mimic Brydon's popular 'small man in a box' in front of the mirror; in others we see evidence of his problematic family and love life. All of which culminates in the final scenes of the series, where Brydon returns to his wife and child in a warm home, whilst Coogan finds himself alone in a stylish and cold London flat. 

Steve Coogan (left) and Rob Brydon in The Trip

In his performance, Steve Coogan is ridiculing his own desire to be revered. He is drawing attention to this complex that he has (or at least that his celebrity self has) and then self-critiquing it with mockery. Hence this version of Steve Coogan who toils for fame and high regard only to be revealed as a fool and a failure. However, it's not a definite depression, but more of a tragic comedy, Coogan and Brydon do enjoy each other's company, and the show is very funny.

The significance for me, lies in Coogan's conscious decision to face, challenge, and excoriate an issue of his own public (and to many degrees, private) personality, and his use of humour in exposing it. This is why the actor Steve Coogan's portrayal of the character of Steve Coogan, is relevant to my research.


'This is how Michael Caine speaks', The Trip BBC2

Structure Planning

Today I presented the research to date to the group and the Wise Ones. In preparation for this I drew up an initial plan of the structure of my presentation, based on what I have discovered so far and the specific direction I want the talk to take.

Title: Self-portrait, Self-mockery, and the Mirror

Intro: Seeking to explain Self-mockery in photography and video (and visual art/culture).

1.     The curiosity and intrigue of the mirror/reflection. Our interest in viewing our own image.

2.     The consciousness of presentation - the desire to be revered, to give best impression.

3.     Awareness of an image's ability to immortalise character.

4.     The will to make/possess/show images which display our desired qualities - an explanation of vanity?

5.     Then the response to mock ourselves, our narcissism, vanity, and self-centredness.

6.     However, self-mockery being humour, gives us a position of performing to be funny, to make others laugh, to be liked, all about us(me) again..

Relevant artists: 

·        Boris Mikhailov – Self-portraits

·        Bjorn Veno – Mann 

·        Steve Coogan – The Trip

Other Areas (these are things I plan to mention but not discuss, and also for questions afterwards):

–      Masquerade, dressing up, performing as another: Cindy Sherman, Yasumasa Morimura

–      Femininity, concerning the appropriated images of women: Sarah Lucas     

Bjorn Veno - from Mann

Boris Mikhailov - Look at me I look at water

Initial Plans for Final Project

Yesterday was the first presentation of our intial ideas for the final major project. The content of which will be shaping itself into a proposal in the near future. My project, at its earliest stage, began with the Nude Naked task from the 'picturing the body' module. You can follow the link for the rationale behind that work, but essentially my wish to present my own body in a stark and unflattering manner as a counter to my pride in it, illuminates a key theme which continues into this present project. And that is: an awareness of the problem and weakness of vanity, and yet also a susceptability to it; and following that is (or may be) a response to mock our vanity. That module culminated in the Body (own) piece. But as well as this mockery of pride in physical appearance, there also grew a more personal jest, at my desire to be revered, to be funny, liked, a regarded performer - as evidenced in Self Videos.

The current project then, concerns issues of: self-portraiture; self-mockery and narcissism - the relationship of the two; performance and presentation; the intrigue of the mirror.

At present I'm struggling to define it in words clearer than those, however I am clear on the following pieces that I wish to produce, and in analysing these it may be clearer what it is which underlies my practice.

1. A set of self-portraits using a two-way mirror, so I look at and interact with my reflection rather than a lens, but line up the eyesight to give immpression of a straight portrait, aiming for high clarity and minimum background detail (similar lighting and composition to Robbie Cooper's 'Immersion') reenact the extreme facial performances as done to the bathroom mirror - investigate: my altering of presentation; relationship between inner (thought) and outer (visible) selves; attempting humour; challenging attractive appearance.
2. A similar process using others - where I photograph them (whilst they look at their reflection) at an unknown moment, I will wait and look for some reveal in their character, and then they photograph themselves, with cable release or other - to see how they respond given the option to present their desired look, how it contrasts with the portrait taken by another.
3. As a continuation of Self videos - a regularly updated diary of webcam performances - showcasing a general indulgence of trivial aspects of my personality, experiences, thoughts etc, investigating further the desire to be celebrity/revered/known through attempted humour. 
4. A self-portrait of pixels (can't use paint) - using a mirror, and Adobe Photoshop, various colours, various brush sizes, several pieces - forming an overall progression, striving towards a realistic portrait (eventually looks like a photograph), inspired by the Johannes Gumpp painting of himself in the act of painting a self-portrait - investigating what image I will put upon myself, in what manner and with what adjustments will I reproduce my image?
5. I'm a ... (artist) - a series of videos in which I attempt to prove my creative multitalents (musician, actor, painter, etc.), but which ultimately highlight myself as a failure and fool, wanting appreciation,   inspired in part by Bjorn Veno's promotional videos for pxsnatch.   

Still from Immersion by Robbie Cooper

Johannes Gumpp

Bjorn veno's videos for PXSnatch can be found here.

The feedback from this presentation was encouraging. One significant aspect higlighted, was the notion of a division of self between a public and a private, and how these two perspectives then relate to each other, and furthermore how that relationship is reflected in the work. Also illumated was the conflict between: a yearning to be noticed (likely arising from the public side), and a wariness of being watched or inspected (private).

Imitation of Me

Continuing in the vein of self-mockery and introspection of one's own image, comes the following piece. The first image in the sequence is a still from a video documentary, in which I eagerly present the item of discussion with passion, so that it and I may be taken seriously. And then pulling the old 'freeze somebody mid-speech trick' gives the wonderful image - revealing (or creating) the fool. The subsequent self-portraits are an imitation and a jest of that attempt to appear sincere.

Imitation of Me  (click to enlarge)

I'm steadily developing a continuing use of the 'PhotoBooth' application on Mac, which is essentially using a webcam to take pictures and make videos of yourself. Wonderful!

There's a history to the fascination of this activity. One of its early pioneers was Gary Brolsma with the now incredibly infamous 'Numa Numa Dance'. This has become one of the most viewed viral videos in the history of the web, it sparked a craze with web cam performances, (one of the most notable follow-ups being 'Two Chinese Boys'). More on this phenomenon later.

Imitation of Me (detail)

The Mirror Stage

Steven Z. Levine is the author of Lacan Reframed, which aims to provide a guide for the art student, to the psychoanalytical theories of Jacques Lacan. In my case, this is Lacan's developmental concept 'The Mirror Stage'.

The following are relevant (quotations and paraphrases):

• A summary of the story of beautiful Narcissus – spots his reflection in the forest pool, the impossible love of is own reflected image, the unbridgeable split between desiring object and desired object, resolved by his death and metamorphosis into the flower - at least that's the mythological resolution. 
• "I is another." (Arthur Rimbaud) The beautiful image of self exists outside of oneself, but we recognise it – 'narcissistic identification'.
• Lacan's contribution to the formation of the Ego (of Freudian theory): "Based on the alien but alluring images glimpsed in the mirror in childhood, the Ego was crystallised in response to the admiring behaviour of the Mother" (Levine) 'The Mirror of Mother and Child' 
• Which leads to: 'A lifelong conflict, started at childhood, between the Ego and alter Ego – Self and other – due to recognising the alter Ego in the eyes of the mother.' And hence: 'A stand off between 'the me I see myself as being' and 'the me I want to be and can never be.'
• "In his insistence on the dangerous duel of self and other, .. Lacan was extending Freud's formulations on the self-loving and self-loathing narcissism of the Ego"  

There were many more complex psychological explanations and suggestions of Lacan, all of which centre around a conflict between the self and other, and which relate back to the mirror stage. However seeing that I don't need to progress into those with any depth, I can take away the inference that the Mirror Stage plays a crucial developmental part in the notion of self, even if that notion is constantly fragmented and ill-defined.

Professional Photograhic Practice

Today marked the beginning of the above module (hereby tagged as 'Photographic Practice'). The largest of the course, it is practical based, and because the project is self-defined, one in which we have the chance to shape and solidify our individual practice. This work will take us from January to June and will culminate in our final year show, in other words - what we have been leading up to for the past two and a half years, and our biggest challenge yet.

The project runs alongside the research module 'Working with Photography in Context', and the two feed from each other. Hence, for this practical work, I will continue with my interest in self-portraiture and the mirror, broadening it from the specified 'self-mockery' topic of the research work, but still focussing on the 'response to the self' - ideas of self-indulgence, of the use and understanding of performance, of the relationship between selves through a mirror and photographs.

The next stage will be to develop these ideas, through tutorials and research, into a clearly defined and professionally presented proposal. This proposal will make up a substantial weight of the overall mark, the reason being that a skill and appreciation of writing project proposals, can be a great asset in a future professional context, particularly in the case of applying for grants (a substantial source of income for many practitioners). Onwards.

'The Walk' Short Film

The people depicted here are my family. The story takes place from Summer to Winter. This is a short film I made using stills of their activity with each other, and with the outdoors. The most enlightening and exciting element of producing this was working in collaboration with the composer Brendan Beales. The photographs - their timing and running order - were edited to silence, I then provided Brendan with a total running time, as well as times for various cues and I gave direction for the mood, tempo, and tonality of the music. He did not know which images he was writing for until the piece was completed, this was to avoid 'mickey mousing' the music. Essentially, this production has highlighted for me the pleasure and ability I have, working in collaboration with others towards a larger creative goal. The film and television industry calls all the louder.

'Here's Looking at You'

'Here's Looking at You' is the title of the fourth chapter of Richard Brilliant's book Portraiture, and in that chapter he discusses self-portraiture across all mediums of art. So although not overtly relevant to my specific angle of research, it is still a very useful core text for this field.

There are numerous points of note throughout the chapter, below are those which stood out as greatly significant to me:

• Brilliant mentions the mirrors input to self-portraiture - 'The fallacy of the reflection, our own internal images of self are misleading compared to how other see us. Seeing your reflection unexpectedly and being surprised by the image is testimony to the varying imagined perspectives you hold of your appearance/presentation. 
• He also cites philosopher David Hume's musings on the notion of 'self': "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call 'myself', I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch 'myself' at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception ... If anyone , upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of  'himself', I must confess that I can reason no longer with him."
• Parmigianino's Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Where the viewer is privy to the moment of an artist meeting his own reflection. 'Parmigianino represents himself as a subject experiencing his own (re)presentation in a mirror.'
• "With greater or lesser degrees of success, self portraiture always makes a concentrated autobiographical statement - the manifesto of an artists introspection" (Brilliant)
• Norman Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait. ".. it is so explicitly self-referential and demonstrates so well the distortions in the mirror reflection. .. one could hardly imagine a more explicit statement of the 'I' in the work, and of the artists engagement with the concept of 'I-ness'." (Brilliant)
• Brilliant also mentions something that I would term as 'the vulnerability of sharing introspection' which is a threat to all self-portraying artists: "The natural impulse to protect one's personal privacy from others conflicts with that artists equally natural desire to create an autobiographical image that, being a separate entity, lives outside of himself and may escape his control."

Parmigianino - Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Norman Rockwell - Triple Self-Portrait

Update: Although initially conducted for my research module, I could conclude that this reading will in fact have a more direct use to the major practical project which is to commence soon. The works of Rockwell, Parmigianino, Lovis Corinth, Artemisia Gentileschi and others mentioned in the chapter (and furthermore Brilliant's commentary on them) have sparked lots of ideas for self-portraiture work, particularly in relation to the mirror/reflection - see here.