Research

 Kitchen stories film  

Kitchen Stories, 2003  

A Norwegian Comedy/Drama film set in the 1950s.  A Swedish research team plan to reimagine the kitchen and its contents. After investigating the modern house-wife's movements through the family kitchen when preparing meals they found the kitchen unit and appliances were usually set out in a way that wasn't efficient for the user, it was said in the film that when the average housewife was in the kitchen and preparing meals she would walk the same number of miles as the distance between Stockholm and Congo, after conducting this research they set there aim on observing bachelors and their kitchen habits. A team of Swedish researchers go to a small town in Norway to conduct their research on single male, the film focuses down on the observations of one cantankerous old man and the growing relationship between the researcher and subject. Before the study all researchers were told not to have any direct interactions with the subject, despite the close proximity of the literal observers chair in the subjects home, Set in the 1950s the film explores post war themes to do with the relationship between Sweden and Norway and the idea of cultural guilt from by-standing. The film itself was a delightful watch, many light humorous scenes but also holding a deeper message of human nature and analysing objectivity. I really enjoyed the storyline to this film but when watching it with my own project in mind I was more focused on the research and documentation of the movement and use of the kitchen. Folke (the observer) sat in a tall chair observing and documenting Isaks (the subject) movements throughout the kitchen by drawing his movements in lines on a paper sketch of the kitchen. I believe my own work to be kind of similar to this at the moment, from the beginning I've played the role of Folke, gathering the images of peoples tables and putting them up for observation, seeing what we can take away and learn from them about the owner. During my more recent tasks and documentation like the video and 25 images my role in the work has switched, I became Isak and the camera became Folke, putting myself up for observation. I enjoyed this film, I believe it to be highly relevant to my own work and found it to be inciteful in viewing my own actions within this project.