Blog 4- Motif Development

 

Motifs are everywhere, where it be the logo of your favourite brand or the love you feel for your family. Motifs are essentially recurring ideas. They are not only limited to emotions such as betrayal or heartache; but can also be shapes, positions or sequences in an artistic piece.

As a group, we decided to use ‘repetition’ to guide our process of creating a motif. Repetition to me in this context symbolises the constant struggle of living in a world that is going too fast without a way to escape. By repeating our original sequence, we are showing that this is a daily battle and constant cycle that our character is slowly starting to escape from. Each time the sequence is completed, it is developed further to show that there is hope, that we are making progress, that we are moving forward.

Throughout our sequence, we are discovering ourselves again for the first time. At this point in the piece, we have realised the need to slow down. We create specific contact with ourselves and use specific eye-lines to show this discovery. Everything is now new.

What else is new? Not using a mirror!

Ohan Naharin doesn’t believe in mirrors and so we have adopted his method of creating for how it feels instead of how it looks which has been an interesting task to undertake.

 

Learning about motifs in creative works has helped us as a group become more intentional with the movements we are creating and choosing. I have learnt that, specifically more neoclassical or contemporary work, it is all about the intention behind the movement. The WHY.

 

Check out a snippet of our creative process here :)

https://youtu.be/wwQ7QvA4aX4?si=W2XuO99mSIy7VyNK

Resources:

Delf,L, Williams,M.2023.What is a Motif?//Oregan State Guide to Literary Terms.Oregan State University. Avaliable at: https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-motif[Accessed 17 October 2023]

 

Lawrenz,L.2022. What is Repetition Compulsion?.Psych Central. Avaliable at: https://psychcentral.com/blog/repetition-compulsion-why-do-we-repeat-the-past[Accessed 17 October 2023]