2027 SPE Annual Conference: Community in Contrast
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print this pageOne Step Forward, Ten Steps Back: Learning Through Failure
Student Presentation
Friday, October 23 - 4:45PM to 4:55PM
WCAD 101
One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back: Learning Through Failure follows the development of my MFA candidacy project through a series of failed plans, technical mistakes, abandoned experiments, and unexpected changes. Instead of presenting the finished artwork as the result of a clear and confident process, I will discuss the moments when the project seemed least likely to succeed and how those moments ultimately shaped the work.
The project began as a series of large-scale tableau photographs made with actors in real locations. The scenes required coordinated schedules, location access, extensive lighting, props, and groups of performers. As these logistical challenges accumulated, it became clear that the project could not continue in its original form. Rather than abandoning the idea, I shifted toward constructing miniature environments and initially attempted to photograph the scale models with an 8 x 10 large-format camera. When that process failed to produce the clarity, depth of field, and visual control the scenes required, I changed course again, ultimately photographing the sets digitally and combining multiple exposures into stitched panoramic images.
The miniature approach offered greater control, but it created an entirely different set of problems. Buildings had to be designed and reconstructed, figures had to appear believable within the sets, and lighting had to imitate the scale and atmosphere of real environments. Issues involving perspective, focus, depth of field, exposure, film, digital capture, image stitching, mounting, and printing often meant that several days or weeks of work produced an image that could not be used.
Using finished photographs, failed images, test photographs, set-building documentation, and installation views, I will trace how the project changed through repeated attempts. The presentation will consider the emotional and practical difficulty of investing time in an idea that does not work, as well as the importance of recognizing when persistence becomes resistance to change.
Ultimately, the project taught me that not giving up does not always mean continuing with the same plan. Sometimes persistence means rebuilding, changing materials, questioning your assumptions, or allowing the work to become something different from what you originally imagined. The failures were not separate from the finished project. They became the process through which the work found its final form.
speaker
Colby Kohn
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