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Tales from the Crypt: Tracing the Origins of the Myth Surrounding Eleonora of Toledo’s Burial Dress
Full text linkThe body of Eleonora of Toledo, Duchess of Florence, was exhumed in 1857. Over a century later, after extensive restoration work, her burial dress was first displayed to the public. Prior to its restoration, a widespread myth emerged claiming the burial gown was the same dress as the one the Duchess is depicted wearing in Bronzino’s 1545 state portrait, which hangs on the walls of the Uffizi Gallery. Although this misconception has long been dispelled — the two dresses are not similar — this story is nevertheless often repeated and has continued to influence the ongoing scholarship surrounding both dresses. This article traces the origins of this misidentification, arguing that it stemmed from a frequently cited secondary source. Based on this, it also examines how research practices, assumptions and referencing methods contributed to the myth’s endurance. In turn, the existence of this myth is shown to demonstrate the ongoing importance of dress history in cross-disciplinary research
Essay Film and Narrative Techniques Screen-writing Non-fiction
No full textBringing together filmmakers and scholars, this volume unpacks the evolving language of screenwriting in documentary and experimental cinema.
Uniting filmmakers and practice-led researchers, Essay Film and Narrative Techniques: Screen-writing Non-fiction explores the evolving language of essay film through various methods of narration, including production diaries, self-critiques, interviews, and theoretical analyses. Including canonical works and unconventional approaches, this collection emphasizes how essay films blur the lines between personal expression and collective storytelling.
In this volume, renowned scholars and practitioners unpack the conceptual and contextual dimensions of screenwriting for essay film, considering its role as both a cinematic and research tool. Whether reflecting on the personal camera or hybrid creative methodologies, the essays provide invaluable insights into how essay films are written and realized.
With its interdisciplinary scope and innovative approach, this work is a beneficial resource for academics, filmmakers, and students of documentary and experimental cinema, offering a nuanced understanding of how screenwriting shapes nonfiction storytelling
Materializing Data: A Macramé-Inspired Framework for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Creative Participatory Research
Full text linkThis paper presents the development of a macramé-inspired framework for evaluating the effectiveness of creative participatory research (CPR), addressing gaps in conventional framework models that overlook the complex, multidimensional and experiential nature of these research approaches. The framework was designed to visualize and materialize the evolving nature of CPR, where participant engagement,
contextual factors, and the sometimes organic and unpredictable creative activities shape both the research process and its outcomes. To achieve this, we worked with a group of experienced researchers with expertise in participatory textile-making methods in a series of three online workshops. Through these
sessions, the research team explored the challenges of evaluating creative participatory approaches to research, critiqued existing evaluation framework models and developed potential alternatives before finalizing the proposed macramé-inspired framework prototype presented here. The resulting framework employs macramé components such cords, interconnecting knots, and anchor points metaphorically to highlight different aspects of creative participatory research processes including the research context, participant engagement levels, project scope and duration, key research activities and participant
interactions. In order to support robust evaluation of research effectiveness, we have devised question prompts to encourage shared reflection and discussion between researcher(s) and participants, rather than the one-sided assessment more usually offered by a set of fixed evaluation ‘criteria’, thereby shifting the focus from static metrics to embodied, experiential data. The prototype macramé framework presented here has the potential to be adapted to a diverse range of creative participatory projects beyond its origins in participatory textile-making. We anticipate it to be particularly useful for researchers and practitioners seeking evaluation models that highlight experiential knowledge, contextual nuance, and participant agency experienced ‘live’ in the unpredictable contexts of creative participatory research. Future research plans for this experimental prototype framework will include testing through case studies of real-life contextualized
research settings
Sensoaesthetics: Introducing alternative embodied material expressions in textile and fashion
Full text linkFashion is primarily a visual ontology consisting of definitions, theory, and methods that are based on visual language. The workshop Sensoaesthetics: Introducing alternative embodied material expressions in textile and fashion is a part of a three-year research project, Sonic Fashion (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2022-2024).
The project aims to expand the discourse of fashion by approaching it from a new and very different—sonic—perspective wherein sound
is considered not as a negative aspect, but as a potential source of a new theory and facilitator of the evolution of new methods.
The proposed workshop aims to (i) introduce participants to experimental inclusive aesthetics and (ii) expand the vocabularies of material definition - analyzing and defining them by using five experiential levels: functional, sensorial, interpretive, affective and performative. The workshop invites participants from a whole host
of design fields and people with a visual impairment to co-create together within sensitizing exercises and sonic design prototyping to develop more inclusive ways of designing, defining, and representing textile and fashion artifacts
A Feminist Counter-History of Latin American Documentary
No full textA Feminist Counter-History of Latin American Documentary provides a new lens through which to revisit the history of Latin American cinema and proposes three approximations to the study of women’s documentary produced between the early 1970s and the mid-1990s.
With a focus on documentaries with clear political intents, this book illustrates some of the thematic interests, authorial modes, production practices, formal devices, and aesthetic strategies employed by women filmmakers. Through analysis of the contexts, processes, and forms of a selection of films, the author shows how these non-fiction films shed light on the precarious conditions that characterised women’s greater entry into the workforce, on the circulation of feminist ideas, and on the inevitable questioning of identity that resulted from migration and displacement.
This volume will appeal to scholars and students interested in women’s and feminist cinema, documentary history, theory, and practice, and Latin American history and culture
Supporting transitions to special school: Co-constructing virtual tours to share important knowledge about school sites and practices
Full text linkTransitions between stages of schooling present well-known challenges for children with special educational needs and disabilities, including navigating new sites, people, practices, timetables and expectations. Site visits are often recommended for helping with transition, and yet such visits can be difficult to achieve for practical and logistical reasons. This study piloted the development of virtual tours that were co- created with two special schools to support the transitions of children with complex communication and learning needs. We were interested in what the co- creation process revealed about the practices and site features that schools felt were important to share with others to help them understand what to expect. We were also interested in the ways in which the schools enabled the voices of young people with complex needs to be included in the tours. Accordingly, we examine whose and what knowledge was shared in the creation of the tours, and how this knowledge may be used to support transitions. We conclude that virtual tours could be a helpful transition tool to support children and families' familiarisation with a new school site. The findings offer a preliminary framework for planning virtual tours that could be applied and evaluated in future research
Tracing the Archive of Franca Donda and the Venezuelan Film Collectives Cine Urgente/Urgent Cinema and Grupo Feminista Miércoles/Wednesday’s Feminist Group
Full text linkFranca Donda (Italy, 1933-2017) was an activist, filmmaker, and photographer who lived in Caracas for most part of the second half of the twentieth century. During these decades, she made several short films with the Venezuelan collectives Cine Urgente/Urgent Cinema (1968-1973) and Grupo Feminista Miércoles/Wednesday’s Feminist Group (1979-1988). Throughout her life, she also took thousands of photographs of women across Latin America. However, her work has received little scholarly attention, and her archive has not been properly preserved. This article demonstrates the importance of protecting the legacy of Donda, Cine Urgente, and Grupo Feminista Miércoles. To do so, it explores Donda’s multifaceted identity and outlines the production of the two collectives. It maps, locates, and assesses the conditions of some of the materials that could comprise their archive. And it reflects on issues of positionality and briefly describes the transmedia project that is emerging from this research
Museum virtual tours as sequences of gaps: The Red Lodge Museum
No full textMuseum virtual tours are interfaces of interaction with archival spaces situated at the heart of the debate around the (in)accessibility of archives. Focussing on the case of The Red Lodge Museum in Bristol, we argue that drawing attention to the ‘insignificant’ - the transitional and interstitial spaces of both the virtual and physical tours - bring opportunities for decolonising the representations of history. Drawing from the works of bell hooks, Jack Halberstam, and Sara Ahmed, this paper examines the successes, failures, and strange joys of moving from a virtual tour to a physical space and back again.
Genealogically and technologically, a virtual tour inherits the imperialistic and global capitalist undertones of panoramic painting and photography, but discursively presents a well-intended call for accessibility. In the Red Lodge Museum, where the history of the place presents almost entirely a sequence of its possessors, this opens room for questions: how can we make a museum experience continuous, not focussed on these possession-oriented moments in time? How can we capture continuity in the museum context, or alternatively - how can we bring the gaps to the forefront in representing history?
The abrupt cuts in the transitions between the hotspots of virtual tours illustrate the gaps in the representation of the place’s history, which are also reflected in the patchwork-like organisation of the physical museum. In our experience of visiting the Red Lodge Museum, both virtually and physically, we wonder, “What happens when 'nothing noteworthy' happens?”
Referring to Jussi Parikka and Trevor Paglen’s conceptualisations of surface in 3d spaces, Tim Barringer’s work on panoramic gaze, as well as Annet Dekker’s nuanced approach to the intertwinings of the digital and physical archives, the paper will suggest an artistic approach towards interpreting the gaps in the museum virtual tours
Chimeras in Couture: Hybridity and animality in Leonor Fini’s fashion illustrations for Elsa Schiaparelli
No full textElsa Schiaparelli was well known for her collaborations with avant-garde artists, particularly those associated with the surrealist movement, however previous research has rarely discussed her relationship with the artist Leonor Fini. Between 1937-1940, Fini produced several designs for Schiaparelli, comprising three fashion illustrations and the bottle for the couturier’s perfume. Focusing on these illustrations, this article examines how Fini’s artistic aesthetic, particularly her use of animal-human hybrids, complemented and amplified the surrealist elements in Schiaparelli’s designs at this time. Capitalizing on the increasing popularity of surrealist imagery in contemporary fashion magazine publication, Fini and Schiaparelli both used the image of the woman-animal hybrid to evoke a sense of unease in contemporary audiences in a way that reflected deeper cultural tensions. These illustrations were a site of exchange between the two women, with a lasting influence on the Schiaparelli brand and on Fini’s ongoing artistic practice
Erth Praze
No full textHow can we honour the Earth, while also acknowledging our own embodied situatedness upon it and complicity within its crisis, however lightly we strive to walk upon it? Bringing together ecologically-aware poems written primarily since moving to West Dorset, this collection strives to explore that challenge, drawing upon experiences while long-distance walking, wildswimming, wildcamping, cycling, travelling on trains across continental Europe, and spending time deeply embedded in nature. Both local and globally-minded and featuring poems inspired by the Jurassic Coast, Wessex Ridgeway, Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland, Vienna, and Turkey, Erth Praze offers a paean to Planet Earth, while also expressing the pain and hope of being alive in perilous times