Arts University Bournemouth
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Autoethnography and postmemory: A methodology for the use of film forms as research
Get PDFPractice as Research (PaR), and Practice-led Research, as studied by Hazel Smith, Roger T. Dean, and Graeme Sullivan, are increasingly being implemented in a wide range of disciplines. In this article, I will report on the methodological trajectory of my creative practice, an autoethnographic work that used film forms as research. The process progressed on three levels of investigation: the narrative, the epistemological, and the ontological. It developed from my personal experience and research in the archive, as a network of references supporting and responding to the needs of producing films through the exploration of prior film methodologies, and elaborating novel forms of mediation of history, memory, and postmemor
Breaking down, going feral: the movements of colour
No full textThis article is a contribution to the section on colour photography that I guest-edited for PhotoResearcher 31 (also including articles by Dr Laure Blanc-Benon and Dr Caroline Fuchs).
The text discusses the intrinsic elusiveness of colour photography vis-à-vis the complex historical baggage of its synthetic nature and in respect of Rainbow’s Gravity (Mareike Bernien and Kerstin Schroedinger, 2014) and A 240 Seconds Analysis of Failure and Hopefulness (with Coke, Vinegar and other Tear Gas Remedies) (Basim Magdy, 2012)
The crafty animator : Handmade, craft-based animation and cultural value
No full textThis collection is a study of the value of craft as it can be understood within the study and practice of animation. The book reconsiders the position of craft, which is often understood as inferior to ‘art’, with a particular focus on questions of labour in animation production and gendered practices. The notion of craft has been widely investigated in a number of areas including art, design and textiles, but despite the fact that a wide range of animators use craft-based techniques, the value of craft has not been interrogated in this context until now. Seeking to address such a gap in the literature, this collection considers the concept of craft through a range of varying case studies. Chapters include studies on experimental animation, computer animation, trauma and memory, children’s animation and silhouette animation among others. The Crafty Animator also goes some way to exploring the relationship craft has with the digital in the context of animation production. Through these varied discussions, this book problematizes simplistic notions about the value of certain methods and techniques, working to create a dialogue between craft and animation
‘Re-membering the Past’; eye-witness and post-battle artistic accounts of the Falklands War
Get PDFThe war to recover the Falkland Islands from invasion in 1982 has been described as the last eruption of colonial warfare to be fought by the British Empire. The short, scrappy conflict was conducted under draconian restrictions that controlled the transmission of images, texts and first-hand frontline narratives. Despite an imaginative record of commissioning war art in the 20th century, the British government, through its Artistic Records Committee, chose to send a single artist to accompany troops in the latter part of the war. Her background as a nationally recognised illustrator prepared her to depict the scenery of war, its idiosyncrasies and informal incidents. Her portfolio of line drawings reinforced positive notions of the authority of the eye-witness. First-hand visual testimony effectively trumped all. Newspaper photographers and those working on syndication to agencies produced an equally spontaneous body of raw material. This paper explores the front-line work produced at the time and the body of creative material that later emerged, as artists, art therapists and other visual commentators started to reflect, critique and celebrate the British Empire’s ‘last colonial war’
Walking Between Worlds: In defence of experiential research
Get PDFThis article explores the benefits and challenges of experiential research for a PhD novel in the contemporary fantasy genre and how this has significant qualitative impacts upon the “early drafting” stage of the creative process (Neale 2018). Drawing upon the extensive field research undertaken in the Scottish Borders, with its rich palimpsest of oral tradition, traumatic historicity, and touristic gilding, the article shows how this informed the emergent multimodal approach, resulting in a transmedia novel – one that ‘performs’ the liminality experienced according to a reader-response model. The Scottish Border ballad of ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ (Roud 219: Child 37) is used as a map – both in the field trips to associated locations, and in the creative-critical process itself. Within the ritualised landscape of the ballad three roads offer three ontological choices for not only the protagonist, but also the researcher-writer. Layered over this is Walter Benjamin’s three-step model of the musical, the architectonic, and the textile. How does one negotiate the various tensions of different disciplines? How does one avoid displacement activity in a protracted research project that embraces different modes of enquiry? When and how does one ‘return’ from this crossed threshold? And in what form can one’s findings withstand critical scrutiny, while retaining faith with the initial vision, the demands of the narrative, and the expectations of the reader
Material memories in storage: The aftermath of site-specific, collectively made textiles
Get PDFSite-specific, collectively made textiles are particularly effective producers of histories that entwine place and people. More than simply a means to an end, the process of making together foregrounds the potential of textiles to transform and be transformed beyond their materiality. The material making process mirrors another kind of making process: that of a certain kind of social integration or a sense of being and belonging somewhere, however temporary and changeable these may be. Once completed, however, these material artifacts can provoke difficult questions concerning the responsibility for their storage and display, succumbing to a fate in semi-permanent storage and eventually relinquishing their material presence to a form of visual or textual representation. Although this is not the fate of all collectively made textile works, given the widespread practice of collective textile-making, it is inevitably the fate of some. Using the example of a collectively made hooked rug project that I coordinated and participated in 15 years ago, I will explore in this article the transformed status of collectively made textile artifacts through memories of making in order to open up new understandings of these types of site-specific collective textile- making projects as a different kind of creative practice: as a narrative performance of experiences of being together
Style, Structure and Allusion in Lucifer Rising
Get PDFLucifer Rising can be understood as the culmination of Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle. The power of this film, in part, rests on the way in which Anger alludes to a range of esoteric myths and Gods, without contextualising them in the way a more traditional film would do. This article sets out to reveal the various allusions, and in turn elucidate Anger’s unique aproach to filmmaking
Together, alone? Performance, protest and digital proximities in India’s Blank Noise feminist campaign
Get PDFThis article examines the performative digital practices of India’s feminist campaign group Blank Noise, with a focus on their 2016 project #WalkAlone. The event sought to explore and challenge embodied notions of female safety and visibility in night-time urban public spaces, by inviting women to walk alone in a place of their choosing between 9pm and midnight. In doing so, Blank Noise called on participants to ‘walk alone, together’, utilising digital documentation tools and media platforms to network these dispersed embodied acts. Drawing on my participation in #WalkAlone from the remote position of the UK alongside online documentation of the project, I examine how these tools established ‘digital proximities’ between participants, transforming our solitary acts into collective embodied action. I argue that Blank Noise’s project extends Butler’s notion of ‘plural performativity’ (2015) into a digital public sphere, by constructing a mode of embodied assembly within media spaces. Here, digital proximities between dispersed participants forged a concerted enactment from the private and personal actions of individual women, walking on the stage of the nocturnal city
Black-mirror architecture: Para-historical musing on the architectural peculiar.
No full textThis chapter explores two manifestations of the black-mirror in architecture. The first of these consists of a shallow pool at the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969); the second takes the form of a ceiling at Villa Cavrois (1932) in Croix (near Lille), designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens (1886-1945). The chapter claims that the architectural black mirror opens up a realm, at once metaphorical and material, that can be understood beyond the binary mass/void distinction as standing in a negative relation to space
Performance in print: Channeling Tōmatsu Shōmei’s NO.541
No full textAt 1 p.m. on 6 February 1971, eight “actors,” a reporter, and a cameraman entered a space at an undisclosed location with the intention of spending 24 hours together. They did not belong to a single artistic group and some of them had never met before. Tōmatsu Shōmei’s photographic record of this event appeared in the spring 1971 issue of the magazine Kikan shashin eizō accompanied by sections from a transcript of the tape recording. The images and the text – jointly titled NO.541 – offer fragmented glimpses into the situations and conversations unfolding in the room and also function with and against each other, as in a dialogue.
The jointly written text continues this dialogue in the writing up of major themes contextualizing the performing and recording of this work: the space, the magazine page, and the body. We imagine ourselves in NO.541 and enact this intermingling of space-times by reproducing not only some of Tōmatsu’s photographs but also parts of the transcript in translation. Joining the conversation, we adopt some of the main strategies of the image-text, such as fragmentation, improvisation, and refusal of any singularity. Woman C and Man G take on the role of mediums, channeling, for instance, a possible future re-enactment instead of producing a conclusive account of the event