Graduate Symposium: Theorising Otherness, 23 April 2012

The AVPhD Group participated in the Goldsmiths Graduate Symposium, 2012


AVPhD Group
Chair: Tony Dowmunt

RHB 139
3.30pm- 4.3opm

Tom Tlalim
What is that, being a border? Speculating sonic space, in-between existence
and affiliation

Heidi Hasbrouck
“Would you like any more coffee or just the check?”  The Political Economy
of the American Waitress as Icon

RHB 138
4.30pm- 6.30pm
Sabine El-Chaama
Picturing live war: frame, language, and technology

Whitehead Building Foyer
6.30pm- 7.30pm
Christian Nyampeta
Musical performance

Practice Theory Schism? A group discussion

A discussion on the relationship of art and theory in our work. 

The discussion was led by Tom Tlalim who gave a short introduction of the texts, and screened his film 'Being a Border | 5.11.75'.
 
'Being a Border | 5.11.75' uses a scene from a film by Tlalim's father (Asher Tlalim) titled 'Jerusalem 22.4.75'. In the original work, his father and mother are filmed on set, just days before his birth, futilely trying to reach some form of communication, while his father is the director and his mother acting as a war widow. Tom Tlalim employs digital manipulations on the images and sound in order to undo some of the the signifying content of the family archive. He uses methods such as removing spoken voices and leaving only translation, erasing and cutting up the image, deleting the parents' silhouettes, as well as collapsing and juxtaposing materials from different points in the film, so that they tell the story about the conflict in their relationship, which becomes a model for negotiation of practice and theory.

Reading material were:
- 'Art and Philosophy' (1st chapter in Badiou's Handbook of Inaesthetics)
http://tinyurl.com/dxeehor
- 'A Whited Sepulchre: Autobiographical film/video as practise/research' by Tony Dowmunt
http://eprints.gold.ac.uk/2129/
- 'The 3rd Mind' by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin
http://tinyurl.com/bug2ntu

Guiding questions:
- What is the relationship between practice and theory in your own PhD work?
- Do you write about your art practice, or rather is your practice is driven or motivated by the writing?
- Or, do you separate the theoretical part from the practice component?
- Or how do you see the dialogue between the practise and theory in your PhD. "

* This is a recording of the discussion part only. unfortunately, the introduction file was corrupted.
** The texts can be obtained online, from the authors or from library resources, not attaching for copyright reasons.
*** This session took place on the 9th of November.
**** The next meeting will be on the 7th of December.