Film as an Archive for Still Images: strategies for activating colonial memory

Miranda Pennell, Friday 31st May

My research explores the possibilities of film as an archive for assembling and animating colonial still images.  I hope to show how the merging of still and moving images bears on the perception of time and of history, collapsing the disconnections and separations that enable the colonial past to be kept at a safe distance. My research proposes a formal means for inviting the colonial past to be felt in the postcolonial present. 

For this session I shall look at some of the ways the archive has been theorised.  My current practice re-organizes the visual archive of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (BP). One of my immediate aims is to unravel the colonial construction of ‘Iran’, and of the British subject,  and to engage alternative readings of the company’s historical narrative. What are the techniques of seeing and knowing the world produced by the archive?  By which methods can these be grasped? And what kinds of knowledge or experience might a moving counter-archive hope to produce?

I will present a number of sequences from my film-in-progress, each sequence constructed either from an album of official company images or from the personal album of an employee. Each sequence seems to elaborate a way of seeing and of knowing the world. My film will act as an accumulation of different orders of such image-series, which I rework and reframe with other elements, including sound and voice-over.

*** Next meeting will be Friday 12th July 

AVPhD Group member's participation in Sheffield Fringe 14-15 June

Sheffield Fringe programme announced including "Urban Observations: In and Around Istanbul" curated by November Paynter with films by Köken Ergun, Didem Pekün, Annika Eriksson, Halil Altındere, Esra Ersen.
Saturday, June 15 at 12.00

http://goo.gl/yGe4W

Also showing Amanda Mc Dowell & Jennifer Fearnley's  programme in tribute to Michael Grigsby. Living on the Edge (1987) reveals the impact of the Thatcher era on three families, counterbalancing the exuberant Sheffield Media Unit archive (1984-89).


Saturday, June 15 at 4.30 pm

FLAMIN artist Charlotte Ginsborg’s Over the Bones launches Sheffield Fringe 2013, as the opening salvo of a curatorial mix tape that positions artists’ film as musical, selected by Minou Norouzi.
Friday, June 14 at 6.00 pm

Full programme details: sheffieldfringe.com
Image: Didem Pekün, "Of Dice & Men," 2013

OBJECT DOCUMENTARY: EVERYTHING

Project Title: Object Documentary

Minou Norouzi, April 2013

Through literary adaptation of Everything, a short story by Ingeborg Bachmann, using only personal archive and through themed curatorial presentations at Sheffield Fringe, this PhD by Practice research project titled Object Documentary surveys the relationship of contemporary artists working with documentary material today. The project questions what the ethical implications are of using actuality as object. It tries to keep an open, critical perspective on the positioning of documentary as material in art production - rather than simply as a genre as in film practice.

It investigates how far the ‘creative use’ of actuality can be taken in this context.

Looking at specific contemporary examples, including my own objectifying practice, the project also examines the relationship between audience and maker, placing audience interests and drives against the drive of artists.

The project occupies an intentionally oppositional space. Looking at deliberately questionable ethical practices, the project asks when and how it might be useful to objectify. 

minounorouzi.com

sheffieldfringe.com

Minou Norouzi, 'Everything', 2013. video still 

Of dice and men; production of subjectivity as reflected on essay film

Of dice and men; production of subjectivity as reflected on essay film

Presentation by Didem Pekun, 8 March 2013

On this session I will be presenting the introductory chapter of my practice-based PhD, which embarks from previous works and outlines the reasons for my positionality. 
The current project focuses on essay film and how it functions, if at all, as a platform for production of subjectivity. 

Text circulated:

Guattari, Felix "Subjectivities; for Better or Worse" in 'The Guattari Reader' ed. Gary Genosko, London: Blackwell Publishing, 1996: 193-204 

* The next meeting will take place on the 10th of May and Minou Norouzi will be presenting her work. 

Cross institutional presentation at "Poetics and Politics of Documentary Film" in Finland

The AVPhD Group will be participating and presenting a cross-institutional panel to the Research Symposium: Poetics and Politics of Documentary Film - Building Bridges between the Theory and Practice of Documentary Film  

April 22 - 24, 2013 Aalto University, ARTS, ELO Helsinki Film School, Finland

The Aalto University ELO Helsinki Film School (Department of Film, Television and Scenography, School of Arts, Design and Architecture) will host a symposium on the relationship between theory and practice in documentary film. The objective of the symposium is to build bridges between the practice and theory of documentary film.  The symposium seeks to find ways to “theorize within” film instead of “theorizing about” it. Theory can be understood as an active tool in catalyzing the new politics and poetics in the practice of documentary filmmaking.

http://sensate.tumblr.com/post/36586627091/research-symposium-poetics-and-politics-of-documentary

Theorising Practice, Practicing Theory

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Theorising Practice, Practicing Theory

A postgraduate training workshop

Tuesday April 23rd, 2013

Hosted by the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures and the Media, Culture & Language Forum at the University of Roehampton in London.

This postgraduate-led training event will explore practice-as-research and contemporary conceptions of the relationship between practice and theory in screen media studies (and related disciplines). Bringing together scholars and postgraduate students who are conducting, supervising and examining practice-as-research projects, this workshop will also serve to build and strengthen a network of scholar-practitioners.

Drawing on the experience of some of the leaders in the field, we will explore how the practice-as-research landscape is developing. Eight years after the launch of the AHRC-funded AVPhD (audiovisual PhD) initiative, what have we learned?

What are some of the common issues faced and approaches being taken? How do artistic and academic aims clash or converge; how are creative and critical concerns balanced? What other disciplines are we drawing from and what theoretical and methodological frameworks are we using? How do we understand audiovisual practice in a research context as distinct from other kinds of audiovisual practice?

We invite 20-minute paper proposals from postgraduates and researchers at all levels who are engaged in audiovisual practice-as-research. Please submit 300 word abstracts and a short biographical note to Holly Giesman at holly.giesman@roehampton.ac.uk by March 18th, 2013. 

Performing Documents Conference at Bristol University

Four members of the AVPhD Group (Heidi Hasbrouck, Amanda McDowell, Marianne Hougen Moraga and Didem Pekun) will be participating in the Performing Documents conference which will be held in Bristol University, 12-14 April 2013. The participation takes the form of a panel titled 'Performing the Self' and will be chaired by Dr. Tony Dowmunt. 

Performing Documents is a major collaborative research project which asks how we are dealing with the remains of Live Art today. Drawing on creative, curatorial and research strategies, this project stages a wide-reaching investigation into the problems and potential of performance and its documents. It will comprise a series of public events in 2012, culminating in a large-scale conference and exhibitionat Arnolfini in 2013.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/research/performing-documents/