Wednesday 19 January 2011: Film practice, teaching and research

William Raban, Gary McQuiggin, Ayman Saey, Louis Henderson

Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 5 - Film practice, teaching and research

Four films by UAL research staff and students were played to a full house, at this special session of The Practice Exchange at the BFI. After a brief introduction about TPE by Marsha Bradfield, William Raban introduced his latest film, and the work of three of his students.

Fig. 2 William Raban introducing the films

THE ELEPHANT WITHOUT A TAIL, 2010, 7 minutes, dir. Gary McQuiggin.

CAPITAL (work in progress), 2010, 10 minute section, Dir. Louis Henderson

ABOUT NOW MMX, 2010, 27 minutes, Dir. William Raban.

ABOUT FILM MAKING, 2010, 6 minutes, Dir. Ayman Saey

Fig 3. From left to right: Louis Henderson, William Raban, Gary McQuiggin, Ayman Saey, Marsha Bradfield

The screening was followed by an hour-long discussion between the audience and the film-makers, chaired by Marsha Bradfield. Below there are some of the issues and questions that came out of it (sound recording of the discussion is available on request).

Film as auto-ethnography: William Raban said “I find myself written in the film,” alluding to the traces of his body in the film. Often created accidentally – for example, jolts of the camera operated manually, or voice-overs done in a hurry- such traces nevertheless became integral to the film, testifying to the presence of not just the subjectivity of the film-maker in constructing the film’s narrative, but to his / her embodiment in the actual texture of the film.

A throw of the dice: The role of chance in film-making. Filming as a process of gathering visual and audio material, and being responsive to what happens in the present, allowing accidents to influence the editing of the film.

Film as critique: How important is it - in the context of films that deal with political subject matter or that have a political intention – to interrogate also the film tropes being deployed? Should film-makers take to task the genres and techniques borrowed from other filmic traditions, and consider them in their full historical significance?

Image and sound: Trusting in the power of image and sound alone to convey meaning without added commentary. Whist digital manipulation of image might be rejected in film-making to preserve the authenticity of what is being represented, sound is altered with much more ease, and often used to underline meaning in a non-didactic way. The importance of sound in watching a film is how it makes a more bodily experience, as sound is actually felt in the body, especially when it is screened in purpose-build spaces.

Film as a mind map: Tracking the process of making the film as part of the film itself, though the use of time-based genre such as the chronicle or the diary. Attempting to visually map the city as a living organism, or to “track a thought” through film. The difficulty of bringing forward the complexity of thought and perception involved in our experience of the city, and how its visualisation in film resists these attempts by flattening out and bounding it to the film frame. This flatness can play into a sense of alienation, in line with a perceived revival of detachment strategies in practice, as a step towards critical distance. The importance of geometrical composition within the film frame, and camera movement in constructing additional meaning around the subject matter depicted.

“It takes two to make a film”: Film can be thought as collaborative practice in several respects. The collaboration between film-maker, camera operators, sound artists, but also the meaning created between director and audience – the film as “open-text”. Filming in the city, the chances of the film audience to literally be in the film are plausible. Does that increase the sense of “becoming a community” in the shared experience of watching the film, or does it makes us wary of being under surveillance?

Film and ethics: Film practice always works with limits, the limits of the film frame, the limits of viewpoints. The erosion of public space, new anti-terrorist laws, and child protection legislation set increasingly restrictive limits on what film-makers may record in the city. Is this a form of “censorship” and if so who or what is being removed or obscured from public view? What kind of images of the present are we creating when we accept those limitations? Film-making as research sets tight frameworks for artists to work within the demarcation of academic research ethics. Should artists challenge the boundaries of how ethics are conceptualised and applied to artistic research in academia? Should they be challenged on principle, or by artists actually raising above ethic regulators’ expectations?

Wednesday 1 December 2010: Leap into the Unknown

Jennet Thomas and Sonia Boyce

Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 4: Leap into the Unknown

Present: Sonia Boyce | Jennet Thomas | Gerard Choi | Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre | Scott Schwager | Angela Hodgson | Ope Lori | Maria Christoforatou | Keira Green | Sam Nicholson | Chris Hopkins | TK Roberts | Lucinda Evans | Simon Cunningham | Tanya Morozova | Ana Aguiar

Apologies: Samantha Epps | Aaron McPeake | Marsha Bradfield | Caroline Rabourdin | Charlotte Webb

Ana Laura introduced the session by explaining briefly the history of TPE and summarising some of the key ideas discussed in our previous seminar. (You can read the summary notes by clicking here).

Jennet Thomas:

Fig 2. The Purple Preacher - All suffering soon to end by Jennet Thomas

Jennet started by introducing her film work, and showing one of her latest pieces All Suffering Soon to End, a 30-minute film that had been exhibited as part of a larger installation exhibited as part of larger installation at Matt’s Gallery The project was partly funded by CCW, and showing it at a TPE seminar was a great opportunity to share the outcome of the project with others at CCW, and to highlight how significant it is to produce new work with University funding.

The film was inspired by an evangelical pamphlet put through Jennet’s door. She’s very interested in religion though she’s an atheist. Jennet is fascinated by the schizophrenia of Jehovah Witness texts. Working from the impossibility of improving such “cultural artefacts,” she developed a story mixing mythologies from religion and popular culture, around the idea of the stranger that calls at your door. She created a character that is a hybrid of an evangelical creature and a super hero (Purple Man from Marvel Comics whose superpower is that of persuasion). A close friend of Jennet’s plays this role in the film. Shot at her parents’ house, the film tells the story of an innocent couple whom the strange visitor drags into a strange world. Contemporary hip hop/dance music overlay’s the protagonist’s (purple preacher’s) monologue; he proselytises on inclusive global values, hunger, earthquakes and terrorism. Jennet’s film connects the idea of the stranger coming into your house “to instruct you” with the trope of the reality-TV expert telling you how to decorate / improve / organise your home and life. Two Adam and Eve-like dolls evolve into life-size living figures over the course of the film. As they transform, the preacher chants: “Who has the right to rule, whose rule is right?”.

Fig 3. Parents as actors - All suffering soon to end by Jennet Thomas

Discussing her practice, Jennet spoke about the boundaries between life and practice being very thin. Practice is affective. It's an opportunity to spend time with people one loves, one cares about, and who one knows well. So Jeannet creates characters that she believes her friends will enjoy playing. Her artwork also explores paranormal experience in everyday and the ways in which the hidden is revealed.

Jennet's projects typically begin with a found object (found text) and are thus very different from the way traditional film-making works. The importance of making / building props, of constructing characters through performance is explored in her work. Using looping, her films think about what it means or what happens when you tell something twice. What determines the duration of the film? Is it the found material that sets the time limits? How do you work with time?

Where does collaboration reside in the production of films? Is the site of collaboration in the concept of the work or in the making? How does crediting / billing reflect the actual dynamics of collaboration. Sometimes collaboration comes out of a technical need. You need help if you want to construct fairly complex fictional scenarios. The benefit of collaborating in constructing a fictional situation includes having more people to take control of the fictional space, a director, a camera person, lightning, actors. With more people involved you can do more, but you have less control over what happens. One can really do extraordinary things with just two people (vs. a larger group or one).

You can find out more about Jennet Thomas work in the following websites:

Video Data bank - Go to Artists index and look under T for Thomas
http://www.vdb.org

http://www.wemakeourowntv.com

http://www.peeruk.org/projects/thomas/jennet-thomas.html

http://www.mattsgallery.org/artists/thomas/exhibition-1.php

Fig 4. Ope Lori,Maria Christoforatou, Scott Schwager.

Sonia Boyce:

Sonia’s work often happens in response to an invitation or commission from an institution. Her ability to engage with specific communities has been an important basis for being commissioned in the past. She frequently works in collaboration, as was the case of Oh Adelaide, which was created with sound artist Ain Bailey. (We had an opportunity to view the Oh Adelaide exhibition before the seminar).

Sonia thinks about participation and collaboration in an expanded sense: her work involves draws on other people’s knowledge and expertise. She provides a framework for people to share their knowledge with the view of feeding her projects with new information and understanding. In this way, she is a kind of conduit knowledge sharing and transfer. How does knowledge find expression in a document / a collection / an archive? As cultural artefacts, expressions of knowledge can be put into circulation for the benefit of others.

Sonia showed us part of Documenting a project by Sonia Boyce, where she discusses her process of working with collaborators in For you, you only, a project made in Oxford. For this project, Sonia collaborated with an early renaissance choir and a contemporary sound artist. She is interviewed about her practice and explains that she likes inviting people to do something they already know how to do. Collaboration often entails working with differences. As the artist facilitating the collaboration, bringing others in and asking / letting them get on with it creates tension around Sonia’s role. What role, for instance, does she play as a non-musician in a film about music? There is a dual-position of being a director and not being a director at the same time. Her role was not clear until the end of the film, when she struggles with the final outcome and eventually makes a decision. Someone in the TPE seminar observed the following about the film: The physical layout of the film set, the position of the performers and of Sonia as the director – these aspects intimated and/or reproducing the dynamics of the collaboration process in a provocative way.

Sonia introduced a very recent film she made in Cordoba, Argentina, during a one month residency that was part of AFUERA, a large art in public spaces project, curated by Gerardo Mosquera. Her original proposal was to work with a choir in a busy public space, the central bus station. Singers would start singing in different spaces / times for an unaware audience. Once in Cordoba, however, she realised it would be really difficult to organise this kind of performance in such short time. Deciding to conduct further research, Sonia visited the Museo de la Memoria (Museum of Memory) located in a former clandestine detention centre and learned more about Cordoba. In this relatively small city, 45,000 people had been killed or disappeared during ten years of military dictatorship. Sonia was gripped by this horror and felt compelled to produce an artwork that responded to the legacy of this disappearance. She proposed to a local choirmaster that he bring his choir to the Museum to sing to the building, to the photographs of the dead and disappeared. Sonia also invited the public to come along on the day of filming and take part. It was a risky proposition; she had no idea who would turn up or how they would react to the situation she had set up. She had to work very quickly, and make decisions on the spot. The film was edited in just a few days and was shown as part of the festival.

Sonia’s unscripted film relies on improvisation, with the narrative taking shape through post-production editing. If storyboarding helped the artist anticipate some of the demands of filming on site, clear instructions to the film crew made the shoot more cohesive.

You can watch Sonia Boyce's video Gather: Justicia on youtube

Themes and questions to take forward:

Different types of collaboration. Collaborating as realising your vision alongside someone with a similar investment in art practice versus collaborating with someone who shares your world-view but a very different skill set. What cultural capital is generated in collaboration and how do the different people involved access and use it? Crediting, authorship and ownership are all complex issues that reflect on who benefits from collaboration, and how.

Artists making films without having trained as filmmakers. Should they train, or is there some value in that lack of “expertise”? Using the medium in a different way, perhaps in a more material way, more visual than narrative, with more work done in postproduction than in early stages of scripting.

The discomfort in the power relationships the camera produces, who is looking and who is being looked at. The importance of trust among collaborators / participants. An interest in “affective” practice, where people are in the film because they want to be there, and because they are doing something they are comfortable with or they are good at doing.

Wednesday 3 November 2010: The Other Side of the Other

Caroline Rabourdin and Angela Hodgson

Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 3: The Other Side of the Other

Present: Marsha Bradfield | Ian Brown | Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre | Scott Schwager | Aaron McPeake | Angela Hodgson | Caroline Rabourdin | Bernice Donszelmann | Pamela Kember | Ben Fitton | Tsuyoshi Amano | Sharon Rhodes

Apologies: Samantha Epps, Malcolm Quinn, Brandon Prendeville

Fig 2. Ian Brown, Caroline Rabourdin, Angela Hodgson, Pamela Kember

Scott introduces the seminar, with thanks to Angela and Caroline for coming to present their practice. Scott reviews themes from the previous TPE Pilot seminar (see notes on the blog), followed by a quick round of introductions.

Fig 3. Aaron McPeake, Sharon Rhodes

Caroline Rabourdin:

* Presented a text-based piece entitled "Translations of a Dandelion" (to appear soon in a publication by The Dandelion Network at Birkbeck College), as well as some research-in-process, coming out of this work. The work references the dandelion as the emblem for Larousse Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, and the different meanings and uses of the word dandelion in French and English.

* Metaphors for knowledge production and dissemination borrowed from nature: roots, dispersal of seeds. Singular versus multiple roots for knowledge as explored in the work of Deleuze. The dandelion as a weed, knowledge spreading without control, knowledge as something subversive that might grow where it is not expected.

* Translation as a vector, always directional, bringing into doubt the notion of origin. The need for some form of "third text" (Ricoeur) that mediates between the text to be translated and the translation, somehow explaining why and how the translation takes place.

* The relationship between text and image, how they "translate" into each other. For artists that work with the textual / discursive, what kind of translations happen between the practice itself and the writing of a doctoral thesis?

Fig 4. Ian Brown, Scott Schwager, Angela Hodgson, Pamela Kember

Angela Hodgson:

* Presented a cross-section of constituent elements of her practice and research as both an artist and medical doctor: hypothesis, individual practice, participatory events, all focusing on the use of drawing as a way of exploring empathy within the context of a hospital / medical setting.

* Narratives emerging through the practice, the stories and experiences of the participants (namely other staff), things happening in the background. Improvisation as a way of responding to context, and allowing for free associations to emerge.

* Difference in scope and depth in science and in art, as forms of knowledge. Sympathy and empathy as constitutive of the relationship between doctor / artist and patient / audience. Measuring empathy? The problematics of the "empathy quotient".

Fig 5. Aaron McPeake, Bernice Donszelmann

Themes and questions to take forward:

*Artists also trained or experienced in a other disciplines - interdisciplinarity - in this case architecture (Caroline) and medicine (Angela). How to map the influences, overlaps and dissonances and in what direction such mapping occurs.

* The cultural specificity of epistemological paradigms, and how they influence the way in which as researchers we might attempt to describe the knowledge emerging from our practices.

*Presenting practice as a form of thinking aloud; creative production on-the-spot, in the TPE sessions. Performativity without being a performance.

* Searching for resolution, seeking a narrative that others can read, the role of the audience / reader. Is he/she present at the onset of practice or comes in as an afterthought? What happens when the researcher becomes the primary audience for his or her research?

* And/or - Relations between verbal and visual (and other) languages in art research - in the thesis and beyond. For example, Roland Barthes' discussion of image/text relations, his "third meaning" (the first on the information level, the second on the symbolic level) which he links to filmic and photographic images, but can possibly be applied in terms of the emblematic reading of certain visual/verbal devices - suggesting that this remains an "obtuse" sense or meaning to use his term, where meaning resides neither in the image or in the text alone. It is instead produced across or through both.

Wednesday 6 October 2010: Performance Matters

Mark McGowan

Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 2: Performance Matters

Present: Elisa Alaluusua | Marsha Bradfield | Ian Brown | Sam Burford | Samantha Epps | Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre | Maria Kheirkhah| Scott Schwager | Tansy Spinks | Charlotte Webb

Apologies: Aaron McPeake | Angela Hodgson

Ana Laura introduces the seminar, with thanks to Mark McGowan for coming to present his practice.

Marsha reviews themes from the previous TPE Pilot seminar (see notes on the blog).

Fig 2. Samantha Epps, Scott Schwager, Elisa Alaluusua, Mark McGowan

Fig 3. Ian Brown, Tansy Spinks

Fig 4. Mark McGowan

Fig 5. Charlotte Webb, Samantha Epps

Fig 6. Marsha Bradfield, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre

Mark McGowan began his presentation with a video entitled ‘practice exchange’. It fuses projects in his practice, many of which are from reports by global press.

Mark is often asked to give artist talks - to speak about his work - and he counts himself lucky in this regard, because his practice is quite funny. It hits the main news, and gets whole pages in the Sun. So that’s attractive and quite simple. But his practice is actually quite complicated. To understand anything he does one would need to know something about his background. And, he very rarely talks about this past, which has an effect on his work. For example, there’s lots of rolling around and crawling.

One of the big questions about practice, Mark says, is your idea. So in your practice, your ideas are everything.

Also, you need to say, this is where I’m standing, this is the gallery you like, these are my friends, so, you take a position. So, he says, for this, he is kind of loathed by a lot of people. Even a close friend who strongly supports his work recently criticised his saying he’d vote conservative and work around that, which was, again, complex.

Mark works non-stop. He feels he can’t stop making things. Drawing, writing, making videos, posting on facebook. There’s no time to stop and think. He’s in the newspaper and hasn’t even done it yet.

There are ethics involved in the work as well. It’s all about language. He uses words like “re-enactment”. And, who pays for the work? How much does he get paid for a piece? Some work is Lottery funded – but how much? There is a selective interest in information (by the press).

Mark gets emotional with the work; sometimes, he gets yelled at. For example, he’s crawling through Elton and there’s “a load of guys yelling” at him “get up you …” Then they change mood to cheer him on. At the end of the day, he’s acting a lot.

The shame aspect is associated with life. Performance has a lot to do with shame.

‘Why is he doing it?’ is a question he asks himself a lot. He justifies his work with a view “they are amazing pieces of art” with really good producers, camera people and they are absolutely beautiful.

He has modelled himself after Robbie Williams.

When he gets a good article he sees it as a piece of art.

How do you assess the quality of the art? One aspect is it’s so layered. Mark’s performance is about taking risks. Most performance is shame-based he says.

What does his practice do for Mark? The main part of the work is the narrative. Before the event you can say anything you want. It’s brilliant. You could do a drawing, a set up photograph. The narrative during the event is changed - by alcoholics, children, the media asking “can you do this for us now?” Mark engages in it. He says he will do anything. Whatever you like. The narrative after the event is important. He has hundreds of films on YouTube. And these have hundreds of millions of viewers.

He loves making work. He can do a performance, make a video, put it on YouTube and finish within an hour. Practice is everything. Mark says, “I can’t stop… I want to make more.”

He likes the power of being the victim, or the scapegoat. “One of the problems is, I take their own bad faith [the press] and give it back to them.”

Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley. “They are my peers,” he says.

How do you get someone to look at something? How do you do that? How do you get an audience? You go and get it. “We are living in an era of ideas.” We are not living in an era of aesthetics, he reflects. Come up with something that will blow people away.

Wednesday 8 September 2010: Making Things Public

Marsha Bradfield, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Scott Schawger

Fig 1. Aaron McPeake, Sam Venn, Ana Laura de la Lopez, Angela Hodgson, Scott Schwager

Fig 2. Aaron McPeake

Fig 3. Angela Hodgson and Scott Schwager

Fig 4. Scott Schwager

Fig 5. Sam Venn, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Angela Hodgson

Fig 6. Aaron McPeake, Sam Venn

General Introduction:

• This pilot session aims to test the proposed structure of TPE - Presenters share their research through a 20 to 30 min session and this is followed by questions - so we're interested in sharing practice and exploring this sharing as being part of our practice - it's about disseminating practice.
  
• We wish to know what are peers are doing - it's part of PhD culture - DIY in the face of widespread cuts...
• Grow peer culture - invest in each other
  
• Ideally, TPE will cut across/sample from the various discussions occurring at different colleges
• Emphasis on practice - does it help us get away from institutional hierarchies? Our supervisors, for instance, may be more experienced researchers, but we we're all practitioners...
  

Marsha:

• A performative presentation that asked and (re)asked: "What does the practice of dialogic art entail?"
  
• Composed entirely of questions, this presentation teased at the difference between speaking about practice and doing it.
  
• The power dynamics that mark the presentation of research - What's shown and not shown...following Bourdieu: developing "a feel for the game" - What does this mean in the case of art research at the UAL, in the UK and beyond?

Ana Laura:

• Cultivating praxis - a good reason to do a PhD - practicing in a way that's more critical and considered - "rigour"
  
• Tension between "public" and "private" - not binaries so much as overlapping sets of assumptions - contrary to conventional thinking, "the private" may be a sphere that's less "free" - where much (conflict) is repressed...
• Relations between practicing "art" and practicing "research" - anxieties around practicing art too much - How to locate practice of art in research culture? Are they very different?
  

Scott:

• The boundaries of art research - what does or does not comprise art practice as research - Does this talk "count"?
• Collaboration involves working together - (the tools of) process - multiple dialogues - with other collaborators, with "viewers," with "peers"... Something is collaborative when you can't do it on your own...Flow
• Working in public as distinct from working with the public - also, what aspects of practice get shared - What about emails? Lots of business gets transacted in emails...
  

Themes and questions to take forward:

• How to narrate one's practice? Should this approach jive with the practice itself or is there a generic approach? Tendencies towards confession as a genre for sharing practice...
  
• Languaging - speaking to different groups
• What's research? A process of inquiry...perhaps cultivating this is more important than the outcome?
  

Ayman Mahmoud Saey - Presenter Biog

I started working with video in my early teenage years. Enthusiasm and a small amount of competence in my first project led to me getting a small paid job. This in turn led to another small job, and quite soon after I was registered as self employed and doing more small jobs.

While grateful for the experience that had seemingly landed on my lap, I began to get restless with the type of work I was doing. I didn’t necessarily care much for the subjects of my films and furthermore I didn’t find myself in any environments that would inspire me to develop as a filmmaker.

My next step was to go to university, which is where I am now. At university my films have been characterised by having elements of both documentary and fiction. I find myself more concerned with what I see as the essence of the film rather than subscribing to a particular form that it must be expressed in.

Also my films tend to be quite self reflexive despite usually have no intention for them to be so; in my short experience, the filmmaking process itself often strangely coincides with the intentions of the film in a way that makes it just as important a part of the film to be depicted/ referred to.

I’m not too sure what is next for me, but if I do continue to make films I would image I would still be concerned with finding ways of translating experience on to film. I prefer it when one gets a sense of something in a film rather than just intellectually derived conclusions.

Also I am interested in just showing things as they are. I believe that watching a film is a unique time in a persons life when all but what is seen and heard in the film is removed, allowing the viewer to connect with the subject in a way that may be much more difficult to within the abundance of ‘real life’. When we connect with a subject we are given the opportunity to comprehend it and with comprehension hopefully comes transcendence.

Film and Video BA, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

You can contact Ayman at a8hm@hotmail.com.

William Raban - Presenter Biog

Fig. 2 - Still from About Now MMX


Fig. 2 - William Raban

Born 1948, Fakenham. BA painting, Saint Martins School of Art 1971; MA (Fine Art) Reading University 1974. Manager of London Filmmakers Co-Op Workshop 1972-6. Published bi-monthly Filmmakers' Europe 1977-81. Part-time senior lecturer in Film at Saint Martin's School of Art 1976-89. Reader in Film at University of the Arts, London. Member of editorial board Vertigo film magazine.

William's Luxonline profile
Putney Debater's review of William's new film