Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailablePretty polyglot: parrotisation as the difference in repetition, again(Unlikely, 2023)This paper was written on Kulin Country — moving between the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri, Boon Wurrung, and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples. On Kulin Country, birds are powerfully symbolic: Bunjil, the creator spirit, travels as a wedgetail eagle, and Waa, the protector, travels as a crow. Even the humble parrots, as Wurundjerri knowledge holder Mandy Nicholson reminds us, are Bunjil's children, and they carry Bunjil's messages, for those who know how to listen.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDy(e)ing is Not-Dying: Nova Paul’s experimental colour film polemic(Routledge - Taylor & Francis, 2017)Abstract Paul’s This is Not Dying (2010) is a twenty-minute film utilising three-colour separation to liberate hue from the form in which it inheres. With a soundtrack by the late Māori steel guitar legend Ben Tawhiti, Paul’s film celebrates a day in the life of her hapu or tribal sub-group in the North of the North Island of New Zealand. Under Whatitiri Mountain, near Whangarei, the cluster of houses that Māori would designate as a marae, is the site of simple communal living: card playing, swimming in the creek, fixing motorbikes and eating together.
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ItemFrom Underdog to Overview(Antennae, 2017)This paper examines four experimental short films by the multi-disciplinary artist Camille Henrot. Film Spatial (2007) is a textural exploration of haptic visuality and perspectivism from the p.o.v. of Balkis the dog. Attention to the singular Balkis becomes a concern with dogs in general in Cynopolis (2009), and snake symbolism in The Strife of Love in a Dream (2011). Finally Grosse Fatigue (2013) parodises both creationism and taxonomic organisation, in an anarchival gesture. The cinemal , like Derrida’s animot, becomes a disruptive force which re-animates the dying animal, breathing life back into the cinema, the archive, and human-animal relations. The full title of this essay is: 'Perspectivism, Symbolism and Taxonomies in the films of Camille Henrot'.
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ItemParticularity: Swarms, Storms, and other Matter(Art and Australia Pty Ltd, 2017)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSonic Disturbance and Chromatic Dissolution: The Cantrills Remake Melbourne(Senses of Cinema Inc., 2017)This paper examines the work of Australian experimental film legends, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, who, over a fifty-year period, perfected a range of avant garde cinematic techniques including experiments with colour separation, repetition, exposure, and layered soundtracks. This ‘making wild’ or ‘becoming animal’ of the filmic medium is here given the term cinemal, whereby, in rearranging the viewer’s sensorium, the Cantrills’ re-enchant everyday life. Three aspects of their diverse oeuvre will be examined, as their disruptive techniques call for a re-figuring of the way we conceive of the Australian landscape, as well as cityscapes, in particular, the city of Melbourne, and finally, of the domestic sphere.
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ItemAperture, Apparition, Apparatus: An Incantation for Ghostly Machines(Discipline, 2019)This article proposes that photographic and film apparatus enable a more-than-human vision which includes potential communion with the spirit world. The photographic work of Joyce Campbell and Natalie Robertson is discussed, along with references to experimental film including those by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, Nova Paul, and Carolina Saquel and Camila Marambio.
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ItemCrystal Phallus: The Brutal Truth About Zardoz(Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, 2019)In response to the special issue on "Brutalism", this article reflects on John Boorman's 1974 cult classic film Zardoz, a dystopian science fiction which uses the term "Brutals" for its underclass. Focussing on the preponderance of crystal imagery in the film, it is read through the lens of Gilles Deleuze's theory of the "crystal image" in his book Cinema 2. While these philosophical musings may seem highbrow, the article engages in humour and "low theory", following Jack Halberstam's Queer Art of Failure. What is brutal about Zardoz, it turns out, is its denial of a utopian future, and its return to a patriarchal "business as usual".
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ItemA Bat’s End: The Christmas Island Pipistrelle and Extinction in Australia, by John Woinarski, CSIRO Publishing, 2018.(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2020)This is a favourable review of Woinkarski's 'A Bat's End', using the book's message of conservation of endangered species to underline the plight of many animals after the bushfire season.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDigesting Gut Feelings - A Conversation(Unlikely, COVA, University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, 2020)This is a discussion between artist Andrew Goodman and critic Tessa Laird about his work 'Gut Feelings' in the exhibition Translating Ambiance curated by Jordan Lacey. Lacey curated a number of sound artists looking at ambiance and the natural world in relation to the urban environment. Rather than imagining nature 'out there', Goodman turned to nature inside his own body - the millions of microbes dwelling in his gut, and made recordings of those noises. These sounds were then made not just audible but palpable through a vibrating speaker that viewers could feel as they listened. This raised pertinent questions around interactivity, ecological art practices, and how we can better attune to the environment.
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Item[Review] Deborah Bird Rose. Shimmer: Flying Fox Exuberance in Worlds of Peril. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. 240 pp.(University of Wollongong Library, 2021-01-01)Animal Studies Journal 2021 10(2): [Review] Deborah Bird Rose. Shimmer: Flying Fox Exuberance in Worlds of Peril. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. 240 pp.