Centre for Ideas - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 7 of 7
-
ItemWhat lies buried will rise: exploring a story of violent crime, retribution and colonial memory( 2015)This thesis explores historical connections between colonial violence, memory and representations through art. It examines archival documentation and oral histories of an 1839 murder case in York; Sarah Cook and the hanging of Aboriginal men, Barrabong and Doodjeep. This case was the catalyst for the some of the worst massacres in WA. As an Aboriginal woman from York, I examine how art engages with story telling to investigate critical events in colonisation and imagine how what lies buried might rise.
-
Item(K)rap(p): voice as gaze in the mundane( 2015)(K)rap(p): Voice as Gaze in the Mundane examines ekphrasis - the “telling of vision” - in contemporary art. Between the scenario of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape; unorthodox voice recordings by Konstantin Raudive, recorded interviews and archived material relating to my deceased parents’ involvement in the Communist Party of Australia during the 1950s; a type of proletarianisation of the gaze, an ekphrastic dematerialisation and re-materialisation of vision is interrogated into political and uncanny dimensions. The ekphrastic relation to art is that of viewing and articulating, visually rendering an articulation as an inversion of ekphrasis. The sonorous act of verbalizing becomes visual representation, therefore art. Paradoxically the notion of what constitutes art is complicated by its own description. The research begins with the examination of art and voice in relation to ekphrasis, hypothesising whether ekphrasis might be made visible as art through its inversion and concludes with voice in relation to the spectral, invisible in both social and political terms, made visible through the unification of sound (voice recordings) and image (archival and artefact), in which selected audio and visual material are manipulated to form artwork. The exhibition created for this project was an accumulation of these manipulations, found and fabricated artworks in the form of photography, voice recordings and collated archival material including original documents regarding the Communist Party between 1948 and 1960. The selected material was presented with archaic voice recording equipment as part of the Installation project exhibited at the Margret Lawrence Gallery in February 2015. The exhibition was not just a product of research into the Communist Party of Australia, but of voice in the broader sense. Voice has been examined from multiple facets, in its many incarnations and it is through Samuel Beckett’s work and Raudive recordings that voice as a subject of the gaze has highlighted the uncanny potential of voice as gaze.
-
ItemResounding cinema: exploring misconceptions of the nature and obligation of nonfiction film through the challenges of the ‘music documentary’( 2015)This research analyses how nonfiction cinema might best elucidate abstract attributes of music and its practice. The word ‘documentary’ as applied to film connotes and is typically understood as a representation of actuality. As a musician and filmmaker, I argue that Music, with its propensity to elude representation, requires a cinematic approach liberated from documentational forms. This paper maps a conceptual framework for nonfiction cinema that conveys abstract ideas via sensory cognition. It illustrates a difference between documentational moving image formats, whose primary concern is representation, and modes of cinema whose primary concern is to seek knowledge through Idea creation, aesthetic construct and the sensorial and transformative qualities of cinema. Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of concept creation provides a framework through which to understand nonfiction cinema as a mode of thought and sensorial creation. I argue that meaning is not to be found, but created, and that the significance of such nonfiction cinema lies in its capacity to reconstitute thought and agency. This research is conducted through stages of the production and assembly scene edits from 170 hours of footage for a feature film I am making with master guitarist, Bill Frisell. The creative component is eight scene assembly clips (provided on DVD), with a total duration of 104 minutes. I produced, directed, shot and edited the material, which has not yet been professionally sound mixed or colour matched and graded. I approach this material with the particular combined experience of having worked as a full-time professional musician through thirty-three countries over fourteen years, and eleven years full-time as a film director-producer and cinematographer. Through a rhizomatic layering of cinematic, musical and philosophical ideas, and my own practice and experience, I hope to revalue the role of creative construct in nonfiction film.
-
ItemBody of water( 2015)Through a series of underwater video sequences, my exhibition Body of Water marked the culmination of my Masters research findings investigating the physical animation of the female body in the element of water. Using video and video stills to explore the process of thought and perception, the images trace the concept of the psyche moving between unconscious and conscious realms. The materiality of an aquatic dimension provides a suspended three-dimensional “canvas”, and womb-like space within which to construct the artworks. The accompanying written paper encompasses my research into philosophical and psychoanalytical texts, as well as feminist theory and video art, to further articulate the materials and methods used in my studio practice (and final exhibition). In the underwater filming process what becomes apparent is the potential for water to trigger both sensory and psychological notions, assisted by a dream-like sequence of the female’s journey. Dream theory is introduced as a way of understanding the unconscious process as an art practice, and the project sets out to locate its manifestation within psychosomatic experience. My art process echoes the process of dreams vaporizing from the unconscious as the camera’s blind operation first captures the imagery without judgment, before the images are later edited, layered and juxtaposed to create the work. The underwater swimmer gives further expression to symbolizing “thresholds” of outer and inner phenomenological experience. The term a “psychical interior” is used frequently to refer to metaphysical dimensions of thinking about the swimmer in water as a metaphor for the process of “unconscious” thought. Concepts derived from psychoanalytical research including a “psychical envelope” and “skin-ego”, are juxtaposed within my phenomenological descriptions of water’s materiality. The skin-ego is a concept derived from skin’s dual sensory function, that of an outer sponge and an inner perceptual matrix. The female body immersed in water has been fashioned to enable a dialogue about metaphors of feminine space and its subjectivity. I have intentionally de-identified elements of the female body to instead focus on phenomenological frameworks including the body as a “container”, and tension between the environments of skin and water in defining the self. Bringing the viewer’s awareness closer to the “lived body” experience, my project aims to invite slowness from the visitor when entering the intimacy of the womb-like projection space. The immersive, dark exhibition space enables one to encounter the dream-like nature of the underwater sequences. Water as a moving element (captured by the camera) offers a spatio-temporal dimension of time literally dissolving before the viewer. Water imagery is potent with symbolic associations to the spiritual and maternal and has the potential to arouse in the viewer anything from a reflective reverie to a deep psychological introspection.
-
ItemEssential gesture( 2015)My research into essential gesture has brought together the technique and practices of harp playing and eurythmy. I use Carlos Salzedo’s fundamental harpistic gesture, which I see as a distillation of a more universal concept that I call essential gesture, as the ground of departure. Through research into Rudolf Steiner’s eurythmy and collaboration with eurythmists I sought to find; a deeper understanding of the essence of music, a corrective for teachers of the Salzedo method for harp, greater depth in my own instrumental performance practice and a validation of my sense of essential gesture. The importance of the senses, especially seeing and hearing, to the conception of Salzedo’s method is outlined. Steiner’s twelve senses are introduced and the relationship of seeing and hearing in regard to perception, comprehension and memory is explored. This practice led research contains the documentation of the performance discussed in my written exegesis. The performance includes three compositions: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) ‘Adagio–Andante quasi Allegretto’ from The Creatures of Prometheus, Opus 43; Claude Debussy (1862–1918) Danses ‘I. Danse sacrée II. Danse profane’ for harp and string orchestra; and Johanna Selleck (1959–) Spindrift for solo harp. These three works align with the three themes arising from my research into essential gesture: archetypes, microcosm and macrocosm and metamorphosis. The performance also includes my own original poetry, tone and speech eurythmy and flamenco dance. The seven key concepts arising from the research describe how eurythmy has changed my instrumental performance practice and my methodology for teaching, they include: Focus and grounding; Creating space and freedom; Balance and becoming inwardly musical––A; Communion, embracing the harp––O; Subtleties and nuances in articulation––consonants; Waiting for something that never comes––duration; and Harmony––I give, I receive. This research is important for all harpists, not only those working with the Salzedo method. It can be used as a corrective for understanding the intrinsic conception of Salzedo’s fundamental harpistic gesture, unified with the core principles of his method for harp: mental relaxation, breathing and movement. The research is also significant for all musicians, who will be stirred to rethink their approach to their own instruments and study of music, in their performance practice and studio teaching, and also in the act of listening and experiencing the joy of music.
-
ItemThe responsibility of the media: occupation in East Timor and Western Sahara( 2015)The military occupations of East Timor and Western Sahara almost mirror each other, but they are small and insignificant according to the rules of traditional realpolitik. The thesis asks: What was the responsibility of the media in the occupation of East Timor and the continuing occupation in Western Sahara? In Chapter 1 – “Letting East Timor Speak and Breaking Indonesia’s Information Blockade 1975-1978” - the Indonesian military’s bloody invasion of East Timor and its campaign of “encirclement and annihilation” was broadcast by Radio Maubere, an illegal and underground radio network, to an increasingly disturbed and alarmed group of Australians led by Denis Freney. While the broadcast was heroic, Radio Maubere was ultimately flawed. In Chapter 2 - “The Responsibility of Filmmakers: Before and After the Santa Cruz Massacre” - I discuss Noam Chomsky’s argument that the American media were responsible for the genocide in East Timor. However, in 1991, Max Stahl’s film footage of the Santa Cruz Massacre helped in turning around years of international indifference and apathy. In Chapter 3 – “Scenes From An Occupation: East Timor 1999” - I return to my documentary film, Scenes From An Occupation, which I filmed in 1999, during the last six months of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. In order to re-examine my own responsibility as a video-journalist and filmmaker, I interrogate documentary filmmaker Pamela Yates’ statement that “sometimes a story told long ago will speak to you in the present”. In Chapter 4 – “Who Speaks For Fetim Salam?” - and Chapter 5 - “Western Sahara: How To Stop A National Liberation Movement” - I explore the irresponsibility of filmmakers via a discussion of the controversial and discredited Australian documentary Stolen (2009). This film, which was publicised heavily online and shown repeatedly at international film festivals, alleges that the black-skinned Saharawis are slaves in the Polisario-run camps in Algeria. As such, after almost four decades of media neglect of Western Sahara, Stolen managed to combine both mendacity and sloppy documentary practices. In these two chapters I deconstruct both the film and its critical reception, taking Carlos González’ film, Robbed of Truth: The Western Sahara Conflict and the Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking, as a starting point. In Appendix 1: As part of the practice-based component of this thesis I write a feature length script, based on my previous research on East Timor called The American Brother. In Appendix 1 – “Notes to The American Brother” - I examine the relationship between history, character and the responsibility of the media.
-
ItemBeautiful little dead things: empathy, witnessing, trauma and animals' suffering( 2015)This sculptural practice-led research investigates empathy, trauma and witnessing and the role of testimony in visual arts practice. The thesis argues that Edith Stein’s phenomenological account of empathy articulates an empathic encounter that recognizes the alterity of the other. Stein’s account, I argue, can be drawn out to include encounters with nonhuman animals and sculptural objects that resemble embodied forms. Responding to developments in my sculptural practice the research examined the possibility of visual art practices to bear witness to the ongoing suffering of animals: marking out the possibility for sculptural objects to perform as testimonial objects. As testimonial objects they attest to the trauma of the one who witnesses for the other. Ethical considerations in relation to materiality, representation and the position of one who testifies for, or on behalf of, the other are examined.