[-empyre-] Week 2 of the April 2018 discussion: New Media Documentary Practice

[Dale Hudson]

Thanks, Patty and Helen, for participating in last week’s discussion.

This week’s guests include Dorit Naaman (CA), Luke Munn, (AU/NZ), Garrett Lynch and Frédérique Santune (IE/FR), and Toby Tatum (UK).

All have participated in the “Invisible Geographies” exhibition for the twentieth edition of FLEFF. For this discussion, I would like to consider them for their intersections with and interventions to assumptions about documentary and digital media, as well as nearby categories, such as experimental. Each of these projects engages with representations and performances of spaces that are both physical and psychical, contoured by the sensory and rational.

Dorit Naaman’s project _Jerusalem, We Are Here_, an ongoing project to remap of the international city of Jerusalem (Al-Quds in Arabic). The project takes the form of a platform that allows users to move through neighborhoods, past and present. Users explore the geographies of a city whose many ethnicities, religions, and cultures have been partly erased and severely diminished — none more than the indigenous Palestinians.

Luke Munn’s _Null Island_ explores how movement through our world is increasingly dependent on environments that exist partly as computer code — and what happens when connections between virtual and physical worlds break down. The project focuses attention on invisible manifestations of power by rendering their effects visible in an absurdist yet disquieting manner by highlighting a tiny island that exists only in GPS systems.

Garrett Lynch and Frédérique Santune’s _Best of Luck with the Wall (variant)_ allows users to move along the geopolitical border between México and the United States at a speed equivalent to driving in an automobile, thus gaining a sense of the scale of the border and counterproductive enterprise of dedicating public monies to policing and militarizing it.

The result of “a year-long vision quest into the twisted labyrinths of the forest,” The Toby Tatum Guide to Grottoes and Groves presents psychological and emotional geographies in particular and peculiar environments near the coastal town of Hastings (United Kingdom). _Toby Tatum’s The Toby Tatum Guide to Grottoes and Groves_ looks at the wooded world in coastal towns in the United Kingdom.

I look forward to hearing more about these projects from their makers, as well as their conceptions of an arts practice that moves between conventional categories, including documentary.

Best,
Dale

Bios:

Dorit Naaman (CA) is a documentarist and film theorist, born and raised in Jerusalem, who teaches film and media at Queen’s University (Ontario). She developed a format of short personal documentaries, which she calls DiaDocuMEntaRy. She has published on Israeli and to a lesser extent Palestinian cinema, focusing on gender, nationalism and militarism. She initiated _Jerusalem, We Are Here_ as a collaborative platform that can map and tell the stories of a Jerusalem that is no longer visible. To learn more about her work, visit her website: http://www.diadocumentary.com/.

Luke Munn (AU/NZ) uses the body and code, objects and performances to activate relationships and responses. His projects have been featured in the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art (DK), the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (ES), the Fold Gallery London (UK), Causey Contemporary Brooklyn (US), and the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum (TR), with commissions from Aotearoa Digital Arts, and TERMINAL. He is a Studio Supervisor at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design and a current Ph.D. candidate at Western Sydney University (AU).

Garrett Lynch (IE) is an artist, lecturer, and theorist. His arts practice, teaching, and research addresses networks (in their most open sense) within an artistic context; that is, the spaces between artist, artworks and audience as a means, site, and context for artistic initiation, creation, and discourse. His project with Frédérique Santune, _Best of Luck with the Wall (variant)_, is featured in the European Media Arts Festival (EMAF)’s “Report – Notes from Reality” exhibition, which opens in Osnabrück  (DE) on 18 April 2018 (https://www.emaf.de/en/index.html).
 
Frédérique Santune (IE/FR) is a versatile artist/designer with fifteen years of experience in cultural and educational fields. She is interested in both paper and screen-based media, so long as it involves user journeys through words. Her project with Garrett Lynch, _Best of Luck with the Wall (variant)_, is featured in the European Media Arts Festival (EMAF)’s “Report – Notes from Reality” exhibition, which opens in Osnabrück  (DE) on 18 April 2018 (https://www.emaf.de/en/index.html).
 
Toby Tatum (UK) has exhibited at film festivals and arts events, including the Rotterdam International Film Festival (NL), the Berwick Upon Tweed Film and Media Arts Festival (UK), the Swedenborg Film Festival (UK), the Stuttgarter Filmwinter (DE), the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (UK), the Chicago Underground Film Festival (US), and the BFI London Film Festival (UK).



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