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

Fri Apr 13 06:38:49 AEST 2018

Thanks, Garrett, Fédérique, Toby, and Dorit, for these insights into the conception of your projects for FLEFF.

One aspect of all three projects, and also Luke’s, that intrigues me is that they allow audiences to experience them in multiple ways rather than one single way. 

What I mean is that Jerusalem, We Are Here invites users to follow one of three guides through the city, selecting to read text, view videos, or look at images along them way. Exploring the project becomes a kind or archeology. It demands users to make comparisons and develop arguments about what they find. They can’t just wait for information to be interpreted for them.

Null Island requires users to move through a virtual space, orienting and reorienting their experience of hearing and seeing within a somewhat fluid space. The experience is particularly disorienting at times since the virtual space is rendered as a map with longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates that typically suggest stability.

With Best of Luck with the Wall (variant), users do not necessarily need to watch for 34 hours without interruption, so that can watch segments over days or weeks — or they can dip into the video at various points, moving backward and forward. This very act calls attention to the ways that surveillance footage can be monitored by humans.

When screened online, The Toby Tatum Guide to Grottoes and Groves also allows the option of access images out of sequence without undermining the integrity of the immersion within the environment, thus allowing users to spend more time in particular grottoes or groves, that is, produce their own mental spaces in the curation of their interaction with the film.

For me, all of them moves around conventional assumptions for documentary, documenting, and documentation. 

Curious to know your thoughts — and please correct anything that I may have misunderstood.

Best,
Dale

> On Apr 11, 2018, at 22:46, Toby Tatum <tobyjamestatum at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thanks Garrett,
> 
> Ok, for my part:
> 
> I'm trying to create landscapes of the imagination - the geography of mental space. Although there is a profound engagement specific places when I'm out shooting material but during the editing process the filmed material becomes reformed into something reflective of my own inner geography. 
> 
> 
> Toby Tatum
> 
> http://www.tobytatum.com/ <http://www.tobytatum.com/>  
> 
> 
> Toby Tatum's films are distributed by Collectif Jeune Cinéma <http://www.cjcinema.org/pages/fiche_auteur.php?auteur=969>  
> 
> 
> Recent interviews online here <http://theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FILM-PANIC-ISSUE-3.pdf> & here <http://www.swedenborg.org.uk/events/swedenborg_film_festival/programme_and_awards_24_march_2016/interview_with_2016_joint_winner_toby_tatum>
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, 11 April 2018, 18:34:43 GMT+1, Garrett Lynch <garrett at asquare.org <mailto:garrett at asquare.org>> wrote:
> 
> 
> Yes gazing through technology is certainly an aspect of some of my works this probably creeps in from my reading around the New Aesthetic but the goals aren't the same.  There is a simpler level/theme (even 'site') that links the works however, networks.  Both Best of Luck with the Wall (variant) and Sculptures for Distant Places both use networks to see spaces in impossible ways.  The former work shifts me more firmly into film because it's a collaborative work and Frédérique's main medium is film.
> 
> We've both (Frédérique and myself) being talking about deterritorialisation/reterritorialisation (sticking more closely with Deleuze's spelling with an s) since it's been mentioned a few times now - trying to unpack a little more how we feel Best of Luck with the Wall (variant) deterritorialises a space.  For us I guess this occurs on two levels; political, how politics is turing the US/Mexico border into a sort of no-mans land, and technological, how the use of technology/seeing through technology transforms the territory/space into something other than geography.  We are not sure what that 'other' is precisely but its scale (rapidly approaching actual scale) makes us think of Alfred Korzybski's map-territory relation and Borges short story On Exactitude in Science.
> 
> There seem to be aspects of deterritorialisation/reterritorialisation in all the works by the artist's this week (to greater and lesser degrees) - would be useful if you could all unpack this for the list.
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 6:15 PM, Toby Tatum <tobyjamestatum at yahoo.co.uk <mailto:tobyjamestatum at yahoo.co.uk>> wrote:
> Yes, of course! That is why your name was familiar. I can see now how Best of Luck with the Wall (variant) ties in with your installation at Stuttgarter Filmwinter. I can see now that the unrelenting gaze of the surveillance camera or drone is something you're very interested in, as well as the potential for subverting those machines. 
> 
> Best Wishes,
> 
> Toby
> 
> 
> Toby Tatum
> 
> http://www.tobytatum.com/ <http://www.tobytatum.com/>  
> 
> 
> Toby Tatum's films are distributed by Collectif Jeune Cinéma <http://www.cjcinema.org/pages/fiche_auteur.php?auteur=969>  
> 
> 
> Recent interviews online here <http://theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FILM-PANIC-ISSUE-3.pdf> & here <http://www.swedenborg.org.uk/events/swedenborg_film_festival/programme_and_awards_24_march_2016/interview_with_2016_joint_winner_toby_tatum>
> 
> -- 
> regards
> Garrett
> _________________
> Garrett at asquare.org <mailto:Garrett at asquare.org>
> http://www.asquare.org/ <http://www.asquare.org/>
> 
> Current events and soon:
> 
> Real Virtuality The Networked Art of Garrett Lynch:
> http://realvirtuality.peripheralforms.com/ <http://www.filmwinter.de/en>
> 
> A network of people who attended an exhibition and contributed to the creation of this work
> http://asquare.org/work/peoplenetwork/ <http://asquare.org/work/peoplenetwork/>
> 
> Pick up a postcard and participate at any of the following galleries: Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Bannister Gallery (Rhode Island, USA), Centro ADM (Mexico City, Mexico), Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City, Mexico), Gallery XY (Olomouc, Czech Republic), Gedok (Stuttgart, Germany), Guest Room (North Carolina, USA), Human Ecosystems (Rome, Italy), Kunst Museum (Stuttgart, Germany), Laboratorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City, Mexico), Le Wonder (Bagnolet, France), MUTE (Lisbon, Portugal), NYU Art Gallery (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates), Open Signal (Portland, USA), Plymouth Arts Centre (Plymouth, England), The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art (Plymouth, England), Transfer Gallery (New York, USA), Upfor Gallery (Portland, USA), Watermans (London, England), Wilhelmspalais (Stuttgart, Germany), WOWA (Riccione, Italy), ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany)
> 
> Garrett Lynch: A network of people @ Galerie XY (Olomouc, Czech Republic) 9 - 13/04/2018
> https://www.facebook.com/events/177492866199740/ <https://www.facebook.com/events/177492866199740/>
> 
> Best of Luck with the Wall (variant) @ European Media Art Festival, Report - notes from reality (Osnabrueck, Germany) 18/04 - 21/05/2018
> https://www.emaf.de/en/index.html <https://www.emaf.de/en/index.html>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
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