Sol Archer

Thesis and graduate project proposal draft, part the first.

2014-10-09

1

in which I block in from the wiki

Here I will talk through where I am at at the moment with regards to the thesis and the graduate project. The two will be in varying degree interleaved and separate as the research will fade in and out of the same spaces.

I am tentatively titling the graduate project as

“And this also has been one of the dark places of the world” (from heart of Darkness)

or

“we are fitted for works of darkness, all the while deprived of light.” (from John Donne)

These are unlikely to remain as actual titles of the exhibited work itself, but stand as flags for a particular tone to the work as it starts.

Generally as a naming strategy I pull a fragment from dialogue or script, (or in the case of Death comes to Home Farm, a mis-typing of an earlier title, which was drawn from a newspaper headline within the archival material I gathered. I will go into a little more detail later on what this is). Naming then is a serendipitous process of extractive poetry. Working titles are useful, however.

The thesis I have a working title idea of

How we can be responsible.

With the two part subheaders

a) How the artists position is instrumentalised by institution and philanthropists, and how we can instrumentalise right back

b) The responsibilities of representations. Speaking for others in their own voice.

Back then, to the graduate project. I think this will be primarily a video work, with spatial or sculptural elements, which are key in the reading of the work and the physical experience of viewing it in the movement of material in and out of video, sculptural, and installation languages.

My current thinking is that this will be a video investigation, using conversation and interview as a site of production, and editing a a curatorial process, winnowing out the intersections of global pressures on local/specific narratives and histories. Forming the backbone of this will be filmed conversations with around history and work in the docks here, possibly Hamburg, and if I can access certain people, around Tilbury in England, where there recently was a tragic case of refugees dying in containers as they were trafficked into England (possibly from Rotterdam). It will superpose, or conflate, or at least use an abutment of the black box as cinema space, with particular technical histories and spaces, the closed shipping container being a dark space of possibility, cloaking near infinite content possibilities (bounded by the reality of scale, supply, etc). Tying in with previous work there may be a link to the Black Box flight recorder from aircraft. Current/open probes.

[1]

I am trying to contact translators who worked with police forces in England, in cases where a translator who speaks a very specific small demographic language or dialect. Particularly when refugees have been found in shipping containers. There is something I find interesting in the role of the translator here and how a particular embodied knowledge (here of language) creates the role of an expert when it is required by the state to support judicial or border forces, and a marginal community becomes an agent of control. These situations are difficult to negotiate, and traumatic, particularly for the translator, who in many cases is not trained but just bilingual – and becomes a site for investigating and responding to research into the responsibilities of the artist/documentary maker when working with other people and their experiences in the second part of the thesis.

I think there are a few particular situations which interest me in the figure of the translator, particularly when they are mediating a traumatic situation, with a supposed transparency, how their experience is mediate through translation and recollection of what they witness. Whether this comes out in conversation remains to be seen. Kate Briggs (KB from here on in) has suggested reading The Translation Zone (Emily s Apter) regarding these issues immediately following 9/11, and the sudden need for translators of arabic.

I need to leave space for thinks to develop so establishing a script for exactly what I would want from a conversation with a translator may be unhelpful. But include + The role of translation and the shifting dynamic which occurs when it is needed by the state. + The position occupied when a translator becomes witness – and is protagonist in a situation. + War and severe gradients of wealth entering the scene of international trade, both creating and using the body of trade (in containers and shipping lanes). This is an enormous issue, but something which I may haze towards with touching on the destruction of Rotterdam and Hamburg (now Europes largest ports) during the war.

[2]

I have been trying to talk to people who work in the container ports by just turning up with a camera and seeing what happens and if conversation about things like; their daily schedule, physical experience, and social alienation within their jobs is possible. This has been unsuccessful. I have been passed on to management and asked to leave or had email requests rebuffed.

I am now just looking to find people through friends or contacts who work the docks. Remains to be seen how this goes. The lower they are in the heirarchy the better, hopefully to reflect on alienation and scale in the container trade.

Things I would like to emerge from this

+ the incommensurable scale of global container shipping in relation to that of one of the very small number of humans working on/in

File:ProjectManagement 03.jpg

A provision for the provisional. or a proposal for a proposal (for a proposal)

I will detail a bit of both the graduate project and the thesis thinking, as the research will be overlapping and divergent in varying degrees, so its maybe useful to outline some of the distinctions in these initial chats.

Tentative Title

Graduate project:

"and this also has been one of the dark places of the world" - from heart of darkness

or

"we are fitted for works of darkness, all the while deprived of light" - from John Donne

Thesis

How we can be responsible.

sub title in 2 parts.

how the artists position is instrumentalised by institutions and philanthropists, and can how we can instrumentalise right back

and

the responsibility of representation. speaking for others in their own voice"

italic subtitle

how we are all victims and we are all guilty.

and maybe thats ok

building a machine for personal ethics.

Remember this can change as your research evolves - also keep in mind that the title of your research does not have to be the eventual title of your exhibited final project. Proposal outline. Word count 1500 words max

Introduction

A general introduction laying out your plan for your final project.

Be as specific as possible about the form you imagine the graduate project to take.

Describe the field you wish to research.

Identify key questions driving what you want to explore and how you will test these questions through practice.

this is quite vague at the moment.

specific form

I intend to create a primarily video work, with installation elements, or an installation structure which is key to the reading of the video in its manipulation of sculptural and spatial languages.

my current thinking is that it will be a film investigation, using conversation and interview as a site of production, with editing as a curatorial process which winnows out the intersections of global pressures on local/specific narratives and histories.

specific techniques.

I think it will be centered around filmed conversation, using that as a means to intimate relations between current and historical grand/global narratives and pressures, as i see it at the moment it is centered around the docks, here and possibly in hamburg.

it will conflate, or at least use a superposition of, the Black box as cinema space, and the black box, literally as the shipping container; cloaking infinite possibilities in one inform schoedingers cat style unit.

current probing lines of inquiry.

I am trying to contact translators who have worked with police when refugees have been found in shipping containers (this is difficult, and also traumatic in many cases for the translator - hence the direct overlap with responsibility - see above). I am interested in a number of issues here, and want to leave space to let them expand or contract, depending on the material gathered

+ these include

+ the role of translation itself

+ when a translator becomes the protagonist of a situation

+ when marginal communities (for example, in a recent case of this, refugees from a very small ethnic group of Sikhs from Afghanistan were found in a container, and required a translator who spoke their form of Afghan Punjabi) become integrated into the machinations of the state (policing, judicial and borders)

+ War entering the scene as a site of trade control, creation, etc. and the regional desperation created by capital and international trade (too big an issue perhaps, but something which can be hazed towards. esp. as the bombing of hamburg and rotterdam in many ways made possible Europes formation of trade as we experience it today.

I am trying to just turn up with a camera and talk to people who work in the docks, the lower they are in the heirarchy the better - to see if, in conversation with them about their daily schedules, and historical relationship with the dockworks suggests their alienation and mechanisation. this has been unsuccessful

+ Human experience. telling the scale of this global machine through individual experience (or lack thereof)

+ again, using conversation as a site of research/inquiry and the possibilities film (digital video at least, in this case) has for presenting the textures od tone of voice, accent, intonation, inflection, body language, etc. which may be lost in translation to written media - and then the manipulation of this in editing (and restaging, perhaps.

+ also filming around the dockworks. some of this i have. and letting image do its work too.

I am spending time on pilot forums (which are horrifically right wing militaristic places, unsurprisingly) to see if i can find people who flew in the bombing raids on Hamburg and Rotterdam - now the largest ports in Europe to hear their visual recollection. this is so far unfruitful. so i might just find some witness statements, and find the archives about them - this maybe is more useful anyway as it provides another way of structuring information and another means of recording/recalling it - which ties in with wider interests in documentary form, but also with previous work.

Relation to previous practice

How does your research connect to previous projects you have done? Remember to briefly explain or describe related projects as the external is not familiar with your work.

It is useful to address the points raised by tutors in the feedback from your Self-assessment at the end of trimester 3 and to draw on your 'essay on method' written in trimester 2.

for the external

ill give a brief description of 2 previous works (the most recent so recently previous that it might just be current.) and to previous attempts at collecting data in a number of forms which never quite managed to precipitate a product.

Last year I worked on a project - which is hopefully still a little ongoing - of which more in a minute -

plus also . the relationship of pacing/ images, formet, etc to an editing practise/writing as montage.

1 - Death comes home to farm

In 1962 an experimental Nuclear Bomber (without payload) crashed into a farmhouse in rural lincolnshire. From conversations with the woman who was in the house at the time, her farm foreman who pulled her to safety and a pilot who flew this type of plane in the 80s and 90s I constructed a film which touches on the role of the witness, the sharing and embodying of memory, the construction of a shared story from differing subjective experiences, and their changes over time, technological opening up of spaces of potential, agricultural and military, intersections of global narratives around the cold war and arms races, etc. with the local, both in the point when the world collie spatially, in the plane crash, and in the position of a individual who was an undifferentiated cog in the engine of world events (in this case a pilot in long distance war - the falklands - and observation/fronting games with the soviet union. in installation the film is coupled with material from the military inquest which gives a particular reading on the event, privileges the visual, and was recorded within a couple of days of the crash, I have reworked this since last showing it, but not shown it in its reworked state cos i pulled out of a show for political reasons.(see responsibility issues in thesis ) but its a collage of fragments from the archive, large halftone prints from newspapers - primary of men with their heads lowered wearing hats, poking around in the wreckage and blown up fragments from Breugels Icarus - which i had used as a reference for putting the whole thing together and which bore striking compositional resemblences to the newspaper photographs.

2 - they were sleeping, it was at night

in 1990 a meteorite crashed into a house in a small Dutch town nestled into the border with Germany. this was carried out primarily as an experiment in method. I turned up in the town with a camera and wandered around asking people if they could point me in the direction of the crash site

(you might notice what Lisa called a Genre of things falling from the sky beginning to emerge)

this is a 12 or so minute long video where i an send back and forth by people. As an experiment in method it was about creating a quicker way of investigating a place and observing how people perform their social relations and positions, through the ways in which an even shared in the town metastasises in the mind of the public. how they are told and how it is manipulated into a video work.

Relation to a larger context

Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. Keep in mind that we are *not* expecting well formulated conclusions or persuasive arguments in the proposal phase. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.

broad contexts. cavarerro for more than one voice has been sort of useful with spoken recollection.

witness statements in general are of interest

'THE ARCHIVE' or whatever that means, but more specifically using and making your own sense out of the diverse range of sources within an authoritarian historical model.

documentary form, and particularly documentary form in art

ie

errol morris

deimantas narcevicus(whose name i persistently misspell)

joshua oppenheimer

chris marker - the israel film in partcular

herzog

alan secula

maybe a bit on some current friends who work with something approaching documentary - richard sides, heather phillipson, katarina Zdjelar, Frances Scott

thesis

contexts

particularly histories of conflict WITHIN the existing frame of institutional exhibitions

hans hake,

1987 vaparaiso biennial chile - document i am about to read b y colin richards on this in particular

the israel BDS movement

the south african culture boycott

the zabladovic boycott

the whitney biennial tech walkout

some things out of the studio visit

Walter benjoamin arcades

hannah arendt eichmann trials (complicity, responsibility, etc)

Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972). "Civil Disobedience" originally appeared, in somewhat different form, in The New Yorker. Versions of the other essays originally appeared in The New York Review of Books.

The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, edited with an introduction by Ron H. Feldman (1978).

drift caroline bergfall

kriss kraus i love dick

hannah rickards at modern art oxford.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

from sri and alice

the box house/container houses (middle class dream - stability property - breaking it from the movement.)

and box park east london.

christchurt rebuiold - container shopping

Practical steps

Describe how you will go about conducting your research through reading, writing and practice. In other words, through a combination of these approaches, you will explore questions or interests you have laid out in your general introduction. In this section you can help us understand how your project will come together on a practical level and talk about possible outcome(s). Of course, the outcome(s) may change as your research evolves, but it's important at this stage to have some idea of how your project might come together as a whole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100027_Hannaharendt

material prcoesses - i.e. filmmaking aspects of producing film. the enjoyment of medium/material and medium specificity.

address the problems of form - the potential of a problem . describe the nature of the problem, rather than produce a charachature of a solution. this is a methodology.

problems are zones of richness

chart towards the zones of complexity.

[these are my questions, these are te risks, the dangers, the strait negotiated. identify the zones of precarity. ]

identify the concern

thesis

step one

print out existing material from emails about sydney, artport, etc. look at that

print out all my already written material trying to work out a position on artport

try to contact translators who work in the shipping companies outside of the realm of refugee issues.

References

A list of references (Remember that dictionaries, encyclopedias and wikipedia are not references to be listed). These are starting points which should lead to more substantial texts and practices. As with your previous essays, the references need to be formatted according to the Harvard method. See: http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/A_Guide_to_Essay_Writing#The_Harvard_System_of_referencing

Feel free to include any visual material to substantiate, illustrate or elucidate your proposal. For example use images to reference your work or that of others.