Thematic-Navigating Borders and Contours
with Tina Bastajian
Synopsis
Sometimes it is almost impossible to infer whether or to what degree a narrator is fallible. (Wayne Booth -The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961)
This thematic will interrogate in theory and praxis the mutable contours of narrative strategies from early cinema, modes of address in documentary practices, to more data driven speculative scenarios. A variety of approaches will be explored, such as appropriating and re-positioning the conventions from the silent film era. Early film or the ‘cinema of attractions’ used live film ‘lecturers’ also known as ‘Explicateurs’ (Holland), or Benshi, (Japan), that attracted viewers and propelled the silent narratives onscreen as well providing forms of translation for films with foreign language intertitles. Such constellations of display coalesce for example, with more contemporary practices known as the performance lecture, neo-benshi or even PechaKucha style presentations.
Throughout this thematic we will locate, re-contextualize, undermine and intervene with such strategies to produce new relationships and encounters with variations of fuzzy, * disembodied, unfaithful, or unreliable narrators and hybrids thereof. The module will navigate in between the interstices of moving image/sound online archives providing an initial platform to consider one’s own work. This may also include forms of documentation, the underscoring of work processes, or constructing new spaces of speculation, inquiry, and spectatorship.
Public/Extended Text
Topics-by DAY
Monday: Locating the fuzzy, the unreliable
10:00-11:30 Introduction
- Outline of the thematic:
Strategies & Goals
- Reading assignment/Discussion
(break-away groups / main group)
11:30-11:45-BREAK
11:45-12:45
- Clips to screen/Discuss
12:45-13:45 Lunch break
13:45-15:00
- Screenings TBD
15:00-15:30 BREAK
15:30-17:30 Praxis
17:30-18:30 Dinner Break
18:30-20:30 Film screening for forthcoming assignment