Film As Fabric: Connecting Textile Practice and Experimental Filmmaking Through Expanded Cinema Performance M Stark Phd 2020
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Film as Fabric: Connecting textile practice and experimental filmmaking through expanded cinema performance M Stark PhD 2020 Film as Fabric: Connecting textile practice and experimental filmmaking through expanded cinema performance Mary Stark A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Design Manchester School of Art Research Centre (MSARC) Manchester Metropolitan University 2020 Abstract This practice based study examined connections between textile practice and experimental filmmaking as evidence of deeper repressed narratives. The research was informed by the long association of domestic crafts with women, as well as feminist critique of contextualisation of experimental filmmaking as from narrow and misplaced perspectives. Historical analysis was combined with tests in the form of studio-based practice and expanded cinema performance. This led to identifying the terminology of analogue film editing as evidence of the largely unrecognised labour of women who worked in the cutting rooms of early cinema, whose practice was seen as menial due to it being considered similar to cutting and stitching cloth. Underpinned by feminist and post-materialist discourse, the methodology of crafting expanded cinema involved entwining digital and analogue technologies to produce a new expanded cinema performance Film as Fabric. This live work developed through numerous iterations documented using video, digital photography and sound recording. The embroidery practice of sampling enabled examination of a seminal expanded cinema performance that featured stitch, Reel Time (1973) by Annabel Nicolson. The process of combining textile practice and experimental filmmaking through expanded cinema performance was informed by Richard Sennett’s ‘domain shift’ theory. It resulted in hybrid tools and the specific practice of creating moving images and optical sounds from fabric and stitch patterns and editing them into loops with a live method informed by dressmaking. Driven by ideas of the body as a living archive and performance as a mode of memory, the live work became a way of analysing and remembering Reel Time, as well as a way for repressed analogue filmmaking practices associated with women’s hidden labour to re- emerge and be celebrated. Documentation of Film as Fabric became a record release, a website and this thesis offering a divergent historical narrative and a field of contemporary practice to support future interdisciplinary exchange. Website: https://marystark.wixsite.com/filmasfabric A copy of Industrial Folklore Tapes Vol IV: Film as Fabric accompanies hard copies of this thesis Acknowledgements Thank you to Steve Dixon, Alice Kettle and Jacqueline Butler for your supervision, as well as Amanda Ravetz from 2012-2016. This project would not have been possible without the enduring love and support of all my family, but I wish to express special gratitude to my mum Joan Stark. I also thank my dad Chris Stark and Sara Stark for instilling the ideas that things always, “go deeper”. This research has been richly sustained by all at Slacks Farm, but especially my ever- deepening love for David Chatton Barker and our beautiful son Rowan. I thank Annabel Nicolson for making Reel Time, which largely inspired this research, and for supporting my interest in her work. To spur on anyone in a similar position, this project has been carried out on a part-time basis without regular funding. Do not give up. The international dissemination of the research has been financially assisted through the Research Development Fund at Manchester School of Art Research Centre, as well as a UK Arts Council Grants for the Arts award for an artist residency at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto in 2014, with support from the Canadian Council for the Arts. The release of Industrial Folklore Tapes Vol IV: Film as Fabric was financially assisted with an Oram Award for women innovating in sound and music selected by the PRS Foundation and New Radiophonic Workshop. From 2018-2019 I was grateful to receive a bursary from Funds for Women Graduates. Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 Short description of Film as Fabric ............................................................................................................................. 2 Film as Fabric at Radio Revolten International Festival of Radio Art ........................................................................ 3 Film as Fabric at Full of Noises, Islington Mill ......................................................................................................... 6 Rationale .................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Cutting/Editing ....................................................................................................................................................... 11 Aims and Objectives ................................................................................................................................................. 12 Methodology .............................................................................................................................................................. 13 Context .................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Contribution to Knowledge ........................................................................................................................................ 25 Chapter 1: The relationships between textile practice and experimental filmmaking ..... 26 The shared technology and terminology of textile practice and experimental filmmaking .............................................. 27 Women’s work in the cutting rooms of early cinema ................................................................................................... 32 Filmmaking terminology as gendered ......................................................................................................................... 40 Annabel Nicolson’s Reel Time ................................................................................................................................. 43 Chapter 1: Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 48 Technical glossary ..................................................................................................................................................... 50 Glossary of terms shared between textile practice and filmmaking ............................................................................... 51 Chapter 2: Sampling Reel Time .................................................................................................. 54 The artist’s body in expanded cinema performance ..................................................................................................... 58 Film and the body ..................................................................................................................................................... 61 Film as a gendered body ............................................................................................................................................ 62 Clothing in expanded cinema performance .................................................................................................... 65 Textile practice as performance art ................................................................................................................. 67 Machine-stitched film quilts ............................................................................................................................. 69 Transforming textile practice into experimental filmmaking ....................................................................................... 71 Patterned imagery as optical sound in experimental film .......................................................................... 73 Patterned imagery as optical sound in expanded cinema ............................................................................................. 75 Tactility in sound art performance ............................................................................................................................. 77 Chapter 2: Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 79 Chapter 3: Crafting noisy expanded cinema performance .................................................... 80 Performing craft/crafting performance ........................................................................................................................ 83 The re-emergence of narrative in post-materialist expanded cinema ............................................................................. 88 Textile practice as noisy feminist strategy ................................................................................................................... 91 Editing as a craft of connection .................................................................................................................................