The Whispering Gallery: Cinematic Meditations on Transnationalism 1977-2013
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The Whispering Gallery: Cinematic Meditations on Transnationalism 1977-2013 Léa Donnan A thesis submitted to the University of New South Wales in fulfilment of the requirement for Masters of Fine Art (Research) School of Art, College of Fine Arts The University of New South Wales Australia 2013 1 ORIGINALITY STATEMENT ‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’ Signed …………………………………………….............. !! Date …………16 / 08 / 2013………………… 2 ABSTRACT: Using decaying systems wrought from the shifting tides of globalism, Léa Donnan creates cinematic elegies that question, remix and remake communal material histories as part of a wider cultural narrative. Both seductive and terrifying, Donnan retraces the movements of whales, ships and planes in relation to her personal history, a process which suggests how entangled in a multi-system global fabric we truly are. Through a series of actions and appropriations, Donnan interprets world wide systems of migration, communication and exchange as a gestural study; lace like markings on the surface of the planet. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor John Gillies. I'd like to acknowledge Sarah Hamilton for her superior editing skills and keen patience. My heartfelt thanks to Melody Woodnut, NES Artist Residency, dear friends and community members of Skagaströnd, Iceland. With great appreciation to Emma Sanderson, Jieva Grigelionyte, Jurga Latvyte and Dainius Bendikas in Reykjavik, Iceland. A warm thank you to the staff and administration of the College of Fine Arts, University New South Wales, with special appreciation to Bonita Ely, Martin Sims and Jo Elliot. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction......................................................................................................................................7 Chapter One WINGS: Physiology of an Artist......................................................................................................9 Chapter Two BRAIN: The Central Nervous System and the Stitch....................................................................17 Chapter Three SPINE: Gesture and Inhabitation.................................................................................................22 Chapter Four LUNGS: Expansion and Collapse, Cinematic works.....................................................................27 Chapter Five CAPILLARIES: A Network View of the World............................................................................33 BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................................................36 APPENDIX, additional works.......................................................................................................40 5 INTRODUCTION “Then I understood it all. In order to make myself heard, I too must speak as it were along the side of the gallery, which would carry the sound of my voice just as the wire carries the electric fluid from point to point........ If my companions were only to remove a few feet from where they stood, the acoustic effect would be over, my Whispering Gallery would be destroyed.......” - Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth (The Rescue in the Whispering Gallery, chapter 25) All the transport and communication systems in the world become one surface. They are lifted, lace like, to create a single object, a single piece of crafted network fabric. This multi- system material forms the conceptual underbelly of my enquiry. Weaving with the strands of decaying systems entangled in the shifting tides of globalism, I am attempting cinematic elegies that suggest a prototype craft of folkloric global proportions. Working in interdisciplinary practices and drawing on a range of experience both personal and multicultural, I have been engaged in detailed research referencing wider fields of activity in science, technological theory and folk discourse. Exploring the above mentioned areas with abstract representation in film, video, sculpture and performance in the context of installation, I am cataloguing and remixing the communal history of materials as part of a wider cultural narrative. My field work took place primarily in Iceland due to its key location below the arctic circle, on the mid atlantic ridge where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet. Iceland is a hub for migration, transport and industry in proximity to international shipping lanes also strategic for British and American air and naval bases during WWII. My core interest is seeking to understand human nature through migratory systems, network theory, and poetics. Weaving with international networks, using mark making actions 6 and appropriations of disused systems via the moving image, my research aims to refine an intimate visual vocabulary belonging to a third culture; part of the human experience of globalization and transnationalism. My own third culture identity as a practitioner is important as it hangs in the balance of a fragile web of systems of exchange sustained by world economy and transatlantic flight. I am a member of an international nomadic generation raised in the cultural and economic boom times of eighties and nineties globalization, now witness to world economic expansion and collapse. As an artist and mark maker, without ever belonging, I am simultaneously dispossessed and rooted in a cosmopolitan life. By establishing a practice of weaving with international networks through mark making and appropriation, I aim to investigate my part as a specimen of a global phenomenon. My family heritage exists at a cultural interstice with largely Western influence. The typical “border- spanning behavior” practiced by families like mine engages “some important questions about the meaning of national belonging and citizenship in a globalizing transnational era”.1 Moving under the currents of transnational economy, one might say we were members of the mobile elite, although definitions such as “ ‘transmigrant’ or ‘transilience’, that were once applied to mobile elites, but are now just as relevant to a wide range of people who have had the capacity to move and live in and between different countries.” 2 1 Ley, D. (2009) Interna'onal Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Oxford: Elsevier. Pages 388-393 2 Papastergiadis, N. (2012) Cosmopolitanism and Culture. p 46 quoGng Richmond, A. (2002) Globaliza'on: Implica'ons for Immigrants and Refugees. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25(5), p712 7 Chapter 1 WINGS: PHYSIOLOGY OF AN ARTIST At one time in my life, my mother had an Austrian passport, my father Irish and my brother Canadian. I was born in France and was issued an Australian passport, a country I only moved to at the age of seventeen. Positioned within a pattern of international locations and flight paths, relying on communication networks to maintain continually shifting familial connections; I was born a physical player in the systems supporting transnationalism. There is no natural order in the tides of global culture with so many forces at play and ”today there is no singular set of co-ordinates that is pulling the major flows. People are on the move in multiple and circular directions,” 3 making it all the more necessary to mark this moment in international chaos. My enquiries as an artist are an attempt to form some kind of social order in this tangle of international exchange. I have become my own specimen under the umbrella of globalization. As a member of an internationally mobile family unit, being repeatedly displaced by either opportunity or historic event is an imprint of my heritage. I believe it governs my pulse. I am an extreme example of what Ruth Hill Useem, an American sociologist and anthropologist named a “third culture kid” (or a 3CK)4. I am a third generation specimen of the families who formed the cultural underpinnings of globalism by raising children in cultures other than their own. My mother was born in Japan and married my Australian father in America. We lived in England, France, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the United States and later on, Australia. My international background forms the skeletal frame of my art practice. By cataloguing and remixing global systems into lines and fibers, I’m suggesting a prototype cultural practice and a folkloric language for a third culture. “Third culture” was coined by Ruth Hill Useem in collaboration with Dr. John Useem, “as a generic term to cover the styles of life created, shared, 3 Papastergiadis, N. (2012) Cosmopolitanism and Culture. p 46 quoGng Richmond, A. (2002) Globaliza'on: Implica'ons for Immigrants and Refugees. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25(5), p712 4 Useem, R Hill. (1975) Studies of Third Cultures. East Lansing: InsGtute for Internaonal Studies in Educaon, Michigan State University. 8 and learned by persons who are in the process