Expanding the field of practice-based-research: the videographic (feminist) diptych

ABSTRACT

In this article my aim is to situate the growing area of academic audio-visual essays within a wider field of practice-based-research. My objective is to look for patterns across this field so as to pose questions as to the history of common strategies for practice-based research. One such pattern is that of comparison. Beginning in the 1970s, I create a joined up trajectory of comparative re-playings using Le Grice’s Berlin Horse (1970) Ken Jacobs’ nervous system projections (1975–2000), Douglas Gordon’s Through a Looking Glass (1999) and Mark Dean’s glitchy videos (1994–1997). Coming up to date I focus upon three videographic diptychs that adopt comparison as their modus operandi: Success (Jaap Kooijman 2016) Maya and Mia at la la land (Jenny Oyallon-Koloski 2019) and Santa y Teresa: a walking dialogue (Michelle Leigh Farrell 2020). Through the creation of this trajectory we find that comparison is a strategy that is not simply ‘good to think with’ but also good to think with in audio-visual and feminist ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Expanded cinema
• avant garde film
• feminism
• videographic diptychs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Catherine Fowler is an Associate Professor in Film at Otago University, New Zealand. She is editor of The European Cinema Reader (Routledge, 2002), co-editor with Gillian Helfield of Representing the Rural: Space Place and Identity in Films about the Land (Wayne State University Press, 2006) and author of Sally Potter (2009). Her articles on artists’ moving images have been published in Miraj, Cinema Journal and Screen.

Notes

1 As I indicate there are numerous examples of comparison being used as a strategy. Other examples include: double projections from Gill Eatherly (Pan Film, 1971 and Shot Spread, 1972) and Sally Potter’s split screen Play 1970; Monica Bonvicini’s two channel video Destroy she said and Martin Arnold’s films Forsaken and Dissociated (both 2002).

2 Stam and Shohat make the point that ‘improbable comparison (Discordia concors) has catalyzed major artistic schools’ and they cite the metaphysical poets, the surrealists and Jorge Luis Borges. (482)

3 Given the inexhaustive and preliminary nature of my study, diptychs that do not focus on women will exist. One such is Nick Honolulu mon Amour which compares, through split screen, Magnum P. I. and Hiroshima Mon Amour.