ISSN 2514-3123
https://doi.org/10.37186/swrks/11.1

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Rolling Volume 11.1

It is with great pleasure that we publish the final piece for our Volume 11.1: Orson Nava’s Decolonising the Curatorial Process. This forty-minute documentary invites us to a participate in a special, temporal and intellectual journey, engaging with dialogical practice and reflection on what decolonising art institutions and spaces entails. From the Museum of London Docklands in London, to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, and Cape Peninsula University, the film becomes a meeting point for researchers and practitioners committed to radically transforming museums and higher education institutions, as well as the collaboration between these to. Beyond this insightful call to dismantle long-established Eurocentric curatorial practice, Nava’s film and research statement evidence the dialogical and inter-disciplinary methodologies that participate in what is still an ongoing struggle. Such a process is enhanced by the integration of voices of two peer reviewers, who celebrate the visibility to the decolonial thinking process led by researchers of African heritage.

Susan Cardillo’s Finding Matilda – Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust through Documentary Creation, explores the process of experiential learning through filmmaking with students documenting an archaeological project in search of the remains of Matilda Olkin, a young Lithuanian college student and poet who has been hailed as the new Anne Frank. The film and accompanying research statement outline how through the process of making the documentary these “GenZ” students developed a greater understanding of the Holocaust whilst at the same time giving one of its forgotten victims a voice. The project explores how teaching and learning about the Holocaust can be enhanced through project-based, experiential learning in a real-world context of study and engagement with the human condition. [Ed.: If you enjoy this you might also like our special issue Vol 10.2 on Practice Pedagogies (edited by Lucy Leake in association with the journal of Media Practice Education).] 

Jeremy Bubb’s In Search of A Past is an autoethnographic three-screen art installation which explores the experience illness and death from dementia of his mother, Dorothy. Building on Bubb’s previous multi-screen work (see Writ in Water), the project takes the form of a triptych, with a central video image documenting the now empty domestic sphere of his mother’s home, flanked by two screens with images from Bubb’s family archive: youthful images on the left juxtaposed against older images on the right. In each of these screens photographs slowly morph from one to another through time using a slow dissolve which results in deformative moments where two images are overlaid, drawing to light the shifting nature of identity and human mortality. The project, which references both slow cinema and moving image art practice, is both a visual paean to his mother and a moving testimony of the ongoing traces of a life, even in absentia.

In When Dahlias Bend Down, Tasos Giapoutzis offers an intimate portrait of his elderly grandparents, capturing details of everyday life in a Greek village, their apartment and its veranda, overlooking the eponymous Dahlias. The minimal presence of the filmmaker is felt through the subtle use of observational documentary techniques which cumulatively create a sense of nostalgia. The first half of the film documents the couple’s routine as they navigate the grandmother’s painful ill health and anticipate the end of her life. In the second half, the film explores the widowed grandfather’s struggle to cope in the flat alone after her death, as he contemplates his own mortality. The film both functions as memory text and investigates the relationship between filmmaker and subject, drawing on autobiographical and autoethnographic research models and inviting the viewer to share in the sense of loss and remembrance.

The Park is a poetic documentary by Kim Munro which explores the final eight months before the closure of Wantirna Caravan Park on the outskirts of Melbourne. Residents of the park were handed eviction notices and given a year to vacate in December 2016. This film de-centres narrative to provide a series of vignettes of life in the park as the residents collect petitions, write letters and hold roadside protests. In her accompanying writing, Munro reflects on the way poetry in documentary can function as a means of reconsidering and problematising the expository-authority of the filmmaker. 

Agnieszka Piotrowska’s Repented, Flora and Dambudzo, a practice-research journey across two experimental films which share a core compelling question about the influence of colonialism on intimate relationships in Zimbabwe. Flora and Damudzo (2015) depicts a scene between the iconic Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera and his German lover Flora Veit Wild using words from their historical writing. Repented (2019) is based on a play by Zimbabwean playwright Stanely Makuwe and focuses on the confrontational meeting of two characters after a long absence. Through split screen editing, the film also incorporates archive material shot during colonial times in Rhodesia and South Africa which serves as an expressive illustration of the profound injustice, oppressiveness and gestures of defiance that occurred. Through this sustained enquiry, Piotrowska describes the process of adapting different material for the screen, explores notions of theatricality and reflects on the significant period of time between the creation of the films as a period of learning and questioning her own preconceptions and ideas.

Elisabeth Brun’s Thinking Through Form, a compelling exploration of essay film techniques. In this award winning experimental work, Brun explores how essayist film practice may be a way to think topographically. She suggests that through non-verbal techniques such as camera movement, camera position, montage and algorithm, films can think conceptually about place forms and place structures, as well as their projective powers for the imagination. Brun’s video essay is structured around three visits to her remote hometown in the Arctic North of Norway, exploring this site to build her ideas about how places are perceived, imagined and conceptualized.

Anatomy of a Mermaid: Subverting the performative image of the pregnant woman, by Adriana Páramo Pérez, is a video essay which explores the use of parody in the play Anatomía dunha serea / Anatomy of a Mermaid by Galician actress Iria Pinheiro to share the experiences of obstetric violence she went through during and after childbirth. Páramo Pérez interrogates how the use of humour to portray pregnant women in films has helped to perpetuate a performative image of this experience rather than subverting the imaginary, opening up a conversation about how to portray this uncomfortable topic on screen.

Mirrors and Tears, is a short film by Pavel Prokopic which explores the potential of film to give rise to a feeling of meaning (affective significance) by combining chance, aspects of audio-visual style and nuances of performance – offsetting, in the process, a coherent sense of space, story and fictional characters. Rather than constructing a story, this approach leads to a new disconnected, alogical structure – forging a sense of meaning that is felt before it can be thought.

Chek Lap Kok (Hong Kong Airport) 21.00 01.12.19 is a short video by Stephen Connolly which documents a walk to Hong Kong Airport from the Expo centre on the airport island, by means of slow travel, under makeshift conditions, and without carbon expenditure. The video offers a brief exploration of the materialities and grounded infrastructures of aviation at a moment of pandemic-led change and invites us to look anew at the familiar and banal physical geography of the airport and how we move within it, drawing on Lefebvre’s Production of Space and theories of ‘Spatial Cinema’.

Iakovos Panagopoulos’ visually arresting Flickering Souls Set Alight is a thirty minute fiction film following the life of a Greek family during the toughest years of the financial crisis. With her husband on a life support machine, the film depicts Persephone’s financial and emotional struggles, drawing attention to a lack of support for people suffering from ALS. This practice-research enquiry asks how modernist techniques, such as Brechtian alienation, can comment on contemporary Greek social issues. Highlighting the cinema of Theo Angelopoulos, Andrei Tarkovsky and Abbas Kiarostami as references, Panagopoulos’ research statement details his production process through the lens of a total filmmaker approach and proposes a new wave of political cinema in Greece.

Screenworks is a rolling publication. Each volume runs from Sept to August. We are still accepting submissions for Volumes 11.1.  To submit work please read our Submissions Guidelines and use our Online Submission Form. If you are interested in submitting your practice and want further advice, then please contact us on [email protected] with “Submissions” in the subject line.

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Contents

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This volume is supported by the Moving Image Research Group and the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England, UWE Bristol.

Peer-Review for Practice Research

Welcome to Screenworks – the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in film and screen media, edited by Dr Charlotte Crofts (UWE Bristol) and Associate Editors: Will DiGravio (The Video Essay Podcast); Shweta Ghosh (PhD Candidate at University of Reading); Catherine Gough-Brady (PhD Candidate at RMIT, Australia); Dr Matthew Hawkins (London Southbank University); Dr Alexander Nevill (Nottingham Trent University); Dr Estrella Sendra Fernandez (SOAS, University of London and Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton). Screenworks publishes practice research that produces new knowledge in Communication, Media and Cultural Studies, Art and Design, Performing Arts and related fields. We offer a forum for the dissemination and discussion of practice research that includes space for reflection on research contexts. Work is published alongside a research statement, which offers a ‘route map’ of the research process, together with two anonymous reviews, which provide critical feedback on both the work itself and its research context.

We accept submissions on a rolling basis as well as for Special Issues. Please see the Submissions page for further information about current calls, deadlines, the peer review process and how to submit your work. Please be aware of our Accessibility Policy, which applies to Vol 12 onwards. Go to our Archive to explore previous volumes, including the full supporting research statements and peer reviews for each volume. If you are interested in proposing a Special Issue then please see our Special Issues Policy.

What is unique about Screenworks is that the work is subject to academic peer review, just as an academic journal article would be, thus providing evidence of the impact, significance, originality and rigour of the practice as research. In addition we operate an open single blind review policy, where anonymous peer reviews are published alongside the research statement so that the review process is transparent. Our intention is to create a supportive, yet rigorous research environment for the academic community researching screen media through practice, whilst at the same time engaging with wider audiences. You can read more about Screenworks‘ evolving editorial approach in Crofts and Nevill (2018).

Screenworks was originally convened in 2006 by Professor Jon Dovey, and Associate editor, Dr Charlotte Crofts, and took the form of a DVD that was distributed with the Journal of Media Practice (JMP) by Intellect Books. Volume 1 was published with JMP (8:2) in Autumn 2007, and Volume 2 with JMP (9:3) in December 2008. Extracts of the works in Volumes 1 & 2 were published online, where possible, when the website was relaunched under the banner of JMPScreenworks.com at the JMP Symposium 2011.

Screenworks migrated to the present website in 2016. We now publish exclusively online in order to disseminate work more widely, save costs and to fulfil the current AHRC and REF research agendas of open access, impact and public engagement. We hope that this new home will enable Screenworks to continue to flourish and grow as both an online publisher of academic film and as a forum for championing screen media practice research with in the academy.

References

Charlotte Crofts & Alexander Nevill (2018) Publishing screen media practice research: evolving processes of contextualisation, peer review and future proofing in Screenworks, Media Practice and Education, 19:3, 283-297, DOI: 10.1080/25741136.2018.1529478.

Academic Reviewers

John Adams	University of Bristol
Laura Ager	University of Salford
Judith Aston	University of the West of England
Sarah Atkinson	King’s College London
Sarah Barrow	University of Lincoln
Des Bell	Queens Belfast
Paola Bilbrough	Victoria University in Melbourne
Kornelia Boczkowska	Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznam
Elena Boschi	Edge Hill University
Mick Broderick	Murdoch University
Christopher Brown	University of Sussex
Jeremy Bubb	University of Roehampton, London
Inga Burrows	University of Glamorgan
Joanna Callaghan	University of Sussex
Neil Carrier	University of Bristol
David Chapman	University of East London
Mark Chapman	Northumbria University
Steve Choe	San Francisco State University
Alastair Cole	Newcastle University
Nick Cope	University Of Sunderland
Patrick Crogan	University of the West of England
Jill Daniels	University of East London
Katie Davies	University of West England
Andrew Dewdney	London South Bank University
Karel Doing	University of the Arts London
Jonathan Dovey	University of the West of England
Tony Dowmunt	Goldsmiths College
Ludovica Fales	University of West London
Bettina Frankham	University of Technology Sydney
Annie Goldson	University of Auckland
Amy Hardie	University of Edinburgh
Wendy Haslem	University of Melbourne
Matthew Hawkins	London South Bank University
Jimmy Hay	Bristol University
Robert Herrema	Michigan State University
Coral Houtman	University of South Wales
Dina Iordanova	University of St. Andrews
Andrew James	Plymouth College of Art
Itandehui Jansen	University of Edinburgh
Owain Jones	Bath Spa University
Aaron Kerner	University of Edinburgh
Lina Khatib	Royal Holloway University
Erik Knudsen	University of Salford
Adam Laity	University of the West of England
Nicholas Lambert	Ravensbourne
Rik Lander	University of the West of England
Gillian Leahy	University of Technology Sydney
Lucy Leake	Plymouth College of Art
Alisa Lebow	Brunel University
Dominic Lees	University for the Creative Arts
Claire Levy	Bath Spa University
Sasha Litvintseva	Goldsmiths
Ramon Lobata	RMIT University
Matthew Lovett	University of Gloucestershire
Nariman Massoumi	Bristol University
Kenta McGrath	Curtin University
Cahal Mclaughlin	Queens University, Belfast
Joshua McNamara	University of Melbourne
Smriti Mehra	Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology
Chris Meigh-Andrews	University of Central Lancashire
Katherine Morrissey	San Francisco State University
Heidi Morstand	University of Plymouth
Steven Paige	Plymouth College of Art
Iakovos Panagopoulos	Ionian University
Kayla Parker	University of Plymouth
Gail Pearce	Royal Holloway University
Angela Piccini	Bournemouth University
Matti Pohjonen	VOX-Pol Network of Excellence
Steve Presence	University of the West of England
Khazim Rahman	Plymouth College of Art
Elizabeth Ramirez-Soto	San Francisco State University
Michael Renov	University of Southern California
Randy Rustky	San Francisco State University
Claudia Sandberg	University of Melbourne
Jeff Scheible	Kings College London
John Sealey	Fabian’s Film
Dafydd Sills-Jones	Auckland University of Technology
Jen Stein	University of the West of England
Suzanne Stich	University of Ulster
Sue Sudbury	University of Bournemouth
Patrick Tarrant	London South Bank University
Joram Ten Brink	University of Westminster
Lizzie Thynne	University of Sussex
Romana Turina	Curtin University
Sarah Turner	University of Kent
Michael  Uwemedimo	Roehampton University
Frank Verano	University of Sussex
Mike Wayne	Brunel University
Anna Zaluczkowska	Leeds Beckett University
Anna Zaluczkowska	Leeds Beckett University
Joanna Zylinska	Goldsmiths

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We are very keen to expand our pool of academic reviewers, particularly in terms of international scope, so if you would be interested in getting involved then please email with “Screenworks Reviewer” in the subject line, outlining your area of interest / expertise and your institutional affiliation.

Supported by the Moving Image Research Group and the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England, UWE Bristol.

Call for Submissions

We invite submissions of moving image work on film, video and new media platforms. We feel strongly that the function of Screenworks is to provide an opportunity for practice research to undergo the equivalent rigorous peer-review process to that of traditional publication, and fully understand contributors’ need to evidence the impact and significance of their practice as research. Where submissions are documentation of interactive or installation work we encourage producers to consider the problems of documentation as part of the research process. We welcome work from doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers, as well as those at the cutting edge of practice research both nationally and internationally.

Guidelines for Contributors

Please submit via the online submission form linked above and read the following guidelines:

Practice Component

Videos or video documentation of other practice must be uploaded to Vimeo, even if it is available online elsewhere. If you do not already have an account, you will need to join in order to upload your work. Please see the Vimeo Compression page for guidance on optimising your upload. You can then include the URL and, if necessary, the password for the video in our online submission form. Only if and when your work is accepted for publication will we make it available on the Screenworks website.

Please note that should your work be accepted for publication you will need to update the Vimeo privacy settings to allow us to embed it on our website. Contributors take full responsibility for ensuring that their submissions adhere to UK copyright guidelines.

If your work is web-based, then simply supply the URL for review purposes. If your work takes any other form (e.g. an app, screen-based art installation or performance) or you have a problem with uploading it to Vimeo, then please contact us to arrange an alternative review method. We are keen to showcase as many pieces of high quality practice research as we can. Where submissions are documentation of interactive or installation work we encourage contributors to consider the problems of documentation as part of the research process.

From Vol 12 onwards, once the peer review process is completed, the audio-visual work will need to be captioned by the author prior to publication. We ask that authors also provide a descriptive transcript of the final video. Please note that captions are not required for the submission of the work for peer review, unless a reviewer requests captions so that they can access the work. Please see our Accessibility Policy for more information.

Supporting Research Statement

Statements of up to 2000 words should outline Research Questions, Context, Methods, Outcomes and Impact – although we also welcome the development of alternative ways of writing about practice which can identify new knowledge, research contexts and rigour – as long as they clearly identify the research in your submission. Please refer to our style guide before submitting.

There are many different kinds of screen media practice research. Our aim is to generate “new knowledge” in Communication, Media and Cultural Studies, Art and Design, Performing Arts and related fields. The purpose of the statement is not to “explain” the screenwork, but rather to offer a “route map” of the research process, as well as a means to provide evidence for the dissemination and wider impact of the practice.

Peer Review Process

All work submitted to Screenworks undergoes rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and refereeing by at least two anonymous referees. Both the statement and practical work are subject to open but anonymous peer review selected from our growing list of academic reviewers representing scholar practitioners working across the field of screen media both in the UK and internationally. Reviewers will have the choice of recommending publication of both work and research statement, acceptance of work with minor rewrites of statement required, invitation to resubmit both in reworked form or of rejecting.

In the case of successful submissions, the reviews are published online alongside the practical work and supporting research statement. The aim is that, through this process, criteria for research will be generated by the community over a period of time – that we will use a dialogic model of criteria generation and research. The process of open reviewing is intended to promote an active, concrete dialogue within the community of screen media scholar practitioners as to how our research is constituted, defined and disseminated.

Submission Deadlines

Screenworks is published on a rolling basis. This means that in the spirit of reactive online publishing we will review and publish work as it is comes in, rather than waiting for a full volume before publication. In addition to the rolling volume, we also publish themed Special Issues, the first of which Volume 7.3 was on Aesthetics/Politics/Activism/Art: What is Radical Filmmaking? Our second Special Issue, Volume 8.2, was on the theme of Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene edited by Alex Nevill in partnership with guest editors Charlie Tweed (Bath Spa University) and Joshua McNamara (University of Melbourne). Our third Special Issue Volume 10.2 is on the theme of Practice Pedagogies, edited by Lucy Leake, in collaboration with the Journal of Media Practice and Education. If you are interested in collaborating on a Special Issue then please see our Special Issues Policy.