SUPER(IM)POSITIONS: Subverting Melodramatic Representation Through Personal Unpredictability
(2024)
author(s): Emilio Santoyo
published in: Research Catalogue
This Artistic Research in and through cinema explores the possibilities of using outdated melodramatic elements of cinematic representation in a new way, dissolving the intersection between the personal and the fictional as a tool for creating a redemptive act of filmmaking. "Super (im) positions: Subverting melodramatic representation through personal unpredictability" delves into the transformative potential of these elements within cinematic representation. By dissolving the boundaries between the personal and the fictional, this work engages in a redemptive act of filmmaking that reimagines melodrama. The approach employs a contemporary, polyphonic, and playful film language to propose a new form of melodrama—one that acknowledges its inherent perversity to challenge and deconstruct its toxic narratives.
Rooted in the pervasive influence of telenovelas and melodrama, particularly within Mexican culture, this exploration questions and critiques the genre's impact on cultural and individual perceptions of love and relationships. The research was catalysed by a significant personal and professional rupture, leading to a critical examination of the genre's conventions.
By employing a contemporary, polyphonic, and playful film language, Santoyo reimagines melodrama as a genre capable of portraying complex, personal emotions and generating critical, boundary-pushing narratives. This self-reflective genre deviation, temporarily termed the "New Melodrama," seeks to subvert traditional melodramatic tropes by acknowledging and confronting their perverse nature. Through this approach, Santoyo aims to dismantle the toxic knowledge perpetuated by conventional melodrama, offering a sophisticated and nuanced critique from within the genre itself. His work presents a trojan horse strategy, using the familiar systems of melodramatic representation to question and ultimately transform them, proposing a relevant and self-aware cinematic experience.
Through innovative use of superimpositions and a deliberate deconstruction of melodramatic mise-en-scène, this study aims to create a critical and self-reflective genre deviation termed "New Melodrama." This method seeks to subvert traditional cinematic conventions by integrating multiple perspectives and temporalities, fostering a richer, more complex narrative experience. Ultimately, the research stands as a trojan horse within the film industry, using the very mechanics of melodrama to critique and reinvent it, offering a fresh, introspective take on a genre often dismissed as superficial.
Örat nära munnen: samtal mellan film och filosofi
(2024)
author(s): Marius Dybwad Brandrud
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
This PhD project is a study in and through filmic conversations. The project addresses the role of conversation in philosophy education. While philosophy often is manifested in individually written form, this is a study of how filmic conversation can act as philosophical expression, mainly based on the film "Samtal om samtal" which is the principal material of this PhD project. The film begins by addressing the manner of which we speak to one another in a seminar; and by extension how that manner decides which philosophy is at all made possible: Who is speaking and who is listening? Whose experiences count and whose ideas are welcome? Yet, conversation is not only of interest as practice but also as expression. Sometimes something is said through/as conversation that could not have been expressed in any other form. What would happen if conversation, as a communal way of saying things, would constitute a form of philosophical expression in its own right, on par with the individually written text? What form would such an expression be allowed to take? Could philosophy be expressed through the medium of film? In and through the filmic conversation of this study, these queries also lead on to issues of representation and responsibility: What signifies the practice of making a film about or with someone? How are those involved in a film project affected, and how can the film act (in the world) independently? How could responsibility be understood in the process of making a film and regarding the final result? In addition to "Samtal om samtal", the text "Eftertext" is submitted. The text further explores the previously mentioned questions, but adds another layer in commenting on the filmic work of "Samtal om samtal". "Eftertext" also refers to the films "Ett jag som säger vi" and "Rehearsals", as well as the document "Transkription". These works are included as appendices, forming sub studies in the process of making "Samtal om samtal".
Collaborative Dramaturgies in Filmmaking
(2023)
author(s): Hannaleena Hauru
published in: Research Catalogue
In this thesis, I make a personal reflection on how the dramaturgical concept of the feature film “Parvet” was created. The aim of the project is to build dramaturgical tools that would benefit voices that are currently marginalized in Finnish film and television. The “Parvet” film focuses on experiences as a racialized or indigenous person, and as a non-binary trans person in Finland in 2023 and deals also with the representation of people with learning disabilities, while most crew members in the production, including me, are white, non-disabled and cis-gendered. The central questions in the thesis are:
• How did using feminist decolonial theories and my previous experiences in collaborative filmmaking inspire the methodological framework for the concept of "Parvet"?
• How can autobiographical minority experiences be adapted to fiction film by providing agency to the performers by rearranging artistic decision-making power between the auteur-director, the performers, and the designers in the crew?
• How does "Parvet" navigate the complex interplay of collaborative filmmaking within a project centered on minority topics while operating in an environment and industry dominated by structural whiteness?
Creating “Parvet” took place in 2022–2023. The film is directed by Hannaleena Hauru and Katja Gauriloff and produced by Emilia Haukka. The production is a collaboration between Aamu Film Company and Uniarts Helsinki's Theatre Academy. “Parvet” will premiere in 2024. The thesis was written in the Summer–Autumn of 2023, while “Parvet” has still been in post-production.
luxurious migrant // performing whiteness
(2020)
author(s): Stacey Sacks
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
Stacey Sacks is a PhD candidate in Performing Arts at Stockholm’s University of the Arts. Her Doctoral Project *This Untethered Buffoon or the Trickster in Everything* takes form as a suite of hyper-disciplinary experiments with mask, clown, stop-motion animation, film, photography, sculpture, text, drawing and performance.
Drawing on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of ‘critical intimacy’ the performance-essay 'luxurious migrant' reflects on whiteness and privilege and the performance of it. As an intra-cultural, auto-ethnographic excavation it attempts and possibly fails to critically engage with notions of access, authority and power from within the cultural canon. As such it is a creative experimentation with theory and performance, an exploration of the improvisatory impulse and what it means to be ‘on’ the moment.
Since clown naturally contains transgressive elements, the project explores how the genre can be used in a neo-colonial context to subvert or interrupt the dominant discourse, whether satire and parody function as activism and if it is in fact possible to push back white supremacy through critical engagement and play, starting with a robust self-critique.
You and Me and Everything Around Us
(2020)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
published in: Research Catalogue
Single channel video, 3’, 2008
The probe for the work was the philosophical question what it is to exist in the world: in environments, with others, people, objects, surfaces; and whether the answer can be intuited.
The work evokes the temporality of such experiences, which is contingent upon the ever-changing nature of things. Objects have often had multiple owners, and so they carry traces of previous worlds. When encountering objects new to us, we may find ourselves appropriating them through affective attachment to assimilate them into our world. Inspired by the everyday lives of the house's occupants, the work is also about the affective bonds developed during and because of their temporary co-existence.
Experimentation with overlaying resonates with the artistic expression of overlapping materials, textures, spatial qualities, and reflected images. Photographs, film footage and sounds were recorded in an improvised way over a one year period in an old house in Walthamstow, East London. The artistic treatment of the subject matter as a time-based media assemblage, which exploits the home style video format, critiques popular staged presentations of everyday life, while exploring the house as an evolving over time system.
[in]visible_illustrating the absence
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Margarida Dias, Catarina Casais
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
On February 19th 2024 took place the 2nd seminar, "Illustrating the absence" of the project "[in]visible - [in]visibility of identities in Portuguese 1st-grade elementary textbooks of Social & Environmental Studies after 1974", at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (Portugal). For the reflection, illustration and critical analysis of the illustration works, there was the participation of the Master's in Illustration, Edition and Print students with the illustrator Júlio Dolbeth and the [in]visible team. Cristina Ferreira and Margarida Dias took the photos, and the session was recorded with audio.
[in]visible_seeing the invisible
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Margarida Dias, Maria Lurdes Gomes
connected to: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
On March 14th 2023 took place the 1st seminar, "Seeing the invisible" of the project "[in]visible - [in]visibility of identities in Portuguese 1st-grade elementary textbooks of Social & Environmental Studies after 1974", at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (Portugal). For the reflection and critical analysis of the illustration works, there was the participation of the illustrators Júlio Dolbeth, Rui Vitorino Santos, Samuel Moura, the guests Catarina Casais, Daniela Fraga Gomes, Inês Capelo, Joana Carneiro, and in addition to the team, the external consultant Fernando Hernández-Hernández (U. Barcelona). Cristina Ferreira and Fabrício Fava took photographs. Through practical and creative proposals, the seminar aimed to think and problematize the illustration in 1st-grade elementary Social & Environmental Studies textbooks published in Portugal in the last 2 decades.
Participação cidadã na construção e representação de cidades: contributos de uma etnografia da produção informal do espaço urbano
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Ana Miriam Rebelo
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Suporte da comunicação feita no 1º encontro de Projeto e Ciências Sociais - FAUL - Lisboa
Resumo
Esta comunicação enquadra-se no âmbito de um projeto de investigação que pretende contribuir para a promoção da participação cidadã na construção das cidades e das suas representações, cada vez mais determinantes para os processos de desenvolvimento urbano. A partir do reconhecimento e da análise das interligações entre a cidade e a sua imagem, a investigação incide sobre práticas e estéticas da construção informal na cidade do Porto, abordando a questão da participação em ambas as vertentes: produção de espaço urbano e produção de representações de cidade.
Partindo do pressuposto de que qualquer representação de cidade é necessariamente fragmentária e que deve por isso coexistir, dialogar e confrontar-se com outras representações, procura-se contribuir para um cenário imagético diversificado, observando e expondo dimensões informais dos processos de produção do espaço urbano, frequentemente deslegitimadas, senão proibidas, mas por vezes também alvo de estratégias de comodificação.
A comunicação centra-se no trabalho de pesquisa etnográfica em curso, defendendo a importância desta metodologia para a produção de representações de cidade que possam refletir a complexidade, a diversidade e as contradições que caracterizam a urbanidade. Faz-se uma análise dos dados recolhidos até ao momento e da abordagem que temos vindo a empregar, essencialmente baseada na fotografia - enquanto ferramenta de documentação e enquanto instrumento discursivo - e na recolha de testemunhos junto de habitantes, recorrendo a diferentes metodologias.
Pretende-se partilhar o processo e a reflexão metodológica que o acompanha, assim como discutir as perspetivas de aplicação do material recolhido, no âmbito do nosso projeto assim como no de projetos em diferentes áreas da investigação e da prática da arte, do design, da arquitetura ou do ativismo.