Exorcising Unhomely Street: Filmic Intuition and the Representation of Post-concussive Syndrome
(2017)
author(s): Susannah Gent
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
My interdisciplinary, practice-led research involves a diverse methodological approach, including experimental film production, continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience. In this exposition, I review the role of intuition in creative practice, and the influential factors when the work of art ‘happens’.
The short, experimental film Unhomely Street represents the experience of post-concussive syndrome through a surrealist narrative with historical accounts of atrocity and anti-capitalist polemics. Having employed a new approach to filmmaking — a spontaneous method in which artistic decisions are informed by emotional tone rather than narrative concerns — I reflect upon this creative play. I draw on the work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, specifically his view that emotion underpins consciousness, Freud’s theory of the unconscious, and Irving Massey’s understanding of metaphor as the original, pre-linguistic language of thought.
In and out of memory: exploring the tension when remembering a traumatic event.
(2015)
author(s): Anna Walker
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The modernist approach to trauma points to an occurrence that demands representation and yet refuses to be represented (Roth 2012: 93); the intensity of the experience makes it difficult to remember and impossible to forget, making any form of recollection inadequate. This exposition explores the repetitive and unresolved notion of trauma using 11 September 2001 as the entry point to navigate a pathway backward into the past and all that was remembered, and uncovers what was forgotten in an effort to lay a traumatic memory to rest. The research began with a journal written on the day of and days following the disaster, which up until a couple of years ago remained closed and unread. Personal remembering is layered upon a well-established collective memory of the event and a vast array of literature, art, and theory written in response to 9/11.