This project explores notions of seeing and knowing, underpinned by performative and phenomenological fields of enquiry that relate this exploration to the sensate experience of the viewer. A specific interest considers ideas of embodied vision with an aim at generating events that vacillate in the bodies of the audience. A primary focus is on the arena of encounter as a multi-sensory experiential event, and within this context this project proposes a temporal and spatial framework for exploration. Studio methods develop a cinematic-body of video work negotiating performative practice involving video projection and temporality. Pivotal goals are to explore the significance of the ‘chiasm’ between seeing and knowing, raising questions about how humans see, and how humans make how they see matter. Therefore, this thesis project progresses along experimental approaches to video installation, particularly in relation to the phenomena of encounter, the viewer, and film experience. The central motivation of this video practice is aimed at corporeal affect in the body/s of the audience. This thesis project is constituted as 80% practice-based work accompanied by a 20% exegesis.

This thesis focuses on four women-directed films as a way to illustrate some characteristics shared by the new Catalan creative documentary: El cielo gira ( The Sky Turns, dir. Mercedes Álvarez, 2004), Nedar (Swim, dir. Carla Subirana, 2008), La plaga (The Plague, dir. Neus Ballús, 2013), and Penèlope (Penelope, dir. Eva Vila, 2018). My aim is to highlight their alternative cinematographic strategies, which stray from the hegemonic discourses of documentary filmmaking. In so doing, I analyze these films from three different angles: the relationship between the filmmaker and the material world; the alternative modalities of time; and the haptic connection between the spectator and the screen. Instead of preparing a traditional thesis in manuscript form, I engage with these films through a video-essay, the most appropriate mode of academic rhetoric and presentation to address this topic (Keathley 190). Entitled Cinema “Turns”: Catalan Creative Documentary, my video-essay articulates my study into three parts: in the first part, I analyze the limits of the realist discourse; in the second, I focus on how these films approach temporality; and in the third, I address their haptic visuality. To view the accompanying video essay, please download the additional file below.