This research addresses the ways in which film might be used to investigate senses of place and representations of place and ritual. It focuses on two seasonal performative folk traditions in rural England, Haxey Hood in North Lincolnshire and Mayday in Padstow. By considering the experiential qualities of these annual rituals and their significance for local communities as seen in their wider socio-economic contexts, this research raises broader questions regarding place and belonging in contemporary society, and how film as a medium capable of directly conveying phenomenological experience, might transmit the sensual qualities of lived experience, place, and landscape to an audience. Drawing on Sobchack's conception of the film as a body in itself, the role of embodied experience is central in this study in exploring interconnections between the bodies of the filmmaker, the film itself, subjects and audience and their empirical possibilities. The research at the same time is wary of realist approaches to representation, instead seeking to consider the ways in which this “wild meaning” is then manipulated, fragmented and transformed in the process of filmmaking, both ‘in the field’ and in the editing process. Through the use of experimental ethnographic methods, key conceptual aspects of this thesis such as performance, the embodied camera and auto-ethnography are used to investigate the complex ways that place and ritual might not only be known and understood, but are also performed and imagined anew through film. Place and belonging are themes of great contemporary relevance in current academic and art practice, and the outcome of this study has been the creation of my film Folk in Her Machine (2013). By exploring both the sensual qualities of lived experience, and other forms of meaning through experimental ethnographic methods, it is argued that fruitful insights have been gained into both the embodied nature of filmic representation and its performative possibilities, or in MacDougall’s words, film’s interplay “between meaning and being”.

This practice-based thesis proposes radical, critical, creative reconsiderations of memory and how the mnemic may be expressed in art practice. The research took place through developing a series of works within contemporary installation art practice, which considers the experience of memory an abstract, affective event. The thesis confronts the typical assumptions and ocularcentric misconceptions that the mnemic is a visual phenomenon. It challenges presumed relationships between photographs and memory then asks: How may notions of memory be re-examined through art practice so as to allow alternative expressions of memory to emerge? After the critique, the thesis offers an alternative concept of memory that may be incorporated into art practice: the memory-event. The concept emerged through my art practice alongside engagement with the writings of philosophers Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and contemporary theorists such as Simon O’Sullivan and Brian Massumi. The inquiry utilises O’Sullivan’s framework as a method towards parallel critique and creation in contemporary art practices; these counter existing forms of thought. The framework includes seven Deleuzean concepts applied in rethinking memory: the encounter, affect, the production of subjectivity, the minor, the virtual, the event, and mythopoesis. The thesis adopts this approach, and demonstrates how the memory-event developed through phases of research. Firstly, the thesis establishes and critiques prevailing ideas and expressions of memory. It then defines the methods and theories to disrupt existing assumptions of the mnemic, showing how the defined methods and theories were applied in reconsidering and posing alternatives to established assumptions. Included is a visual and textual portfolio of work exploring the ideas of memory produced in my art practice. The implications of this research for art practice constitute, through the mobilisation of the memory-event, potentials for liberation from the constraints of representation and common assumptions of memory. This produces innovative expressions of the mnemic experience, and continues to challenge ways in which memory is considered.

This research explores new methods for practice-based research in fine art (video and multi-media installation) and in curatorial practices, residing in specific readings of Deleuze. The thesis looks into the potential presented by the mirror. Mirrors are symbolic references. Video has the capacity to be a mirror to the world; the exhibition also. Yet the mirror here is not examined as a reflection of the true ‘self’ nor is it invested in concepts of a ‘true’ mirror image of the ‘real’. Instead, the suggestion is made that a mirror pertains to an oxymoron, in which contradictory terms are combined as mirroring is recognised in terms of both “identity” and “difference”. Along these lines, reflection on negation becomes the mode of operation and the mirror maintains the reflective experience, more specifically visual thought, in place. This is why the works made and discussed pursue how the “production of the subject” unfolds representational boundaries. It is suggested that the act of being reflected must engage new ways of thinking about multiplicity of subject-positions; what it means to ‘be’ or ‘become’ and how past experiences are manifest in the present. The analysis has been formed through an examination of the transformative potential in representations for speaking about political realities today. To consider these issues, the thesis brings together a number of inter-related fields of creative practice and situates critical inquiry in methodologies that structure how the ‘subject’ manifests itself on screen. A “philosophy of practice”, linking curatorial activities and artistic works is developed through a series of philosophical reflections; artworks; curatorial activities and dialogues with different artists and theorists. The thesis seen as a whole examines these ‘encounters’ that facilitates a mirror reflection of a world “yet-to-come” through varied means for engagement which are tested in art production and theoretical and curatorial positions.

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This practice-led research investigates the problematic representations of women from ethnic minorities in the context of Turkey. It questions the ways in which Turkish cinema conceals the ‘other’ ethnic and cultural differences and represents female identity. It seeks to address this problem through newly created artworks: a series of animation and video works aiming to evoke traces of ‘other’ female ethnicities in Turkish society. The case study, Istiklal Avenue,is an important location that was formerly inhabited by ethnic minorities and was the birthplace of Turkish cinema (Yeşilçam) in 1914. This location forms a platform for the research to find new forms of representation through spatial mappings in the specially created artworks. The thesis is situated in relation to the existing literature on historical representations, from the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul to the period that marks the Istanbul Pogrom (1955), and to contemporary representations of women, especially Asuman Suner and Gönül Dönmez-Colin’s analyses of non-Muslim women in New Turkish Cinema. The methodological approach of the thesis is shaped by the investigation of Turkish cinema and site-specific research at Istiklal Avenue. Svetlana Boym’s (2001) idea that cultural references are usually hidden within the details of ‘reflective nostalgia’films is an important concept which is referred to throughout the thesis. The term ‘shock effect’, which Suner (2010) employs for Turkish reflective nostalgia films, is used in the thesis to describe moments of rupture in the collective memory and consciousness of Turkish society regarding the histories of the ethnic and religious minorities of Turkey. Visual and aural dissonances are created in the artworks to evoke traces of these histories. The first artwork uses the voice-over of the female protagonist Madame Lena in the film Whistle If You Come Back (1993)to create an audio-visual and spatial map for these repressed identities, but the female voice in the final artwork generates a more intensified evocative experience, described by adopting Catherine Clément’s term ‘rapture’ (1994). The research also looks at the difference between ethnic identities through the spoken Turkish of ethnic minorities of an older generation, to explore the viewing of the artworks in different cultural contexts. As well as theoretical and historical research into the female voice,architectural and other visual details are used as research material to make artworks. On-site investigations reveal how various film techniques and montages inform cognitive and psychogeographic mapping, which is put into practice to achieve a spatial understanding of Istiklal Avenue. This investigation leads to the discovery of Botter House, a culturally and historically significant building,which enables the thesis to examine female presence in public space by investigating the flâneuse of the nineteenth-century Istiklal Avenue. Through the artworks, this study proposes that spatial representations, reconstructed from visual and vocal details,can contribute to the representation of repressed ethnic identities, and can question the politics of the representation of ethnic minority women in Turkey.

This thesis looks at independent film and video cultures in Britain from the mid 1970s to late 1980s. It examines a period of time in which diverse radical film- and video-makers in Britain contributed towards struggles against capitalism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism and homophobia. New social models of film and video production and exhibition were developed, such as the film collective, and new alliances were built to campaign for changes to social policy and legislature. The study examines this moment in order to clarify the capacity for radical discourse to bring groups together and impact on dominant cultural forms such as television. The thesis explores the interrelation between public debate, institutions and individuals. It uses public sphere theories to examine alternative reading publics, and media such as film, video and television. It argues that independent film and video in Britain at this time, including activist documentary, currents of counter-cinema and avant-garde film, was largely concerned with creating and circulating counterpublic discourses. These counterpublic discourses consolidated and expanded oppositional groups, and set out to change aspects of society as a whole. The thesis gives an account of the diversity of the influences on independent film and video, from socialist and liberation movements, to popular radical histories and psychoanalytic and Marxist film theory. Attention is given to the Independent Filmmakers’ Association as an agent of change between filmmakers and state, notably in terms of national film and broadcasting policy. There is a case study of Marc Karlin’s television film For Memory (1986), which looks at the fate of socialist memory under televisual regimes; and a case study of Stuart Marshall’s Bright Eyes (1984), which looks at issues of sexuality, identity and counter-history during the AIDS crisis. The thesis argues that during this period, independent film- and videomakers helped to transform television into a vital site of counterpublic discourse.

The main aim of this thesis is to provide a voice to a marginalised community on the island of Inishbofin off the North West coast of Co. Donegal in Ireland. The film’s usefulness lies in its portrayal of a small, indigenous, fragile community that clings to existence and its strength lies in giving voice to this minority in an attempt to correct perceptions of Irishness. This thesis seeks to enrich the discourse surrounding the way Irish identity is reconciled through the moving image. The theme is explored through an investigation of a previously unseen film archive—The Martin Archive—alongside my own documentary film practice. Time within the context of the archive, the nation, the temporality of film, memory and nostalgia is used to structure this thesis exploration. Within my research, the recognition of time and memory and the role these play in the construction of national identity have come to the fore. My documentary film work will intervene within this larger discourse to contribute to another way of thinking about and looking at Irish identity. The ambiguity of historical time and the myth of authenticity are considered through an exploration of how the archive is assembled. My approach correlates with that of certain postcolonial theories, developed through an analysis of the writings of Homi K. Bhabha and Benedict Anderson. In my original approach to this subject I have created a hybrid of two time frames by utilising both The Martin Archive and my own film work, in an attempt to question established notions of Irish national identity. The research is a consideration of the constructed nature of narrative, exploring how a disruption in linear narrative and historical time can provide a new space of performativity, in which the spectator can explore Irish identity anew. By illuminating the multiplicities within the films, the multiple minor voices - that are concurrent in time - can be heard. This process enables the practice to disrupt the time of official history by showing the time of the other. My practice is a temporal bricolage that documents a vulnerable, indigenous, Gaelic speaking community in Co. Donegal. The film work is a poetics of time; memory and fragility, which explores the past, present and future of the community portrayed within the experimental film archive. The structure of the practice as a temporal bricolage displays a fragmented, multiple, jumbled narrative, where chronology itself is disrupted. The fragmentary nature of the practice ensures that no complete meaning can be fixed. The interlocking of historical and personal time enables a plurality of voices to be heard, contesting any dominant historical linear narrative.

The title of this research is constructed from: `via' - route and töp(os) -a place. Viatopias are urban spaces of continual travel or flux that incorporate multiple forms of perception and inscriptions of meaning. My aim has been to define and describe the increasingly important fluid perceptual spaces that have developed between static nineteenth century destinations. Viatopias such as passageways, underground tunnels, train tracks, and the North Circular escape a sense of destination, operating as ever-changing experiences or events. The practice has sought to produce digital representations of these urban travel spaces that exist in constant flux, to communicate the experience of Viatopias. The research explores themes such as: The North Circular as a Deleuzian Route exploring driving as performance; Plica, Replica, Explica an unfolding of experience through digital media; The Making of Baroque Videos, using Baroque architectures of viewing; Mobilizing Perception treating human vision as an artifact; Mirrors For Un-Recognition disassembling nineteenth century controlled vision; Sound as an Urban Compass considering urban audio experience; Narrative Practice in New Media Space analysing contemporary approaches in digital media; and Convergent Languages, Digital Poiesis investigating the dislocation of representation in different digital languages. These conceptual frameworks developed in symbiosis with the practice. The visual practice presents a collection of digital videos that extend and complicate these concepts through experimental visual and audio techniques such as layering, repetition, anamorphic distortion, and mirroring to produce visual immersion and the fracturing of space. The concluding digital works incorporate video with audio and text resulting in integrated visual statements that attempt to stretch the viewer's perception, in the process offering a glimpse of a new experience within urban space.

In The Secret Museum: Pornography and Modern Culture, Walter Kendrick demonstrates that whilst the term pornography remains a battleground of ideas and representations, its origins are to be found long before the word itself was invented in the nineteenth-century. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, pornography's influence on all forms of popular-culture is seen to have dramatically increased, but academic work on the representation of sex has thus far avoided attempting to draw any links between what Kendrick refers to as the different “pornographic eras”, choosing instead to analyse examples in isolation. This thesis is an attempt to fill that gap and analyses patterns of influence between eighteenth-century French libertine literature and the contemporary hard-core pornographic film. Concentrating on the libertine novels of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), it studies how his work demonstrates rules and structures in relation to the representation of sex that are still visible in modern pornography. By focusing on four examples of Sade's work – Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome, Justine, La Philosophie dans le Boudoir and l'Histoire de Juliette – it isolates patterns of influence in relation to three key elements: narrative, practices and philosophy. It therefore looks at both the representation of sex and the narrative structures that surround it. This is a key element of any study of modern pornography, as it can take on a range of narrative forms, with some hard-core films appearing to omit storylines completely. This thesis will therefore consider a range of examples from contemporary hard-core, but will focus primarily on the American producer The Evil Empire and the work of its founder, the director John Stagliano. Drawing on theoretical material from the study of narratology (`) it studies the relationship between the two forms through the way in which they frame, structure and pace the sexual performance, as well as analysing how they attempt to authenticate such representations. It concludes with a study of the hard-core initiation film, through which the political and philosophical meaning of such representations is assessed.