Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Manchester Metropolitan University
Struggle in Jerash
Struggle in Jerash (2009) re-animates a copyright-expired archive film through the creation of a new feature length ‘copyleft’ film work, including a DVD distribution element.
Made in collaboration with Ben White, the research aimed to: i) explore the artists international residency as a generator for artworks that perform as reciprocal resources; ii) create new work and experiment with emerging forms of licensing and distribution through the exploration of national archives in Jordan and iii) develop methodologies to interrogate value and meaning in archive film material.
Study of archive sources and consultation with an international copyright lawyer enabled the retrieval, digitization and preservation of the last surviving copy of Struggle in Jerash (1957), a crucially important text in Jordanian film history. Through the appropriation of the form of the ‘directors commentary’ the work experiments with authorship, rewiring the archival DVD format as artistic experiment. In reference to contemporary debate around the idea of ‘the poor image’, academic Erika Balsom writes: "Struggle in Jerash (2009) stands as a particularly strong example of the way that contemporary artists have engaged with the circulation of low quality images ….. The artists appropriate the convention of the director’s commentary track – usually used to regulate the meanings attached to the text via the reassertion of authorial control over “proper” signification”
Struggle in Jerash (2009) is the first Creative Commons, Jordan licensed artwork. Through re-inserting the film into the most widely used distribution circuit for feature films in Jordan: the market for pirated DVDs, we make use of an unofficial form of circulation
to return a part of Jordan’s audiovisual history to its people in the absence of state initiated efforts at preservation and dissemination.
Selected for the first Berlin Documentary Forum, Mexico’s Ambulante Documentary Festival; Tempo, Stockholm; Biennale of Sydney and Vera List Centre, NYC.
