Output details

The Struggle: pt 1 The Straggle

The Struggle: Part 1 – The Straggle, is a 20 min video arising out of ongoing research into the relationship between the abstract and the concrete in the formation of subjectivity through video. It comprises people interviewed from left-wing activist backgrounds about the impact of their political childhood, intercut with performances, both staged and documentary, of the socialist magician, Ian Saville, performing his set that itself comments on Socialism. The work builds on Garfield’s long-standing interest in experimental documentary, and the tensions between the social and the political; the visual and the textual, that Amelia Jones focused on in Seeing Differently A History and Theory of Identification in the Visual Arts, Routledge, 2012. Juliet Steyn also focuses on Garfield’s video (2006) in Cross-cultural Identities: Art, Migrants and the Metaphor of Waste, I.B.Tauris (2014). The video uses the disruption of jump cuts and parallel editing. The multiple focus and filming methodologies of the staged, documentary, degraded mediated imagery; the use of different cameras and clashes between the comedian in the moment and reflections by interviewees, allows for thinking between past/present. The link between the spectacle/narrative as competing and disruptive elements of critique through the affective immediacy of the haptic is important. Unlike many films in this genre, it is not nostalgic, focusing on the present. This research also takes the form of critical writing, published over 10 years: examples are in REF outputs 2/4. “The Struggle” is commissioned by Beaconsfield gallery (London) and supported by Goldsmiths, University of Kent and was selected for two film festivals alongside acclaimed artists Phil Collins, Larissa Sansour, Uriel Orlow.The second film focusses on the military. The University of Newcastle (Prof Burton, Fine Art and Prof Woodward, Geography) are supporting the development of the next part of the trilogy as a Visiting Fellow.