| 31. |
- Brunow, Dagmar
(författare)
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Black diasporic filmmaking and the political aesthetics of anti-essentialism
- 2011
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Ingår i: 9th International Conference of the Collegium for African American Research, "Black States of Desire: Dispossession, Circulation, Transformation", Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, April 6-9, 2011.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The fact that Black artists are quite often pigeonholed as spokespersons of Black experience is due to a mimetic understanding of art. Using examples from 1980s Black British diasporic filmmaking I would like to shift the analytical focus from representation and mimesis towards art as interventionist practice. The mysterious deaths of young Black men in police custody form the point of departure for an exploration of memory and mourning in Mysteries in July (Black Audio Film Collective, 1991). Additionally, the Sankofa film collective's Territories (1985) is an exploration of urban space, historiography, heterotopia and Black masculinities, while practices of surveillance and the framing of Blacks via media discourses are addressed in Handsworth Songs (Black Audio Film Collective 1986). These filmic essays, instead of looking at the black male as a given social problem, reflect on its construction through discourses of media and governmentality.Rather than creating a counter-discourse, these films abstain from trying to depict events "as they really happened". Instead, they deconstruct the hegemonic media discourse through the use of self-reflexive means. While counter practices often assume a unified essentialist stand (as in concepts of Afrocentrism and négritude, for example) I would suggest that in 1980s diasporic Black British filmmaking self-reflexivity is employed as a strategy which might be able to solve a notion of "strategic essentialism" (Spivak). Filmmaking thus serves as an epistemological tool to deal with the gaps, fissures and absences in the national visual archive and in hegemonic historiography while at the same time defying notions of homogeneity and authenticity. The use of self-reflexivity enables the films to reflect on modes of exclusion of the Black subject from hegemonic discourses on the ontology of the image and on the filmic apparatus. To sum up, my paper outlines auteurist strategies of dealing with the exclusion of both the official canon and of the collective visual archive of the nation.
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| 32. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, 1966-
(författare)
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Bollywood im Zeitalter der Globalisierung : eine transnationale Perspektive auf populäres Hindikino
- 2013
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Ingår i: Kunst als Avantgarde einer Weltkultur?, Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel / Kunsthalle Kiel, Kiel, Germany, 6-8 June, 2013.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Das populäre Hindikino, schon immer hybrid, ist seit den 1990er Jahren ein globales Phänomen. Die Ausrichtung auf ein internationales Publikum hat Konsequenzen für die Produktion, Ästhetik und Distribution der Filme. Inwiefern kann eine transnationale Perspektive dem Wandel Bollywoods vom Kino zur Kulturindustrie (Rajadhyaksha) Rechnung tragen? Der Beitrag untersucht veränderte Distributionsbedingungen, lokale Rezeptionen und Aneignungen sowie Bollywoods globale Fankultur.
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| 33. |
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| 35. |
- Brunow, Dagmar
(författare)
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Deconstructing Essentialism and Revising Historiography : The Function of Metareference in Black British Filmmaking
- 2011
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Ingår i: The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media. - New York : Rodopi. - 9789401200691 - 9401200696 ; , s. 341-355
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article describes the function of the metareferential turn in black British filmmaking of the 1980s. Metaisation is here a result of the impact of European art cinema (Godard, Paradjanov, Kluge) as well as of Third Cinema practice and of the ‘essay film’ represented by Alain Resnais, Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard. Using the examples of Handsworth Songs and Seven Songs for Malcolm X by the Black Audio Film Collective, directed by John Akomfrah, as well as Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston and The Attendant, this article outlines five functions of metareference. First, it can be regarded as a means to counter and reflect on the absences in the visual archive in Britain and of questioning the master narrative of British historiography. Second, it is used as a way of transgressing the boundaries of representation and of escaping the fruitless debate about negative and positive stereotypes. Third, metaisation is employed as an artistic strategy in order to inscribe oneself as an auteur into film historiography. Fourth, it can be regarded as a means of escaping the critical label of the social realist filmmaker who deals with the representation of black experiences. Finally, metaisation contributes to a reconceptualisation of the works in terms of both media theory and the essay film.
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| 36. |
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| 38. |
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| 39. |
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| 40. |
- Brunow, Dagmar
(författare)
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Film-making as intervention : The performative turn and the political avant-garde
- 2011
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Ingår i: Media Acts. The 10th international conference of the Nordic Society for Intermedial Studies (NorSIS) at the Department of Art and Media Studies at NTNU, Trondheim, 26-28 October, 2011.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Artists like Isaac Julien or John Akomfrah, founding member of the legendary Black Audio Film Collective, have recently made increasing use of the gallery space and the art circuits. John Akomfrah's The Genome Chronicles and Mnemosyne were created and exhibited as film installations, and so were most of Isaac Julien's recent works, e.g. Fantôme Créole, True North and Baltimore. Yet, even more striking is the fact that Handsworth Songs, the 1986 filmic essay by the Black Audio Film Collective, initially commissioned for television (Channel 4), 25 years after its premiere has experienced a renaissance when it was screened at the renown international art exhibition documenta XI. Recently, Tate Britain has acquired the piece for its collections, which in turn has been shown as a temporary video installation. What impact does the shift from the black box to the white cube have for Black British avant-garde film-making? I argue that the changed modes of distribution and exhibition are closely connected to a reconceptualisation of the works (Eshun 2011, Brunow 2011). This, in turn, has consequences for the auteur-status of the artists and, subsequently, the canonisation of their films and installations. I suggest that Handsworth Songs, while previously being classified as a 'documentary' (Corner 1996) and as a representation of a pre-given reality, should be perceived as a mediation on memory, colonialism and historiography. In creating a collage of archive footage, photographs and tableaux vivants, the film reflects on the ontology of the image and the racifying structures inherent in photography and the filmic apparatus. In the paper I will analyse the film’s aesthetic politics while taking a closer look at the use of intermediality and self-reflexivity as a means to transgress the notion of representation in favour of a performative turn towards the notion of film-making as intervention.
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