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51 PAINTINGS SUITE

Reconfiguring poses of characters from German Black Death plague era paintings through new places and time.

What first began as a single five minute video filmed in Germany in 2006 become a long term, ongoing video project intersecting slow cinema to what we now understand as a metamodernism. Through short and long form artefacts, each film imbues debate of social anxiousness, rethought memory, uncertain times, and a structure of feeling from the connections we forge and experience with places. All films are public domain artefacts.

51 PAINTINGS

Research Form: peer reviewed art film

Licence: public domain film

Completed: 2012

Published: 07-07-2013

Publisher: XII International Image festival, Colombia

ERA qualifier: 2013

Duration: 71 mins

ISAN: 0000-0005-B469-0000-3-0000-0000-S

IMDB: tt2318982

ERA Repository

 

ERA STATEMENT

 

BACKGROUND

Current international developments in art films have identified the need to establish complex and emotive ways to represent memory as a reflective and social mirror through the moving image (e.g. Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Representations of Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema, Russel Kilbourn). While this research recognises the significance of such implications, it moves to acknowledge the role of memory through art and its subsequent impact on how we remember and reconfigure paintings through images of place.

 

CONTRIBUTION

The feature length artwork 51 Paintings addresses this role through a long term study of medieval religious paintings located in the 1000-year-old St Michaels Church at Schwabisch Hall, Germany. The methodology of such enacted a philosophical perspective that considered the role of memory as a catalyst for the ways in which we articulate and come to terms with the experience of viewing paintings, and how these memories can be mapped into new locations of historical and cultural significance. In doing so, it arrives at a new benchmark for the discipline in understanding how art can bring about a reconfiguration of visual memory, and from this, how such approaches can be instigated within a moving image context.

 

SIGNIFICANCE

The significance of this research is that it enabled a long-term study which overcame barriers for visually understanding the implications and limitations of place-orientated memory through art. Its value is attested to by the following indicators: the artwork was selected for screening by the peer reviewed screenings and academic forums at the XII International Image Festival in Manizales, Columbia; Federation Square, Melbourne, included as a case study in the PhD thesis 'House and Home' by Malcom Bywaters at the University of Melbourne; and as an article of review by Tom Clift in the prominent Australian film magazine Filmink.

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THE TAILOR OF AUTUMN

Research Form: peer reviewed art film

Licence: public domain film

Completed: 2014

Published: 10-11-2022

Publisher: Federation Square, Melbourne

Author: Shaun Wilson

ERA qualifier: 2022

Duration: 63 mins

ISAN: 0000-0005-B46E-0000-S-0000-0000-R

IMDB: tt2676698

ERA Repository: TBC

 

ERA STATEMENT

 

BACKGROUND

Current international developments in slow cinema have identified a significant need for more meaningful social reflection through the moving image (eg. Slow Movies: Countering the Cinema of Action by Ira Jaffe). Embodied in this is an interaction between memory, place, and identity drawing reference to attesting a better understanding of these themes in an era of crisis and care.This research recognises these contribution and moves to acknowledge the role of memory in art in particular how memories can recontextualise paintings through images of place

 

CONTRIBUTION

The feature length artwork The Tailor of Autumn addresses this role through a long term study of medieval religious paintings located in the 1000-year-old St Michael's Church at Schwabisch Hall, Germany. The methodology of such enacted a philosophical perspective that considered the role of memory as a catalyst for the ways in which we articulate and come to terms with the experience of viewing paintings, and how these memories can be mapped into new locations of historical and cultural significance. In doing so, it arrives at a new benchmark for the discipline in understanding how art can bring about a reconfiguration of visual memory, and from this, how such approaches can be instigated within a moving image context.

 

SIGNIFICANCE

The significance of this research is that it enabled a long-term study which overcame barriers for visually understanding the implications and limitations of place-orientated memory through art. Its value is attested to by the following indicators: the artwork was selected for screening by the peer review at Federation Square, Melbourne

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INDIGO RISING

Research Form: peer reviewed art film

Licence: public domain film

Completed: 2017

Published: 02-11-2018

Publisher: Sawtooth ARI

Author: Shaun Wilson

ERA qualifier: 2018

Duration: 48 mins

ISAN: 0000-0005-B46F-0000-X-0000-0000-C

IMDB: tt7657582

ERA Repository: INDIGO RISING

 

ERA STATEMENT

 

BACKGROUND

This research responds to the issue of global social anxiety in a collective memory context by using slow cinema as a device to create a feature length video artwork. The research acknowledges anxiety as a critical barrier of social perception and moves to establish a way for contemporary art to respond to this problem by generating new knowledge through practice.

 

CONTRIBUTION:

The contributions are attested to four factors. First, the work responds to a real-world problem by contributing new approaches to contemporary art in finding ways to respond to critical barriers attested through societal anxiety; second, to contribute to an international dialogue around social anxiety with attention to perception and collective memory; third, contribute to a new way of thinking about anxiety through contemporary art; and fourth, contribute through practice to find a new reference point to understand the impact of social anxiety on the perception of the subject and challenge the barriers of visually experiencing the implications of anxiety through art to further our understanding of the issue.

 

SIGNIFICANCE:

Research Significance was attested to three factors: first, the work was selected as peer review to be screened in a solo exhibition at Sawtooth ARI, Launceston; second, the exhibition was curated by Dr Malcom Bywaters (UTas) who has attributed to high profile national and international curatorial research activity over a thirty year career.

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WINTER ORBIT

Research Form: peer reviewed art film

Licence: public domain film

Completed: 2020

Published: 10-09-2020

Publisher: Federation Square, Melbourne

Authors: Shaun Wilson, Darrin Verhagen, Pearl M. Wilson

ERA qualifier: 2020

Duration: 60 mins

ISAN: 0000-0006-9B8B-0000-P-0000-0000-0

IMDB: tt13445416

ERA Repository: WINTER ORBIT
Collection: ASAC Collection, Venice Biennale

 

ERA STATEMENT

 

BACKGROUND:

The work contributes to new debates of slow cinema which explore the disruptive nature of slowness and design through a Metamodernist framework. As informed and influenced by significant slow practitioner Bela Tarr, the work contributes to the field by positing itself as a new way to think about immersive slowness in film and how design can impact on the ways in which the cinematic frame can derive new knowledge from attesting the form of cinema through a reduction of temporality.

 

CONTRIBUTION:

Winter Orbit is a collaborative feature artwork directed by Shaun Wilson, scored by Darrin Verhagen (under the pseudonym ‘Shinjuku Thief’) and written by Pearl M Wilson. In the creation of the film outcome, the research led by Wilson asks: 'how can cinema represent the COVID-19 lockdown in new ways of situating immersive design through slowness?' The outcomes expand the field of knowledge by defending the role that design plays in cinema by using qualitative research methods based on Design Thinking to create a 60 minute film which demonstrates new ways to approach design within sound and image.

 

SIGNIFICANCE:

The film's significance can be attested through: high impact screenings at the Venice Production Bridge at the Venice Film Festival September, 2020, Digital Facade at Federation Square December 2020, Online exhibition at MARS Gallery Melbourne 22-28 September 2020, official selection at the Geelong Underground Film Festival 29 November 2020, featured as an article in Australian Art Collector online 22 September 2020, published as a DVD and Blu Ray sold world-wide, acquired by review into the Venice Biennale’s historical archives of contemporary art ASAC archive.

Winter Orbit poster

IN THE JOURNEY OF MIDNIGHT

Research Form: peer reviewed art film

Licence: public domain film

Completed: 2018
Published: 20-02-2021

Publisher: Federation Square, Melbourne 

ERA qualifier: TBC

Duration: 50 mins

ISAN: 0000-0006-9BB1-0000-5-0000-0000-M

IMDB: TBC

ERA Repository: TBC

 

ERA STATEMENT

 

BACKGROUND

The recontextualising of places in art has in recent years brought about debates of decolonialisation and the rehabilitation of conquered cultures.. As much of Australian art was founded in early settler definitions of the land by way of colonial artists including  John Glover and Von Gerald, this European gentrification of the Australian landscape in painting masked the overtures of genocide and destruction of indigenous culture. Responding to these effacements of colonial art, this research examines the structural conditions of recontextualising the Australian landscape through the cinematic lens to present these gentrifications as a psychological mode of horror through the guise of the sublime in early silent cinema.

 

CONTRIBUTION

In the Journey of Midnight  is a feature length artwork directed by Shaun Wilson propelling recontextualisations of place through cinema cinema as part of a long term study of Black Death era religious paintings located in the 1000-year-old St Michael's Church at Schwabisch Hall, Germany. The methodology of such enacted a philosophical perspective that considered the role of memory as a catalyst for the ways in which we articulate and come to terms with the experience of viewing paintings, and in the case of the film, how these memories can be mapped into new locations of historical and cultural significance inasmuch as the recontextualisation of memory and place map into debates of decolonising the sublime and historicity of horror-based allegory. In doing so, it arrives at a new benchmark for the discipline in understanding how art can bring about a reconfiguration of visual memory, and from this, how such approaches can be instigated within a moving image context.

 

SIGNIFICANCE

The film's significance can be attested through: high impact screenings at EFM Berlinale, Germany in February 2021,  Federation Square, Melbourne  and official selection at the Geelong Underground Film Festival July 2021, published as a DVD and Blu Ray sold world-wide, acquired by the G Biennale’s archives of contemporary art BGACA collection.

In The Journey of Midnight Poster.jpeg

THE BLACK PERIOD

Research Form: peer reviewed art film

Licence: public domain film

Completed: 2022
Published: 10-11-2022

Publisher: Federation Square, Melbourne

ERA qualifier: TBC 

Duration: 59 mins
ISAN: 0000-0006-9B8A-0000-K-0000-0000-E

IMDB: tt24234830/

ERA Repository: TBC

 

 

 

 

ERA STATEMENT

 

BACKGROUND

This research responds to the social anxiety drawn from plague eras which in a collective memory context uses slow cinema as a device to create allegorical reflections of the post-pandemic era of COVID 19 through a feature length video artwork. The research acknowledges this anxiousness as a critical barrier of social perception and moves to establish a way for contemporary art to respond to this problem by generating new knowledge through practice.

 

CONTRIBUTION:

The contributions are attested to four factors. First, the work responds to a real-world problem by contributing new approaches to contemporary art in finding ways to respond to critical barriers attested through pandemic agency; second, to contribute to an international dialogue around social anxiety with attention to perception and collective memory; third, contribute to current Metamodern debates by creating a structure of reason through an epistemological approach to metamodern affect , and fourth, contribute through practice to find a new reference point to understand the impact of social anxiety on the perception of the subject and challenge the barriers of visually experiencing the implications of pandemic-era approaches through art to further our understanding of illness and place.

 

SIGNIFICANCE:

The significance of this research was attested to three factors: first, the work was selected in peer review to be screened at Federation Square, Melbourne; and second, the work was discussed in the peer review paper 'Plague, Allegory, and Metamodernism as Contemporary Studio Practice in "The Black Period"by Shaun Wilson in The International Journal of Practice Based Research Journal, V5 in December 2022.

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