Melancholy and the Memorial: Representing Loss, Grief and Affect in

Contemporary Visual Art

Annie Macindoe Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) (Honours)

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts

School of Creative Arts

Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology

2018

2

Keywords

Trauma, loss, grief, affect, narrative, representation, melancholy, the memorial, video art,

video installation, text-based art, contemporary art.

3

Abstract

Melancholy and the Memorial: Representing Loss, Grief and Affect in Contemporary Visual

Art is a practice-led research project that draws on my own experiences of loss and trauma in

order to reimagine these memories through creative research and outcomes. The initial

research question framing this project was as follows: how can creative practice respond to

the limitations of traditional forms of language in the representation of trauma, loss and grief?

Contemporary trauma theorists explain that the expression of trauma resists verbal and

written language, remaining incompatible with the conventions of communication and

representation. In 1996, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk coined the term ‘speechless terror’,

describing the difficulty that survivors can have in verbally conveying the depth of their

traumatic phenomenon (van der Kolk, McFarlane and Weisaeth 1996, 193). In her 2009 essay

‘Art/Trauma/Representation’, Griselda Pollock (2009, 42) describes trauma’s complex

relationship with art and representation as the ‘radical and irreducible other of representation’.

Despite this resistance to representation, the themes of trauma, loss and grief are commonly

explored by contemporary visual artists. Artists such as Sophie Calle and Felix Gonzalez-

Torres attempt to express the difficult relationship these experiences have with representation

in any single form or language through a combination of text, image, sound and spatial

qualities. These artists use complex strategies to capture or arrest the elusive nature of

trauma’s affectual phantoms. Common to these approaches is the desire to express the

ephemerality of memory and the parallel fragmentation of space and time, which is examined

in both static and moving image works. These creative practices are instilled with themes of

melancholy, and often produce works that make reference to the memorial object.

This practice-led research project has developed creative approaches to expressing and

reconsidering traumatic memory that reflect the work of theorists and artists who also explore

the ineffability of these experiences. The methodological approach employed deploys both

written and visual language to construct time-based installation works that present fragmented

narrative forms. The aim of this research project is to investigate how text, moving image,

4

sound and space can be combined to reframe the dialogue around public and private

expressions of trauma and open up discussion of the potential for shared, affectual

experiences through art.

5

Table of Contents

Keywords......................................................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................... 3 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................. 5 List of Figures .................................................................................................................................................. 6 Statement of Original Authorship ..................................................................................................................... 8 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 10

Practice Background .................................................................................................................................. 10 Context and Definitions ............................................................................................................................. 11 Thesis Outline ........................................................................................................................................... 12

Chapter 1: Literature Review .......................................................................................................................... 15 Speechless Terror: Trauma, Loss and Grief // Bracha Ettinger and Griselda Pollock .............................. 15 Affect // Susan Best and Jill Bennett ..................................................................................................... 19 Language and Representation // Roland Barthes ................................................................................... 22 Feminine Writing // Hélène Cixous ...................................................................................................... 23

Chapter 2: Contextual Review ........................................................................................................................ 27 Intimacy and Loss // Sophie Calle ........................................................................................................ 27 Melancholy // Felix Gonzalez-Torres.................................................................................................... 31 Text-based Art and Writing as Visual Arts Practice // Jenny Holzer ...................................................... 36 Video Art and Multi-Channel Installation // Gary Hill .......................................................................... 38

Chapter 3: Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 42 Text, Image and Representation ........................................................................................................... 43 Textual Video ...................................................................................................................................... 43 Viewing and the Screen ....................................................................................................................... 44 Multi-channel Video Installation .......................................................................................................... 45

Chapter 4: Creative Practice ........................................................................................................................... 47 Constructing Texts // Process ............................................................................................................... 47 Memory and Language // Prepositions of Time and Place ..................................................................... 48 Intimacy, Grief and the Everyday // Between You and I ........................................................................ 51 Public and Private // Halstead St .......................................................................................................... 56 Melancholy // A Familiar Feeling ........................................................................................................ 59 The Memorial // Monument .................................................................................................................. 62 Beyond the Screen // Parallel Things ................................................................................................... 66 Final Exhibition // Melancholy and the Memorial ................................................................................. 68

Chapter 5: Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 71 References ..................................................................................................................................................... 73

6

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Macindoe, Annie. It felt like… two-channel video with sound, 5:08 minutes (2015). Documentation from Hatched 2016: National Graduate Show, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 2016. .............................. 10 Figure 2.1 Calle, Sophie. 1984‒2003. Douleur Exquise installation view at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2005). Image. Accessed May 20, 2017. https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/sophie-calle-exquisite-pain/installation-views .................................................................................................................................... 28 Figure 2.2 Calle, Sophie. 1984‒2003. Douleur Exquise installation view at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2005). Image. Accessed May 20, 2017. https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/sophie-calle-exquisite-pain/installation-views .................................................................................................................................... 29 Figure 2.3 Calle, Sophie. 1984‒2003. Douleur Exquise (Day 14) detail view. Image. Accessed May 20, 2017. http://www.flaunt.com/content/people/sophie-calle ......................................................................................... 30 Figure 2.4 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix. 1991. Untitled installation view at 11th Avenue and 38th Street, Manhattan (2012). Image. Accessed June 16, 2017. https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/04/04/printout-felix-gonzalez-torres ............................................................................................................................................... 32 Figure 2.5 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix. 1995. Untitled installation view at tram shelters and transportation hubs, Hong Kong (2015). Image. Accessed June 16, 2017. http://www.andrearosengallery.com/exhibitions/felix-gonzalez-torres_2015-02-28/4 ........................................................................................................................ 34 Figure 2.6 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix. 1989. Untitled (Loverboy). Image. Accessed June 18, 2017. http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/felix-gonzalez-torres/images ......................................................... 35 Figure 2.7 Holzer, Jenny. 1978‒1987. Truisms (Detail). Image. Accessed September 3, 2016. http://www.moma.org/collection/works/63755 ................................................................................................ 37 Figure 2.8 Holzer, Jenny. 2006. Truisms—projections (Vienna). Image. Accessed September 3, 2016. http://projects.jennyholzer.com/projections/vienna-2006/gallery#8.................................................................. 38 Figure 2.9 Hill, Gary. 1994. Circular Breathing. Image. Accessed October 2, 2016. http://garyhill.com/work/mixed_media_installation/circular-breathing.html..................................................... 39 Figure 2.10 Hill, Gary. 1981‒1983. Primarily Speaking. Image. Accessed February 16, 2018. http://garyhill.com/work/mixed_media_installation/primarily-speaking-2.html ................................................ 40 Figure 4.1 Prepositions of Time and Place. Video still. Two-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2016)... 48 Figure 4.2 Prepositions of Time and Place. Text (2016). ................................................................................. 49 Figure 4.3 Prepositions of Time and Place. Two-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2016). Installation documentation, Future Proof, Boxcopy, Brisbane. .......................................................................................... 50 Figure 4.4 Between You and I (I). Three-channel video installation with sound, 10:00 minutes (2016). Installation documentation, FAKE Estate ARI, Metro Arts, Brisbane. Photo: Llewellyn Millhouse. ................. 51 Figure 4.5 Between You and I (I). Installation detail (2016). Installation documentation, FAKE Estate ARI, Metro Arts, Brisbane. ..................................................................................................................................... 54 Figure 4.6 Between You and I (II). Four-channel video installation with sound, 9:53 minutes (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................... 55 Figure 4.7 Halstead St (II). Twelve-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................... 56 Figure 4.8 Halstead St (I). Six-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2017). Installation documentation, Frank Moran Gallery, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. .......................................................... 57 Figure 4.9 Halstead St (I). Six-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2017). Installation documentation, Frank Moran Gallery, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. .......................................................... 58

7

Figure 4.10 Halstead St (II). Twelve-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................... 59 Figure 4.11 A Familiar Feeling. Two-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................... 59 Figure 4.12 A Familiar Feeling. Two-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................... 60 Figure 4.13 Monument (II). Six-channel video installation with sound, 8:55 minutes (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................... 62 Figure 4.14 Monument (I). Three-channel video with sound, 6:45 minutes (2017). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. .................................................................................... 62 Figure 4.15 Monument (II). Six-channel video installation with sound, 8:55 minutes (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................... 64 Figure 4.16 Boltanski, Christian. 1986‒1987. Autel de Lycée Chases. Six photographs, six desk lamps, and 22 tin boxes, 170.2 x 214.6 x 24.1 cm. Accessed February 16, 2018. https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/christian-boltanski ................................................................................................................ 65 Figure 4.17 Parallel Things. Vinyl prints, set of 12, 623 x 1107 mm (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ............................................................... 66 Figure 4.18 Parallel Things. Text (2018). ....................................................................................................... 67 Figure 4.19 Parallel Things. Vinyl prints, set of 12, 623 x 1107 mm (2018). Installation detail, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim. ........................................................................ 68 Figure 4.20 Melancholy and the Memorial (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim....................................................................................................... 68

8

Statement of Original Authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for an award at this or

any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis

contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due

reference is made.

Signature:

Date: 03/07/18

QUT Verified Signature

9

Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the support and friendship of many valued

people. First, I must acknowledge the generous guidance of my supervisory team; Dr Rachael

Haynes, Charles Robb, and Mark Webb. Thank you all for seeing this project through. The

wisdom you have imparted to me is immeasurable. Many thanks also to the Visual Arts and

Technical Services team who made possible my final exhibition and all the experiments along

the way; Dr Daniel McKewen, Ian Copson, Mike Riddle and Jacob Broomhall. I couldn’t

have done it without you. I would also like to acknowledge the invaluable support of my artist

peers and the Brisbane Art-Run-Initiatives that have exhibited my work and provided critical

dialogue around my practice throughout this project, including; FAKE estate, Boxcopy, and

Cut Thumb Laundry. Thank you to Carody Culver for her editing expertise.

Finally, thank you to my extended family and friends for always listening and always caring.

To my dad, for his quiet but honest belief in what I do and why I do it. And to my mum, for

everything. As I have learnt through the process, words say less than we wish to convey, and

in this case, it is very true. Simply, thank you.

10

Introduction In a Western context, the conventions of public discourse often dictate that expressions of

personal narrative relating to loss and trauma are private affairs (Laungani and Young 1997,

219). However, many contemporary artists use language, text, image and sound to explore a

public dialogue around issues of loss and grieving. This research project draws on my own

fragmented recollections of loss and trauma, reframing them through word, image and sound

to poetically reimagine repressed memories and emotions.

Figure 1.1 Macindoe, Annie. It felt like… two-channel video with sound, 5:08 minutes (2015).

Documentation from Hatched 2016: National Graduate Show, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 2016.

Practice Background To provide background for the research purpose and aims, it is important to note the

trajectory from which that research stems. This practice-led project extends the practice,

research and outcomes that took place during my Honours project, which resulted in my first

large-scale, multi-channel video work, It felt like… (2015) (see Figure 1.1). This work was a

two-channel video installation comprising excerpts of fragmented language and everyday

imagery and accompanied by an ominous soundtrack. The use of multiple screens highlighted

the relationships within and across these channels, and made me more aware of editing

processes—of how the rhythms, patterns and textures of the image/text/sound combinations

were central to constructing the affectual dimension I wanted the work to evoke. It felt like…

was a turning point in my practice, as it led me to more consciously consider the affectual

11

potential of immersive, time-based work that relies on the sequencing of text, image and

sound to construct experiences that reflect the ineffable, complex spaces of memory and loss.

Beginning this Masters project, I felt a hesitancy and tentativeness about the validity of my

research and creative practice, and often experienced shame and anxiety about the content and

outcomes of my work. I had only taken up creative ownership of my trauma during my

Honours year, and still struggle with the complexities inherent to exploring it. These

complexities are founded in the paradox of a compulsive need to examine and express

personal experiences of loss and trauma, while simultaneously censoring the content of these

works, and the writings and conversations that emerge around the practice and its

foundations. These foundations are the experiences that I speak to and about through my

work: losses and traumatic events in my childhood and adolescence, such as the sudden loss

of my mother at age 12 and of a close friend a few years later. These formative instances of

loss and grief have fostered, and continue to inform, my interest in how traumatic experience

is rendered unspeakable—given the limitations of language—and how these experiences

might find repose in making artworks that use text, image, sound and space. Where I once felt

that the paradox of my experiences and expression of self and personal narrative through art

was an obstruction or hurdle in my practice, I now understand that the inherent difficulty of

articulating personal experiences of loss and trauma is in fact the core of my practice-led

research. This realisation has facilitated many developments in my research, including a

deeper desire to understand theories relating to trauma, affect and feminine writing practices,

and how these can be explored through immersive multi-channel video installations.

Context and Definitions Melancholy and the Memorial: Representing Loss, Grief and Affect in Contemporary Visual

Art examines a range of artists and writings that deal with themes of trauma, affect, language

and representation, and mediums of text, video and time-based media that have helped frame

my own artistic responses to loss and grief. The contextual frameworks under investigation

informed my practice-led methodology, which examined the use of language as a semantic

and poetic device related to representing personal narrative and traumatic memory; how

moving images can symbolise and embody melancholy and the everyday, and how screens

function in relation to space and viewers through multi-channel video installations.

12

The project title refers to melancholy and the memorial, as well as representation relating to

loss, grief and affect. In her 1989 text Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, Julia Kristeva

(1989, 3) speaks of melancholia as ‘an abyss of sorrow, a noncommunicable grief that at

times, and often on a long-term basis, lays claims upon us to the extent of having us lose all

interest in words, actions and even life itself’. For the purpose of this project, the use of the

words melancholy/melancholia similarly describes an underlying, persistent and ineffable

sense of sorrow that defines my own experience of working through and living with

experiences of loss and grief.

The memorial refers to the cultural practices, physical structures and objects I associate with

loss and grief, such as monuments and headstones. These objects are related to the

contemporary monument, which James Young (2016, 15) claims ‘attempts to assign a

singular architectonic form to unify disparate and competing memories’. This architectural

form, Young (2016, 15) explains, propagates the illusion of common memory by asking an

‘otherwise fragmented populace to frame diverse pasts and experience in common spaces’.

The use of memorial forms and structures in this project acknowledges the potential of these

objects to construct an illusion of shared experience.

The representation of loss, grief and affect refers to the project’s specific contextual interest

as well as the core goals of the creative outcomes, which explore the potential of visual art to

provide a space for representing and expressing themes that are otherwise ineffable. I

acknowledge here the paradoxical function of the word representation, as this project deals

with the ineffable and complex relationships that trauma, loss and grief have with

representation.

Thesis Outline This exegesis outlines the key theories, contextual frameworks and visual arts practices that

inform the creative outcomes of this practice-led research project. Chapter 1 denotes the

theoretical frameworks for this project, beginning with an exploration of the ‘speechless

terror’ phenomena coined by psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk (van der Kolk, McFarlane and

Weisaeth 1996, 193). It then turns to feminist theorists Bracha Ettinger and Griselda Pollock,

13

who have written on trauma, loss and grief and the relationship these themes have with

representation in visual art. Susan Best’s and Jill Bennett’s writings on affect in visual art

offer a framework through which to understand and articulate the manifestation of these

experiences in my work and the responses they might evoke for viewers. Chapter 1 then

investigates representation and language through the work of literary theorist Roland Barthes.

To conclude the chapter, feminist writer Hélène Cixous’ practice provides context for

language as a means for working through the process of mourning.

Chapter 2 considers the work of contemporary artists that presents contextual, conceptual and

material provocations for the practice-led research undertaken throughout this project. Sophie

Calle’s practice is examined in terms of her use of text and image to create monuments that

speak of intimacy and loss. Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ work is unpacked in relation to

melancholy and his use of objects and images of the everyday to form works that traverse the

boundaries between public and private expressions of loss and grief. Jenny Holzer’s use of

text and language in her practice is discussed in the context of fragmentation and the authorial

voice. The chapter concludes by addressing the work of video artist Gary Hill, whose multi-

channel installations explore themes of presence, narrative, perception and subjectivity.

Chapter 3 outlines the research methods employed throughout this practice-led project,

including the processing of language and video, and the use of screens to create multi-channel

installations. Chapter 4 analyses the creative works made throughout this project, and

unpacks the processes and ideas that inform both the broader outcomes and details of each

work. In addition to reflecting on individual works, this chapter concludes by discussing my

final exhibition, Melancholy and the Memorial, which demonstrates how creative practice—

specifically, employing text, moving image, sound and space—can create new conceptual and

material possibilities that respond to the limitations of traditional written and verbal language

in representing loss, grief and affect. This exegesis concludes with a reflection on the findings

of this project, including an acknowledgement of the complex and paradoxical relationship

between language, representation and the ineffable experiences of loss and grief.

Through producing a body of creative works that responds to experiences of personal grief,

this project aims to reframe the dialogue around public and private responses to expressions

14

of trauma and open up a discussion of their potential for shared, affectual experiences through

art. As a practice-led research project, the outcomes are a body of creative work—including

the exhibition Melancholy and the Memorial (60%)—and an exegesis (40%).

15

Chapter 1: Literature Review This chapter introduces theoretical frameworks for this practice-led project, investigating the

key themes of trauma, representation, affect, language and writing. First, it outlines Bessel

van der Kolk’s writings on trauma theory, which is then discussed in terms of loss and grief,

and the relationship these experiences have with representation in visual art, as articulated by

Bracha Ettinger and Griselda Pollock. Trauma theory is then connected to affect, and

supported by key texts from feminist writers Susan Best and Jill Bennett. The chapter then

addresses language, representation and structure using various texts from literary theorist

Roland Barthes. Finally, feminist writer Hélène Cixous’ theorising of feminine writing, as

well as language being a means of working through the process of mourning, provide context

for the function of writing and language in this project.

Speechless Terror: Trauma, Loss and Grief // Bracha Ettinger and Griselda Pollock While the term ‘trauma’ can be used to describe a vast range of collective and individual

experiences, its use in this chapter and throughout the project relates specifically to my

personal experiences of emotional and post-traumatic distress caused by loss and grief. This

discussion thus intends to give theoretical context to this experience and how it ultimately

manifests in my art practice.

In his 1996 text Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience in Mind, Body,

and Society, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk (van der Kolk, McFarlane and Weisaeth 1996,

193) coined the term ‘speechless terror’ to describe the difficulty survivors can have in

verbally conveying the depth of their traumatic phenomena. Van der Kolk states that when

individuals relive their traumatic experiences, the frontal lobes become impaired and, as a

result, these individuals have trouble thinking and speaking (Talwar 2007, 24). This inability

to put feelings into words is well established in the field of medical research and in treating

people with post-traumatic stress, but it also plays a central role in the foundation of my

practice-led research project.

16

Prior to van der Kolk’s research, many trauma researchers had defined the unique aspect of

post-traumatic stress disorder as ‘intrusive symptoms, including intrusive images and

recurrent dreams and nightmares’ (Luckhurst 2008, 147). The cause of these repetitive bodily

sensations is further articulated by van der Kolk’s theory that trauma is explicitly non-verbal,

non-narrative memory (Luckhurst 2008, 148). He states,

the experience cannot be organized on a linguistic level and this failure to

arrange the memory in words and symbols leaves it to be organized on a

somatosensory level: as somatic sensations, behavioural reenactments,

nightmares and flashbacks (van der Kolk and van der Hart 1991, 442‒423).

Considering this idea of the inherent ineffability of traumatic memory, it is important to

investigate the paradoxical practice of treatment for trauma survivors. In The Paradox of

Expressing Speechless Terror: Ritual Liminality in the Creative Arts Therapies, David Harris

(2009, 94) notes that Western treatment protocols for psychological trauma often ‘prescribe

recitation of narrative, despite evidence that the human brain’s storage of traumatic memories

undermines verbalisation’. He articulates ‘the contradiction inherent to this directive—to put

into the logic of words experiences that utterly defy human comprehension and capacity for

reason—amplifies already significant challenges to restoration after traumatic loss’ (Harris

2009, 24). Harris’ negative assessment of therapy practices is echoed in my personal

experience of coping with traumatic loss, the involuntary reliving of these sensations and the

resulting ‘speechless terror’ of inexpressible emotions. The verbal recitation and repetition of

disruptive and distressing affects in my own journey through therapy has brought to light a

specific and direct interest in the paradox of these ineffable experiences of trauma and their

revisitation during treatment. The focus on verbal and written language in my research

investigates this inherent paradox at the centre of traumatic experience and memory; it

achieves this by taking advantage of the potentials creative practice offers to producing

meaning outside the limitations of more traditional and linear forms of language.

In her text Art as the Transport-Station of Trauma, visual artist and psychoanalyst Bracha

Ettinger (2016, 151) states that ‘the place of art is for me the transport-station of trauma: a

transport-station that, more than a place, is rather a space that allows for certain occasions of

occurrence and or encounter’. Ettinger discusses the affective capacity of trauma to be shared

17

through intimate encounters between artist and artwork, viewer and artwork, artist and

viewer, subject and object (Kuburovic 2012, 39). While Ettinger’s text goes on to explain

complex theories about these connections through the lens of psychoanalysis, it is this

fundamental premise of affective experiential potential, along with transporting and

transforming trauma through a visual arts practice, that is relevant to this practice-led project.

Ettinger also discusses the paradoxical nature of beauty and representation in visual art:

Beauty that I find in contemporary art-works that interest me, whose source is

the trauma to which it also returns and appeals, is not private beauty or as that

upon which a consensus of taste can be reached; it is a kind of encounter, that

perhaps we are trying to avoid much more than aspiring to arrive at, because the

beautiful, as Rilke says, is but the beginning of the horrible in which—in this

dawning—we can hardly stand (Ettinger 2000, 91).

Just as Ettinger is describing, in my own artwork, I also aim to create encounters that operate

at this threshold between the beautiful and melancholic, between public and private iterations

of trauma and loss and even between a complex, compulsive and paradoxical desire to share

personal experiences and simultaneously censor, reframe and obscure them. In doing so, I

place at the core of my practice the intimate relationships formed between myself, my

creative works and viewers of those works, proposing that by sharing representations of my

own fragmented memories of loss and trauma, the work can create affectual experiences for

viewers in their encounters with it.

In her essay ‘Art/Trauma/Representation’, art historian Griselda Pollock (2009, 40) theorises

the representation of trauma in visual art, proposing that ‘the passage from trauma might be

understood as the move into the narrativity that institutes time, the pause in which memory

forms, hence spatialises’. Pollock (2009, 40) goes on to suggest that ‘we should speak of a

passage into the temporality of narrative that encases but also mutes trauma’s perpetually

haunting force by means of structuration that is delivered by representation’. The notion of

spatialisation and temporality as conceptual and formal methods for creating works related to

traumatic memory have been influential in terms of how I employ methods of fragmenting

and sequencing language and imagery to develop my own disjointed narratives and

representations of traumatic memory in video installation works.

18

Pollock (2009, 42) reiterates trauma’s complex relationship to art and representation,

describing it as the ‘radical and irreducible other of representation’. She considers this

paradoxical position, speculating that we try to think of trauma as:

an effect, a condition, even a shadow that will never be identical to that which

might be its displaced and displacing narration or representation, both always

being a passage away from trauma, a transformation into a memory, as a part of

the psychic apparatus (Pollock 2009, 43).

To untangle this inherent oscillation to and from a possible representation of trauma in art,

Pollock (2009, 43) offers that we might then think about trauma ‘in terms not of event (which

we cannot know), but of encounter that assumes some kind of space and time, and some kind

of gap as well as a different kind of participating otherness’. This consideration allows for a

distinguishing of a specific relation to the ‘destructuring void that is trauma that ceases to be

trauma with the advent of the structuring of representation’ (Pollock 2009, 43).

Pollock’s theorising of the representation of trauma in art as an encounter that assumes space

and time and involves the participation of otherness helps me understand how these

underlying themes function in my practice. This otherness is not only the artist and their

personal trauma, but also the engagement of a viewer with their own subjectivities, and offers

a useful way of considering ‘representation’ and subjectivity in relation to my practice-led

research. While I use the term ‘representation’ to describe the outcomes of my creative works

in connection with loss and trauma, I understand, as Pollock writes, that trauma’s otherness to

representation is an inevitable paradox. By considering the space, time and participation that

operates within and around the making and viewing of my works, I can more fully

comprehend the broader meaning of representation that involves a structuring of language,

images, material and space to destructure the seemingly unrepresentable void of trauma. I can

then view this paradox not as a hindrance, but as the core interest and ambition of my practice

that attempts to represent traumatic memory, loss and grief through textual and visual

language.

19

Affect // Susan Best and Jill Bennett In considering the key themes of trauma, loss and grief in this practice-led project, it is also

essential to discuss the contextual framework of affect in contemporary visual art. This

discussion of affect examines the key ideas of Susan Best and Jill Bennett because of the way

in which they both closely address the interplay between notions of affect in psychoanalysis

and visual art. Their work provided me with a framework for conceiving of, and articulating,

the manifestation of affective experiences in my life, how these inform my creative practice,

and the potential of the works to create evocative environments for a viewer.

Affects are described as ‘genetically hard-wired, physiological building blocks from which

feelings, emotions, and moods are constructed’ (Ohama 2004, 4). Throughout this project, I

understood affect as outlining two distinct but related phenomena. The first, as defined above,

is the pure physiological affect resulting from experiences of trauma that produces specific

feelings and emotions within me, and that forms the foundation of my creative practice. The

second, also describing bodily sensations that trigger feelings and emotions, relates to the

affective responses my work might evoke for a viewer. Both phenomena are creatively

explored in my artworks, and function together in the practice in a way that is holistically

concerned with the experiential potential of affect.

In her text Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde, Susan Best (2011, 118)

investigates the aesthetics of affect and representation, and identifies that this area of visual

art theory demonstrates what French philosopher and theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard

described as attempting to ‘represent the unrepresentable’. This concept of resisting

representation aligns with my interest in the incommunicability of trauma, and is also central

to the investigation of trauma, loss, grief and affect within my practice.

Best (2011, 33) unpacks the complexity of analysing affect within the realm of visual art:

One cannot apply psychoanalytic accounts of feeling to aesthetics or the study of

art because there is no coherent theory to apply. Similarly, one cannot use

aesthetic accounts of feeling to amplify psychoanalytic conceptions of affect, as

there are no such fine-grained or detailed accounts.

20

Best (2011, 34) proposes a theorisation of these relationships, referring to art theorist Thierry

de Duve’s concept of ‘parallelism’. With this approach, concepts are not applied from one

domain to the other, and are instead explored in terms of ‘common concerns, interpretative

goals or methods’, including ‘the centrality of self-analysis and self-referentiality to both the

invention of psychoanalysis and the progress of art’ (Best 2011, 34). This paradigm of self-

analysis and self-referentiality, being present in the fields of psychoanalysis and art, is a

parallel that directly relates to the concerns of my practice-led research (which draws from

theory in both fields, complex and vast in their own right), and attempts to apply them to my

creative outcomes. The theory of ‘parallels’ between the two fields significantly assists in

discussing these frameworks within my research, allowing for similarities to be identified and

co-exist in psychoanalysis and visual arts practices, but not necessarily understood to hold

equivalent meanings or language.

Another proposed parallel to exemplify this theory is the concern in aesthetics with feelings

and form, which can be considered analogous to the psychoanalytic concern with affect and

words (Best 2011, 34). In art, expressive accounts of feeling generally presume a link

between form and feeling, whereas psychoanalysis deems this connection an achievement

rather than an inevitability (Best 2011, 34). Best (2011, 36) goes on to explain the contrast

between affect in analysis and affect in interpreting a work of art, arguing that ‘in the case of

the work of art, there is a kind of open-endedness that can be seen most clearly from the

perspective of clinical psychoanalysis’. This notion relates back to my articulation of the

twofold meaning of the term ‘affect’ as it applies to the project. The affect understood in

psychoanalysis is located for me before the work of art exists. This affect is then imbued

within the work as a result of the exploration of trauma, loss and grief present in the making

processes of the practice. The open-endedness I then present in the work aims to activate this

‘affective potential’ for the viewer.

This approach of considering conceptual parallels between psychoanalytical considerations of

affect and visual art’s notions of affect (rather than directly applicable and predefined

theories) is a way of thinking that I find extremely useful, as it allows me to better grasp the

complexity that lies within and between both fields of study in my research.

21

In her text Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art, Jill Bennett (2005, 2)

considers art as a kind of visual language of trauma and the experiences of conflict and loss.

Opening the text, Bennett speaks of an exhibition she co-curated that involved these themes

and that of memory. Bennett (2005, 2) claims of the trauma-related artworks,

insofar as they could be deemed to promote understanding of trauma, their

contribution tended to lie in the endeavour to find a communicable language of

sensation and affect with which to register something of the experience of

traumatic memory.

The exhibition, Bennett (2005, 2) states, was thus framed in a way that the artworks ‘reflected

process—a coming into language—rather than the subject matter of trauma discourse’. This

distinction was fuelled by a hope to ‘move away from evaluating art in terms of its capacity to

reflect predefined conditions and symptomologies, and to open up the question of what art

itself might tell us about the lived experience and memory of trauma’ (Bennett 2005, 2).

For me, Bennett’s opening anecdote in this text evokes an understanding of the parallel

themes of trauma and affect at work in my own practice. While I have addressed the

centrality of trauma in my work thus far, this process of ‘coming into language’ is perhaps

most significant. Bennett’s (2005, 2) expression of a shift from considering art in terms of its

reflection of predefined conditions and symptomologies affirms what I consider the potential

of visual arts practices to investigate new ‘languages’, new ways of communicating the

paradoxical experiences of trauma, representation and affect.

Empathic Vision also addresses the idea that ‘emotions are felt only as they are experienced in

the present; as remembered events they become representations’ (Bennett 2005, 22). Bennett

explores this idea through the writing of Swiss psychologist Édouard Claparède, who

contended that to represent oneself in memory was to see oneself ‘from the outside’, as one

might see another (Bennett 2005, 22). Bennett (2005, 7) reiterates this notion by affirming

that the long tradition of engaging with affect and immediate experience in the fields of visual

and performance art demonstrates the possibility of both artist and viewer ‘being a spectator

of one’s own feelings’. However rather than referring to spectatorship as a passive condition,

Bennett is asserting that the artist-spectator position can generate active reflection by creating

22

new perspectives in the art practice, from which trauma can be considered ‘from the outside’.

In this way, Bennet’s idea of affective engagement offers critically reflective possibilities.

Even as a spectator of their own feelings, an artist can create new works to investigate and

‘come into’ new languages of trauma. This idea is crucial for how I consider the outcomes of

my own practice, and underlines Bennett’s (2005, 7) assertion that the artworks themselves

can act ‘not just as sources of inspiration or objects of representation, but as fundamental

components of a dynamic between the artwork and the spectator’. This notion of a distinction

between inner and outer self-reflexive considerations of affect plays a significant part in my

comprehension of how the act of reflection, and conditions of subjectivity, operate within my

practice. I find it useful to maintain a distinction between my present self’s ongoing

exploration of and reflection on traumatic memories from my past affects and experiences,

and the affective potential this exploration might also offer the viewer.

Language and Representation // Roland Barthes This section examines a number of ideas from literary theorist, linguist and philosopher

Roland Barthes to provide a theoretical framework for how language is treated in my creative

practice. It explores how a conscious disregard of traditional narrative and linguistic forms

might act as a creative strategy for making text-based artworks that reflect notions of

repression and traumatic memory.

In his text The Rustle of Language, Barthes comments on what he sees as confinement in

traditional literary forms, and proposes that if literature cannot be cured, then instead it must

be killed, assassinated, completely negated or ‘dislocated’ (Allen 2003, 21). Here, Barthes

refers to the tendency towards radical modes of Modernist writing, such as that of French

poet Stephane Malarmé, who attempted to eradicate all signs of conventional literature from

his work. Barthes (1986, 63) argues that this kind of ‘revolutionary writing’, which seeks to

strip language of all convention and free itself from all recognisable narrative and poetic

codes, leads to a ‘complete abandonment of communication’.

In my own processes of making, text as language also becomes dislocated from conventional

narrative forms. It is consciously fragmented and incomplete to open up new possibilities for

poetic and affectual readings of the work. I do this to highlight the complex and contradictory

23

state of attempting to represent and articulate an ‘unrepresentable’ experience to an audience.

Paradoxically, this strategy also employs an ‘abandonment of communication’ in that the

texts I create become abstracted from the constraints of any narrative form (Barthes 1986,

63).

Another key area of interest for this project expressed in Barthes’ writing is the ‘pronominal

subject’: the perspective from which language is written and presented to the reader (Allen

2003, 106). In his self-titled book, Barthes (1994) shifts between first and third person, using

‘I’, ‘he’ and ‘R.B.’ throughout the text. The effect of such writing, Allen (2003, 106) claims,

‘is to disturb the traditional notion of a singular, non-linguistic subject behind the text’.

Barthes explains the influence of this technique as involving a moment in which the subject

and the author as object dissolve into the realm of textuality (Allen 2003, 107). He states,

‘there is not, behind the text, someone active (the writer) and out front someone passive (the

reader); there is not a subject and an object’ (Barthes 1975, 16).

This dissolving of subject and object is something I explore in my own creative process;

constructing texts that deliberately shift perspectives to emphasise the inherently subjective

nature of memory and the fundamental process of reading and understanding language. I

liken this shifting of subject and object, between ‘I’ and ‘You’, to the tenuous connections

and slippages that can occur between memory and lived experiences. This idea also relates to

Claparède’s cited previously theorisation that to represent oneself in memory is to see oneself

‘from the outside’. The use of a shifting subject and object in the written language of my

work thus helps achieve the same psychoanalytic phenomenon that Bennett describes as ‘a

coming into language’: it articulates one’s experiences from both inside and outside each

space. This shifting of subject/object also relates directly to the affective potential of the

work, in that there is an openness in the language used in my practice that can give the viewer

the opportunity to read their own experiences ‘into’ the work, which in turn heightens the

work’s affective potential for that viewer.

Feminine Writing // Hélène Cixous While Roland Barthes’s work offers some of the key ideas about language and meaning for

the project, the work of feminist writer Hélène Cixous expands the contextual field. Cixous

24

establishes a comprehensive theorisation of writing as a method of working through

experiences of death and loss, of rebelling against the masculine law of traditional writing,

and the potential of feminine writing as an approach to achieving an intimate and liberating

use of language and meaning.

A major theme of Cixous’ work is that the process of writing acts as ‘the reparation of loss’

(Sellers 1994, xxvii). In her text From the Scene of the Unconscious to the Scene of History:

Pathway of Writing, Cixous (1989, 19) addresses the function of language as being ‘a

compensation for and a means of living—through inscribing—loss’. In her writing, Cixous

(1989, 18) describes language as a means of working through the process of mourning:

I believe that one can only begin to advance along the path of discovery, the

discovery of writing or anything else, from mourning and in the reparation of

mourning. In the beginning the gesture of writing is linked to the experience of

disappearance, to the feeling of having lost the key to the world, of having been

thrown outside. Of having suddenly acquired the precious sense of the rare, of

the mortal. Of having urgently to regain the entrance, the breath, to keep the

trace.

I relate to these evocative musings, as they mirror my own use of writing and language as a

methodology through which I attempt to ‘keep the trace’ of loss and mourning. My artworks

are attempts to find reparation in the use of words, and to overcome the inherent paradox of

representing affects, memories and experiences related to loss and trauma.

Cixous (1989, 20) asserts that writing preserves life, and that ‘writing follows life like its

shadow, extends it, hears it, engraves it—while inscribing knowledge of loss and death’. For

her, writing was a way to pass through the ‘hell’ of confronting death and the chaos of self-

definition that followed the loss of her father, offering a way towards a present where it could

be possible to record the non-comprehension engrained in experiences of loss and grieving

(Cixous 1989, 21). For me, this conception of writing provides a sense of comfort, as it

allows me to use language to extend and engrave my life. It also lets me utilise creative

practice to pass through my own confrontation with death and face the many complexities of

language and meaning in my investigation of the ineffable ‘speechless terror’ of traumatic

memory.

25

Another common thread within Cixous’ writing is her theorisation of language as a ‘mortal

mechanism’ to express our intimate lived experiences (Sellers 1996, 16). In The Risks of

Intimate Writing: Loving and Dreaming with Hélène Cixous, Jennifer Cooke (2011, 3) states

that in Cixous’ work, the ‘conventionally stable and usually stabilizing boundary between

public and private’ is disrupted, because she uses her own life and its events as the raw

material from which the work is shaped. The tenuous boundary to which Cooke refers is

something I am also very aware of in the creative process, as there is always some hesitancy

about using my private life and its events as a raw material for making public displays of

work.

Cooke (2011, 3) explains that reading Cixous’ work results in ‘becoming intimate’ with the

life of the author, an idea reinforced by Cixous’ use of first person in many of her works. This

mechanism relates back to Barthes’ ideas in that the resultant reading experience challenges

the ‘givens of representation’ and muddies the distinctions between author and narrator

(Cooke 2011, 3). Again, this notion is also apparent in my creative works that use language

with an unclear or irregular distinction between author/artist, narrator and viewer, which can

result in an amplified sense of intimacy and affectual experience for the viewer.

To further unpack the intimacy present in Cixous’ work, Cooke (2011, 4) states that to be an

author of intimacy is to confront and negotiate a doubly difficult task. First, representations of

intimacy, whether physical or relational, can be

tired terrain pitted with clichés and set pieces; too frequently, descriptions of

intimate acts or relationships smack of unoriginality, descend into unintended

farce or are diverted into non-intimate and universalising abstraction (Cooke

2011, 4).

This characterisation of ‘clichés’ as a mode of expressing intimacies is also something I

encounter in my own practice. By using language in combination with visual imagery in my

video installation artworks, I intentionally employ linguistic and cinematic tropes to achieve a

recognisable sense of intimacy and affect. In doing this, the clichés or tropes could be

considered a method for making sense of trauma and examining how these elements can act

as a stand-in for the ineffable.

26

The second instance of intimacy that Cooke (2011, 6) identifies in Cixous’ writing is that her

texts ‘do not just describe intimacy; they are capable of creating it’. Through Cixous’ writing,

the reader confronts an intimacy with the author that is facilitated by her sharing of private

information, feelings and personal experiences (Cooke 2011, 6). This holistic reading of

intimacy in Cixous’ writing practice is similar to my understanding of intimacy and affect in

my own process of creating works. First, the source of the works is an intimacy of affect as I

reflect on my lived experiences of loss and trauma. Second, this affect is then embedded in

the making of artworks. Third, in sharing these affectual experiences, the works are then

capable of creating intimacies and affects between themselves and the viewer.

In addition to acknowledging language’s potential to provide a space for working through

loss and fostering intimacy, Cixous writes of—and through—the limitations of traditional

modes of writing. As Susan Sellers (1996, xii) asserts:

Cixous identifies in language the oppressive structures of meaning and narration

that organize our lives, as well as the potential to deconstruct these procedures

and rewrite them in other, non-coercive and thus liberatory ways.

To navigate this complex position, Cixous theorises a practice of ‘écriture féminine (feminine

writing)’, which is established in her 1976 text The Laugh of the Medusa (Sellers 1996, 1).

For Cixous, the importance of feminine writing is its capacity to ‘circumvent the binary

structure embedded in our current, “masculine” system of thinking, whereby whatever is

designated as different or other is appropriated, devalued, excluded’ (Sellers 1996, 1). One

method to achieve what Cixous deems ‘feminine writing’ is for the writer to prevent

constructing the self in a position of mastery, and instead attend to ‘the gaps—to what is

repressed or marginalized in the text’ (Sellers 1996, 16). This method of ‘attending to the

gaps’ or dissolving an existing hegemony within traditional modes of representation in

language is present in the themes of my work: through exploring trauma, loss and grieving, I

intend to give voice to experiences that are often repressed and excluded from public

dialogue. Through a fragmented, poetic and alternative model of writing and representation,

the use of language in my practice aligns with Cixous’ conception of feminine writing.

27

Chapter 2: Contextual Review

This chapter examines contemporary visual artists whose practices offer contextual,

conceptual and material provocations for the practice-led research undertaken throughout this

project. First, the chapter explores Sophie Calle’s practice in relation to the use of text and

image to create ‘monuments’ that speak of intimacy and loss. Second, it discusses the work of

Felix Gonzalez-Torres through the lens of melancholy and his use of the everyday to create

works that traverse the boundaries between public and private discourse. Jenny Holzer’s

practice provides further examples of using fragmented language and challenging the

authorial voice in visual arts practice. Finally, the chapter considers video art and installation

through the practice of Gary Hill, who looks at the complex relationships that occur between

visual and textual language in his multi-channel video works.

Intimacy and Loss // Sophie Calle Sophie Calle’s work is important to this project because of the way in which her practice

addresses themes of intimacy and loss through installations largely comprising photographic

and textual narratives. At the core of her practice, Calle investigates confrontations with the

intimately human experiences of identity, pain, suffering, relationships, memory, mortality

and empathy. She uses personal narrative and tropes of the everyday in her works to explore

intimacy and the tension around public expressions of private experiences. I consider the

themes of intimacy, loss and the tensions of public and private representations of these

experiences as central to the interest and outcomes of my own practice, and Calle’s practice

has informed my own reflections on these complex questions.

Sophie Calle is recognised for blurring the distinction between fact and fiction in her work by

‘using the material of daily life coupled with storytelling’ (McFadden 2014, 143). This

method is evident in her exhibition Douleur Exquise (Exquisite Pain) (1984‒2003), a multi-

room installation that begins as a narrative of romantic loss and pain. Described by Shirley

Ann Jordan as ‘an anatomy of suffering’ (2007, 197), Exquisite Pain presents a collection of

textual elements, photographs and documents that narrate a journey through Calle’s

experience of suffering and abandonment in the lead up to and following a romantic break-up.

28

In addition to her personal narrative, Calle invited several acquaintances and chance

encounter participants to respond to her question ‘What did you suffer the most?’, including

their intimate offerings as embroidered text works coupled with photographs in part of the

installation (Jordan 2007, 197). Calle’s storytelling in this work functions in many ways: it is

orchestrated, methodological, places the private in the public sphere and merges with the

anonymous other to raise questions about the authenticity and authorial voice of personal

narrative, as well as the nuances of shared experiences of identity, suffering and loss.

Figure 2.1 Calle, Sophie. 1984‒2003. Douleur Exquise installation view at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

(2005). Image. Accessed May 20, 2017. https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/sophie-calle-exquisite-pain/installation-views

In her text Exhibiting pain: Sophie Calle’s Douleur Exquise, Jordan (2007, 198) proposes that

making sense of the work entails exploring two broad and interwoven cultural phenomena—

the first is our growing fascination with ‘the intimate’, and with shifts in, and punctures of,

the public/private boundary that Calle traverses in her work. Using personal narrative as the

foundation of her works, parallels can be drawn between Calle’s practice and that of Hélène

Cixous through the negotiation of intimate narratives in the public domain and the subsequent

‘becoming intimate’ with the artist, narrator or author of the work (Cooke 2011, 3).

However, Calle’s autofictional and confessional work goes beyond this personal realm,

exposing the experiences of the other. This extension of personal narrative into an

orchestrated storytelling that involves the other can also be considered in terms of Barthes’

concept of blurring the distinction between the author, narrator and viewer of a work that

29

features multiple written perspectives. In addition to this, I relate Calle’s methodological

‘storytelling’ to techniques employed within my own practice—specifically, in my aim to

remove intimate personal narratives from their private contexts to both censor and reframe

my own experiences and implicate the viewer in the loose ‘narrative’ of my work.

Jordan (2007, 198) describes the second phenomena as our ‘preoccupation with loss, memory

and the memorial imperative’, claiming that Douleur Exquise puts a new slant on historical

study and the invention of commemorative practice, place and objects. Calle emphasises the

‘disparate sufferings of isolated individuals’, rather than people caught up in collectively

experienced and commemorated events (Jordan 2007, 198). Working against the paradoxical

erasure of the experience of suffering afforded by the classic ‘hard’ commemorative

monument of stone or other permanent matter, Jordan (2007, 199) defines Calle’s approach to

exploring individual suffering and the particularity of loss as self-consciously producing a

‘soft monument’.

Figure 2.2 Calle, Sophie. 1984‒2003. Douleur Exquise installation view at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

(2005). Image. Accessed May 20, 2017. https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/sophie-calle-exquisite-pain/installation-views

Calle’s ‘soft monument’ not only allows us to question what we feel, but muses on how we

articulate and record it individually and collectively (Jordan 2007, 199). In Douleur Exquise,

Calle’s way of articulating experience employs tropes of the everyday to create a monument

to loss and suffering. Images of unremarkable, everyday matter, including travel photographs

and remnants of tickets and documents, put the everyday to affective use. Jordan (2007, 200)

30

explains that Calle is ‘interested in the underside of things: for instance, items that evoke

human presence: rumpled sheets, laid out clothes, a meal waiting to be eaten’. Calle’s use of

these seemingly absent and mundane scenes in her works prompts me to question the use of

images of the everyday in my own practice, and interrogate the intense affect I associate with

such visually ‘empty’ images that fixate on trace and lack. ‘Trace’ and ‘lack’ are terms I use

here to explain the sense of absence, especially of human form, in the scenes of domestic and

public space captured both in Calle’s photographs and in my video works.

Figure 2.3 Calle, Sophie. 1984‒2003. Douleur Exquise (Day 14) detail view. Image. Accessed May 20, 2017.

http://www.flaunt.com/content/people/sophie-calle

McFadden (2014, 143) provides the useful contention that ‘the significance of Calle’s work

lies in its ingenious inability to be pinned down’. He goes on to explain this ambiguity as

resulting from the artist’s intriguing textual and visual storytelling and her ‘manipulation of

the spectator’s desire to know more about the purposeful conflation of art and life in her

work’ (McFadden 2014, 143). This conflation of art and life, which offers intimate and

ambiguous representations of feeling, suffering, loss and affect, is something I see present in

Calle’s practice as well as my own. It is a significant component of my practice, as it is

important that my immersive video installations prompt viewers to participate in introspective

processes, perhaps reflecting on their own experiences of loss or grief in order to make sense

of the work.

31

In addition to the material manifestations of intimacy, feeling and affect in Calle’s practice, it

is important to discuss her work in terms of process and methodology. Calle’s works are

habitually shaped by intricate, predetermined rules and rituals that outline a methodological

approach to data collection in her practice. In the case of Douleur Exquise, the ritual act of

asking others ‘What did you suffer the most?’ functions as a framework for the working

through of Calle’s own suffering by collecting the data of others with which to compare it.

Following these ‘game-rules’ in her practice relates to the legacies of conceptual art and its

tendency to follow a nominal proposition carried out by the artist in making the work (Hand

2005, 463). Janet Hand (2005, 467) proposes that Calle, through adopting conceptual art

techniques in contemporary practice, undermines the ‘polarity between concept and

expression’. The blurring of these two artistic modes or stages of creating a work (concept

and expression) in Calle’s practice is pertinent when considering the methodology of my own

creative practice. In making my works, I employ thematic and systematic conceptual

frameworks for grouping and sequencing textual and video components. While these methods

often adhere to conceptual art approaches, the outcome of the works is imbued with affect

rather than exclusively exposing the rigid conceptual compositions of their making. Calle’s

practice is seductive and transformative in that it compiles an intensely intimate and affective

monument of suffering from ordinary representations and remnants of the everyday.

Melancholy // Felix Gonzalez-Torres The practice of Cuban-born American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957‒1996) also

provides useful points of connection for this practice-led research project. Like Calle,

Gonzalez-Torres’ work is primarily concerned with personal narrative, mortality and loss,

tropes of the everyday and the ongoing tension between public and private discourse in

contemporary visual art. While Calle’s work is direct and explicit in its accounts of individual

and collective pain, Gonzalez-Torres’ approaches to representations of personal narrative and

experiences of loss and grief in his work are ambiguous, poetic and minimal. Gonzalez-

Torres’ works carry the weight of melancholy, and are stripped back to their simplest guises,

providing viewers with only hints at narrative content. By analysing selected works, this

chapter draws connections between the artist’s melancholic approach to making and similar

approaches in my own practice.

32

Figure 2.4 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix. 1991. Untitled installation view at 11th Avenue and 38th Street, Manhattan (2012). Image. Accessed June 16, 2017. https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/04/04/printout-felix-

gonzalez-torres

Gonzalez-Torres’ 1991 Untitled is an ongoing series of billboard works that offer a useful

starting point for unpacking the thread of melancholy in his practice. Exhibited largely

posthumously across New York and internationally since 1991, the work places an intimate

domestic bed scene on large-scale billboards in the centre of metropolitan streets. Among the

many functions of the work, its context highlights the negotiation of public/private boundaries

and narratives with which Gonzalez-Torres’ practice is fundamentally concerned.

Beyond the spectacle of presenting an image of private space in city centres, the work’s

content and formal qualities speak directly to themes of melancholy, loss and absence. The

photograph captures a vacant scene: a pair of pillows on a bed imprinted with absent bodies.

Nancy Spector (1995, 117) discusses the significance of trace in the image, noting that ‘it is

the trace of previous inhabitants that injects meaning into this picture, however open-ended

that meaning might be; the bed itself is merely a backdrop to this silent tableau of pleasures

past, of vanished intimacies, of loss’. In the essay ‘The Means of Pleasure’, Amanda Cruz

(2016, 56) expands on Spector’s analysis, claiming that the billboard also ‘functions as a

memorial for those who had once lain there’. This positioning of the work as a memorial

recalls the rhetoric around Calle’s practice as presenting a ‘soft monument’ to individual

suffering and the particularity of loss (Jordan 2007, 199).

33

While Gonzalez-Torres’ work speaks of the experience of loss and grief following the death

of his partner, the narrative behind the work is not explicit in the image, nor is it necessary to

unpack in this discussion. Instead, it is the understanding of subtle and implicit cues that

provides the most powerful connection between Gonzalez-Torres’ work and the focus of my

practice-led research. As Cruz (2016, 52) expresses, ‘The goal of empowering the audience is

foremost in Gonzalez-Torres’ mind, as his work provides only clues and gaps that encourage

viewers to construct meaning. His is an art of blank spaces and things left unsaid’.

Gonzalez-Torres’ ‘art of blank spaces’ often uses the photographic medium to represent

experiences of grief through scenes of monochrome melancholia (Cruz 2016, 52). In addition

to the 1991 billboard series, the artist produced variations of this work featuring different

images, including the 1995 iteration, Untitled, which depicts a single bird flying across a

cloud-blanketed sky. Charged with absence and foreboding grief, the image prompts me to

question how I consider similar tropes of the everyday as symbols and triggers of affect and

melancholy in my own practice.

34

Figure 2.5 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix. 1995. Untitled installation view at tram shelters and transportation hubs, Hong Kong (2015). Image. Accessed June 16, 2017. http://www.andrearosengallery.com/exhibitions/felix-

gonzalez-torres_2015-02-28/4

Discussing the formal content of Gonzalez-Torres’ work also raises the importance of

process, particularly in relation to photography and the snapshot. Nancy Spector (1995, 125)

contends that ‘photography, in all its forms, is inextricably linked with death’. Linking her

statement directly with Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida text, Spector (1995, 125) goes on to

contemplate Barthes’ ‘return of the dead’ as ‘present in every photograph, each of which is an

irreversible reminder that what was recorded by the camera no longer exists in the state

pictured: the moment rendered is forever gone, save for a fading two-dimensional image’.

While this theorising is centred on still images—and, given the historical context, analogue

images as fading prints—I consider the captured video of my creative practice as inextricably

linked to this history of photography and the passing of moments in time. Spector (1995, 125)

concludes that freezing the reflection of a passing instant in a snapshot, such as in Gonzalez-

Torres’ works, ensures that the ‘tyranny of time is experienced ever more acutely’. When I

consider the use of moving images in my own work, I think of this extension of the

experience of time being emphasised through the medium’s durational capabilities. This in

turn mirrors the acute and prolonged sense of suffering and melancholy that manifests as a

result of loss and grief.

35

Figure 2.6 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix. 1989. Untitled (Loverboy). Image. Accessed June 18, 2017.

http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/felix-gonzalez-torres/images

In addition to photographic works, Gonzalez-Torres’ archive of installation practice includes

many paper stacks and object-based works similarly concerned with loss and temporality.

Untitled (Loverboy) (1989) is a work comprising curtains of sheer blue fabric installed across

open doorways and windows, allowing both light and wind to infiltrate and causing the veils

to move. Spector (1995, 125) conceives of this simple gesture as resounding with a plethora

of meanings—‘not only the perennially shifting distinction between the public and private,

but also the power of the imagination, the memory of the sensual body, a faith in formal

beauty, the desire for transformations, and the hope for renewal’. The work, poetic and

poignant with hope and beauty, reiterates the artist’s goal of providing gaps and silences for

the viewer to independently make meaning of the works. In my own creative practice, I

regularly capture and edit scenes of curtains and windows, and have also included these

objects in installations to afford viewers the same experience of melancholy, temporality and

absence that these scenes evoke for me. What could be an ordinary set of curtains in a home,

a cliché of everyday domesticity, transforms, in the gallery, into a membrane between our

private losses and the public world around us, and punctures the unspeakable facade of linear

time in a space of deep grief.

36

Jane Blocker (2009, 40) refers to Caruth’s writing on trauma and history, defining the latter as

‘double telling’, which is ‘the oscillation between a crisis of death and the correlative crisis of

life: between the story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story of the unbearable

nature of its survival’. This crisis, Blocker (2009, 40) claims, may involve for Gonzalez-

Torres the ‘literal crisis of another’s death compounded by one’s own survival’. Blocker’s

sentiment here resonates strongly when I reflect on my own experiences and how they inform

my approach to practice: that the unbearableness of a loss is compounded by the similarly

unbearable nature of telling that trauma through a visual arts practice. Gonzalez-Torres wields

the power of seductive beauty and the poetic pain of impermanence throughout his practice

(Elger 1997, 9). His representations of loss and grief are affecting and melancholic, and

embody the paradox of death and beauty that is also threaded through my own practice.

Text-based Art and Writing as Visual Arts Practice // Jenny Holzer The use of language as both a textual and visual medium in my work is informed Jenny

Holzer, who could be considered to operate at the intersection between visual arts and writing

practices. This section examines Holzer’s work and the consideration of text and writing as

both a visual medium and conceptual method of practice.

Jenny Holzer has produced a vast collection of text-based works that aim to communicate

personal, political and poignant messages in art galleries and public spaces (Holzer 1997,

105). One of Holzer’s best known bodies of work, Truisms, began in the late 1970s as a

collection of text works that have been printed, displayed on streets, LED signs and in

galleries, and since 1996 have been part of an ongoing series of projection works on public

buildings and sites around the world (Mills 2013, 250).

37

Figure 2.7 Holzer, Jenny. 1978‒1987. Truisms (Detail). Image. Accessed September 3, 2016.

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/63755

Holzer explains language as useful because of its ‘accessibility to convey a store of

information and powerful emotional content through a generally comprehensible lexicon’

(Morley 2007, 181). I relate my own interest in language and writing as materials with which

to work to these qualities of accessibility (that is, language as something most people can read

and understand), and of their potential to convey emotionally evocative content.

Holzer’s manipulation and construction of language in her practice challenges the authorial

voice and investigates its potential elimination through strategic avoidance of a first-person

singular (Hughes 2006, 422). David Joselit (1998, 45) further articulates that Holzer uses text

‘not merely—or even primarily—to dematerialise art objects, but rather to evaporate the

subject of art—the artist … to dematerialise the author’. This technique relates back to

Barthes’ idea of dissolving subject/object in language, and is a method I use similarly in my

works through shifting first and third person and sequencing endlessly unresolved clauses.

38

Figure 2.8 Holzer, Jenny. 2006. Truisms—projections (Vienna). Image. Accessed September 3, 2016.

http://projects.jennyholzer.com/projections/vienna-2006/gallery#8

Joselit (1998, 45) provides additional useful readings of Holzer’s practice and manipulation

of the authorial voice, claiming that ‘the “author” projected by Holzer’s texts is nowhere and

everywhere—both uncannily personal and rigidly ideological’. The dislocation this

experience affords a viewer/reader of Holzer’s work is close to what I hope to evoke in my

own textual video works: ‘what is this, who’s saying this, where’s it coming from, what does

it mean to me?’ (Joselit 1998, 45). Through my use of language, I am interested in prompting

viewers to question the act of reading and their place within these fragmented narratives.

Video Art and Multi-Channel Installation // Gary Hill Gary Hill’s practice provides the primary context for investigating language, image and

representation in multi-channel video installations in this project. In many of his works, Hill

explores themes of presence, narrative, perception and subjectivity, often positioning the

viewer in a space where they can begin to observe and evaluate the process of viewing itself

(Vischer 1995, 25). Hill’s work also shows an interest in exposing the relationship between

language and our cognitive formation of images, with the materialism of writing investigated

and articulated through video installation works (Hanhardt 2000, 114).

39

Figure 2.9 Hill, Gary. 1994. Circular Breathing. Image. Accessed October 2, 2016. http://garyhill.com/work/mixed_media_installation/circular-breathing.html

Hill’s Circular Breathing (1994) is a large-scale, five-channel video projection featuring

excerpts of mundane images: the artist’s family and scenes of travel from his everyday life

flicker across the screens in what has been described as a ‘gestalt field, a sequential

time/space field, digitally calculated, yet without a clearly defined formalist perimeter’

(Morgan 2000, 5). The images continuously pulsate and flicker across the channels, evoking

what Hill calls a ‘trippy neurological thing’, embedded with a notion of narrative or of there

‘being something underneath’ (Quasha, Stein and Hill 1998, 24). The work is connected to

ideas of cognisance and memory and, through its sequencing, it alludes to narrative, but

remains ambiguous and poetic rather than representative of a linear story.

Hill further explains that the effect of these images is ‘not solely mechanical or biochemical’,

but rather an ‘opening up of another view on what a story is, what a narrative is, what images

are, and what do images mean when they are next to each other flickering at such and such a

rate’ (Quasha 1998, 24). Hill’s technique of flashing these seemingly unrelated images

simultaneously across multiple channels has informed the way I think about using fragmented

images to disrupt linear narrative and represent disjointed memories and images associated

with my experiences of trauma and loss. The relationships formed by these images also calls

into question ideas of representation that I explore in the making process: of what it means to

capture scenes from one’s everyday life and construct a sequence that becomes not about

40

what the images are, but how they function to create new connections and readings for the

viewer when placed together in a multi-channel video work.

Figure 2.10 Hill, Gary. 1981‒1983. Primarily Speaking. Image. Accessed February 16, 2018. http://garyhill.com/work/mixed_media_installation/primarily-speaking-2.html

While Circular Breathing is predominantly concerned with images and representation, Hill is

known for working with verbal and written language in his multi-channel works. In Primarily

Speaking (1981‒1983), words and phrases are aurally presented while colour fields and

images of objects and scenes appear across the eight monitors (Hanhardt 2000, 117). Hill

renders language as material, and brings to the foreground of the work a negotiation of the

relationship between word and image (Hanhardt 2000, 118). The work is paradoxical in its

rendering of both literal and metaphoric language/image relationships: when the word listen

is said, one sees a shell; the word blood is spoken together with an upside-down bottle of

wine; for the word earth, an image of the globe appears on screen (Lageira 2000, 47). Hill’s

play with images, spoken word and representation in this work prompts me to further

consider both the cohesive relationships and slippages that can occur between the material

components of my own multi-channel textual and image-based video works.

While the screens and images are dominant features of the work, I am particularly interested

in what is underneath—the written form of Hill’s spoken word. A sample transcription of the

spoken word text follows:

41

well you know what they say we've all heard it before

it never ceases to amaze me this time

it's more than just a change in the weather they've really outdone themselves

how they ever got it past us I don't know in many circles it's considered the unspeakable these types of goings-on surface every so often

statistically one of us is probably involved

there's always someone willing to run the risk at this point though

there are no tell tale signs to speak of I wonder if the better thing to do is refrain from speculation

hang in there but hold back not get caught up in the missing link syndrome

of course there's an ulterior motive when is there ever not

that it's been dropped in our laps I'm sure is no accident we can't just stand around though

where to go from here is the question do you have any ideas one thing's for certain

(Hill 1981-3)

The text is ambiguous and refers to instances in time, events and idioms; it poses half-formed

statements and questions to the viewer. Hill’s construction of language here is notable

because it exposes some of the process behind making the work. Beginning with a text

constructed of fragments that allude to narrative, Hill has sequenced images and sound over a

video timeline to create overlapping channels that prompt the viewer to question the

relationships among material inside the work, but also the relationships formed through the

process of reading/listening/viewing and piecing together its various parts.

42

Chapter 3: Methodology

This chapter delineates the research methods employed for this practice-led project, including

the processing of language and video and the use of screens to create multi-channel

installations.

As a practice-led project, the research undertaken comprises studio practice and critical

engagement with theoretical texts and other visual arts practices. The research methods

employed throughout the project have been cyclical, explorative and reflective. This aligns

with the concept of ‘the iterative cyclic web’ proposed in Hazel Smith and Roger Dean’s

(2009, 8) Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts. This model

places together ‘the cycle (alternations between practice and research), the web (numerous

points of entry, exit, cross-referencing and cross-transit within the practice-research cycle),

and iteration (many subcycles in which creative practice or research processes are repeated

with variation)’ (Smith and Dean 2009, 8). This means that the steps undertaken in this

project involved a ‘back and forth’ between the creative approaches and outcomes, the

collection of traditional theoretical and visual arts research and the reflective process of

making and critically reviewing the works independently and via feedback with supervisors

and peers.

In line with the proposition that ‘within the context of studio-based research, innovation is

derived from methods that cannot always be predetermined, and ‘outcomes’ of artistic

research are necessarily unpredictable’ (Barrett & Bolt 2007, 3), this project has naturally

taken various turns throughout its course. These necessary shifts in the focus of my research

have been informed by both making new creative works, and reading and writing about

theories and practices that have allowed me to constantly develop new understandings and

connections within my research. This method of research assists in contextualising the

creative outcomes already in process and enables unforeseen connections to be drawn

between the overlapping theoretical and material research components; it can also expose

entirely new threads of thought.

43

Text, Image and Representation The use of fragmented language and images in my video works primarily explores how these

components may be used to represent experiences, thoughts and feelings that are difficult to

articulate through conventional verbal and written language. The specific approaches I have

to making art generally begin with writing, recording conversations and reflective thoughts

and gathering text from personal journals and found materials. The text becomes the material

I reimagine, broken up into short phrases and excerpts and reorganised, often thematically, to

become a resource bank of material for generating new texts that become the foundation of

video works. Working with text and language in this way relates back to concepts of trauma

and representation, in that the fragmented texts aim to reflect the disjointed experience of

traumatic memory.

The process of collecting, editing and recontextualising video footage is also a central method

of practice in this project. I am methodical and considered in compiling the video and sound

work I use that reflects the scenes and sensations of my everyday life. These specific methods

of making scaffold the methodology, and result in a set of key processes that operates

cyclically yet flexibly throughout the project. This approach allows for an open-ended site in

which the creative outcomes occur simultaneously alongside other modes of research, and

provide new possibilities for considering the relationship between creative and traditional

methodologies.

Textual Video While screen-based media typically takes the form of moving images, I am especially

interested in how the use of text in video work can create new experiences of reading, and of

viewing and understanding the video medium. In his text Literary Video: A Manifesto, artist

and author Richard Kostelanetz (1976, 62) contends that ‘literary video differs from other

video art in its base of a text whose language is enhanced, rather than mundane—a text that is

conceived within the traditions of literature and a contemporary sense of verbal possibilities’.

I relate to this statement, as I view the video medium as a means of activating the fragments

of language I use in my work, which both challenges traditional modes of reading and

perceiving language and opens up the potential for new understandings of how time-based

media can function.

44

Kostelanetz (1976, 62) also likens video to the printed page, claiming that ‘the video medium

itself is closer to books than film, because the TV screen is small and perceptually distant …

rather than large and enveloping, like the movie screen’. While Kostelanetz’s statement refers

to the much smaller television screens of the 1970s, I still find it a compelling argument in

terms of our relationship with reading and the screen. Though I have experimented with

large-scale/cinematic video projection in the past, it has become a central method of my

practice throughout this project to create video installation works strictly comprising

television screens. By employing this method of practice, I am considering how text and

images presented on screens can challenge conventional modes of consuming language and

narrative, and simultaneously be immersive and affecting in ways that may traditionally be

associated with large-scale projection and cinema.

Viewing and the Screen To expand further on the methods of screen-based installation employed through this project,

it is important to assess how these objects operate both physically and figuratively in a gallery

context. In Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art, Kate Mondloch (2010, 60) explains that

our cultural habit of looking at media screens and ‘our propensity to view them as windows

onto other representational or information spaces’ has special consequences for the complex

spatial dynamics of screen-reliant installation viewing. This idea of screens representing

windows to other spaces is something of which I am conscious when making work

specifically for television screens. The scale and dimensions of the screens I use in my works

are not unlike that of actual domestic windows, and the backlit nature of these technologies

also emphasises the suggestion of an inner and outer space. In this way, then, the glass of the

screen acts as a threshold between public and private—the gallery space and viewers being

the ‘public’, and the intimate and personal content of my work the ‘private’. While I do not

expect every viewer to consciously make this connection between screen/object and

representation, television screens are a key method I used throughout this project to create

works that are methodical, symbolic and affective.

Another element I take into account when creating screen-based works is engaging the viewer

in terms of duration and proximity. The screens I use in my works are at a scale similar to that

45

used for everyday viewing on television screens in domestic, retail and other public and

private spaces. Where large-scale projection is associated with cinema and viewing over

longer periods of time, consuming media on television screens is typically fleeting, like

flicking through television channels, doing other activities with the television on in the

background or seeing public advertising on television screens. With this in mind, I usually

create works that are less than 10 minutes long, with the understanding that viewing

television screens is an activity people perform with relatively short attention spans and in

relatively short time brackets. Another component of this concern with duration and viewing

is the infinite looping of these short videos. Videos playing on continuous loop grant a viewer

the privilege to leave and re-enter an exhibition space at any point (Mondloch 2010, 12). This

is facilitated further by the non-linear narrative of fragmented text and images presented in

my works—there is often no strict or logical start or end point. The continuous nature of the

videos could thus be regarded as signalling the persistence of memory, and the viewer’s

fragmented and fleeting viewing of the work reflecting the disorientating experience of

traumatic memory.

Multi-channel Video Installation In addition to the symbolic use of screens in my practice, it is important to unpack the

relationship between screens, viewers and space that is established specifically though multi-

channel video installation. Mondloch (2010, xiii) describes video installations as forms that

are ‘designed to “unfold” during the spectator’s experience in time rather than to be known

visually all at once’. Margaret Morse (1990, 166) adds to this idea of unfolding by explaining

that the time it takes for viewers to complete a trajectory around the space viewing monitors

and objects allows for ‘reflection in the subject her or himself’, and for ‘the experiences of a

transformation to occur’. The unfolding of video installation works is particularly relevant

when considering the use of multiple screens as part of my practice-led methods. By creating

multi-channel works, I am not only questioning the relationship between fragments of image

and text occurring simultaneously across screens, but forming spaces for viewers to begin this

process of unfolding the works by engaging with multiple screens. In turn, this navigating and

processing of multiple screens, either in close proximity or spread across an installation

space, not only enables questioning of the multilayered content of the works, but affords the

viewer time and space to reflect on their relationship with the works and themselves.

46

Using screens to create multi-channel installation works is a method employed throughout

this project to heighten the tensions of public and private boundaries through the symbolic act

of viewing ‘inside’ another space. Screens are also used to create a space for the viewer to

make autonomous decisions about engaging with time-based media installations. Through

multi-channel installation, these works prompt viewers to engage reflectively as the works

unfold in time and space.

47

Chapter 4: Creative Practice

This chapter discusses the creative works made throughout this project, and unpacks the

processes and ideas that inform both the broader outcomes and nuances of each work. Some

of the creative works are studio experiments documented to show progress, while others are

refined works that have been shown publicly in solo and group exhibitions. The works

explore the potential of creative practice, comprising text, image, sound and spatial qualities

to represent and express feelings associated with loss and grief.

Constructing Texts // Process As a point of departure for the creative works made throughout this project, I consider text a

foundational material. While the texts are presented in time-based media in their final form,

the processes I undertake in arranging and constructing threads of fragmented language also

form the core methods of my creative practice. The treatment of language and text in this

project is primarily intended to disrupt expectations of linear narrative in order to reflect my

personal experience of traumatic memory.

The texts used in the works were sourced from private journals, documents, musings and

conversations about my experiences of loss, grief and trauma. These texts were treated in a

way that aimed to subvert traditional understandings of narrative to create new meanings and

readings of the work. This was a method of processing my own trauma, as well as opening

the works up to be interpreted by viewers in relation to their own experiences and

subjectivities. By considering these intimate texts a material component of my practice, I

aimed to transform my perception of the experiences to which they speak. By repeatedly

processing these texts across a number of works, I essentially minimised the emotional effect

they have on me, and examined how language and representation can function more broadly

in the context of contemporary art.

To create each work, I began by referring to text documents I have compiled over the past

five years of my practice. These documents are ongoing collections of fragmented language.

In some instances, I systematically curated these fragments into thematic lists, such as words

48

and phrases about time, place, witnessing, hearing, saying and feeling things. By separating

the fragments into these themes, I was able to more easily construct multi-channel text works

across screens that drew new connections between subjects such as time and place, hearing

and speaking about experiences and reflecting on them. An example of this can be found in

the work Prepositions of Time and Place, where I extracted fragments of text related to time

and place to investigate how these elements become disorientated through the lens of

traumatic memory.

Memory and Language // Prepositions of Time and Place

Figure 4.1 Prepositions of Time and Place. Video still. Two-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2016).

Two-channel video mock-up: https://vimeo.com/255204131/1765a1e28f

Prepositions of Time and Place is a two-channel video work that explores memory and the

inherent difficulty of communicating complex feelings associated with experiences of loss

and trauma. The work attempts to articulate, recount and reflect on these experiences through

the use of moving image and fragmented language that positions time and place as the

fundamental elements that constitute memory.

The title of the work provides context for the thematic use of language presented in the

videos. In grammar, a preposition is defined as ‘a word governing, and usually preceding, a

noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause’ (Oxford

English Dictionary, 2017). In relation to the work, I see the preposition as situated in the in-

between of time and place, and the way these concepts are articulated and disrupted through

the lens of traumatic memory.

49

The left channel comprises words, phrases and fragments of language that specifically relate

to time, including moving forward, taking so long, for the first time, I’m just not ready, going

back in time. The right channel comprises a set of texts that relate to place, including where

you are, down the corridor, on the other side, it’s disorientating, the way out, on the inside.

These fragments were carefully arranged, appearing on screen for various lengths of time,

overlapping and weaving in and out of logical narrative form. Occasionally, two texts could

appear across the screens, allowing one to create a coherent connection between the

components of time and place. Sometimes, fragments were intentionally paired and

sequenced to highlight the incoherent, often disorientating experience of recalling traumatic

memories.

Figure 4.2 Prepositions of Time and Place. Text (2016).

The moving images in the work were made deliberately ambiguous, repetitive and slow

moving. Filtered light captured on camera and translated through the digital medium of video

mimicked the bodily sensation of seeing light move through closed eyes. The movement of

the two channels was edited so that the blurs of light appeared to float inwards across the two

screens. This was a deliberate decision that relates to the idea of there being an ‘in-between

space’, perhaps a void, where these fragmented memories of time and place might merge to

form an unseen resolve. The floating fragments of light aimed to heighten the symbolic nature

50

of the text, suggesting a state between reality and dreaming, and an attempt to grasp the

meaning of something that is just out of reach.

Embedded in the work is a plethora of personal anxiety related to this struggle or (self-)

perceived inability to find the words required to coherently express my own lived experiences

of traumatic loss. Included in this difficulty with trauma is the ongoing grief that these events

cause in terms of intrusive memories and a frustration with expressing and sharing these

everyday griefs with others, such as in a clinical therapy context. The fleeting images and text

in the work speak to this struggle and desire to overcome and understand how to process

these intrusive thoughts, memories and affects. I also consider the imagery to hold a

paradoxical position in that its repeated slow movement can have a calming and therapeutic

effect, while also suggesting a sense of foreboding darkness and melancholy, as the shapes of

light fade in and out of the black void. Although specific connections to personal trauma are

threaded through the text, the images evoke sensations that remind us of a shared

experience—of cognisance, memory, reflection and the liminal space between dreaming and

consciousness.

Figure 4.3 Prepositions of Time and Place. Two-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2016).

Installation documentation, Future Proof, Boxcopy, Brisbane.

Prepositions of Time and Place was included in the 2016 exhibition Future Proof at Boxcopy

Contemporary Art Space, Brisbane. The work was installed on two adjacent 40-inch screens,

51

one wall-mounted and the other mounted at a slight inward-facing angle. The angled

positioning of the screens was subtle, but aimed to emphasise the idea of the two text

channels being somewhat dialogic, like two people adjacent but not quite speaking directly to

one another.

In addition to the text and image components of the work, the soundscape accompanying the

video was added to suggest a sense of melancholy. I recorded the droning sounds of an

electric cello and created a soundscape with multiple layers of distorted and drawn-out bass

tones. These lower register tones, combined with the organic scraping of the bow across the

cello’s strings, were elongated and manipulated to make an atmospheric and somewhat

sombre soundtrack for the work.

The combination of moving image, sound and carefully constructed language in this work not

only attempts to reflect on lived experiences, but creatively reimagine them to gain a deeper

understanding of how the conscious and unconscious mind deals with difficult memories.

Intimacy, Grief and the Everyday // Between You and I

Figure 4.4 Between You and I (I). Three-channel video installation with sound, 10:00 minutes (2016).

Installation documentation, FAKE Estate ARI, Metro Arts, Brisbane. Photo: Llewellyn Millhouse.

Three-channel video mock-up: https://vimeo.com/255206719/e0f3889165 Video installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/255156948/815ae98864

52

Between You and I is a multi-channel video installation that has been exhibited and reworked

for two exhibitions throughout the project. In its first iteration, the work was a three-channel

video with sound. As the project developed, the work was extended to comprise four video

channels with sound. It explores how intimacy, loss and grief can be expressed through

image, text and sound. Fragmented text and images of the everyday were combined in an

attempt to express thoughts, feelings and experiences that resist traditional verbal language

and linear narrative. The work reflects on traumatic memory by traversing the tenuous

boundary between public and private experiences. Here, I first discuss it as it was exhibited in

my solo exhibition Between You and I at FAKE Estate ARI, Metro Arts in 2016.

Split across three vertically mounted screens, the video had two text channels and one centre

channel with scenes of moving images captured from my everyday surroundings. The text in

the work addressed experiencing or witnessing an event/events and the act of hearing or

speaking about it/them. Specifically, the left channel presented texts related to seeing,

including the look on his face, not able to focus, your eyes opened, to see you again, you’re

worried about seeing, I’ve seen this before. The right channel represented the complementary

theme of saying/hearing, and featured fragments such as you could not talk, explaining to me,

a lot of noise, what would you say, everyone’s trying to explain.

The moving images shown on the centre channel were fragments of my everyday

surroundings, captured on camera and edited to create a sense of stillness. The images barely

moved, fading in and out of focus and darkness, and included an unmade bed, light filtering

through curtains, a cloudy sky, mouldy fence palings and water trickling down a gutter,

among others. Each scene, while intimately connected to my family home and its surrounds,

was intended to represent a common milieu of the everyday—of banal moments, spaces and

places that evoke a sense of absence of human form, traces, memories and passing time.

These images were not unlike those that repeatedly appear in the work of Felix Gonzales-

Torres, who also implicitly speaks of loss, grief and melancholy through images of the

everyday.

53

The use of these images is not simply about what the images themselves show, but the

broader sense of connection they might evoke for a viewer. This connection speaks to our

impulsive need to make sense of what we see in our surroundings, and how we can project

our own lived experiences onto these blank/familiar scenes of everyday life. The use of text

and image across screens is reminiscent of the methods seen in Gary Hill’s multi-channel

video works, in that the combination of these fragments prompts viewers to question the

relationships between visual and textual language and representation as well as the act of

viewing.

It is important to consider the act of capturing and editing these video excerpts. Video, like

photography, can only represent a moment that has already passed. In this sense, the video

speaks of a dual consideration of time. The first is that the literal scenes captured once existed

as present moments in my life, and are now just representations removed from this space and

time. The second is that the images were taken with attention given to domestic and broader

scenes of natural phenomena, such as clouds, that are cinematic tropes often used to allude to

transience and the passing of time (Bordwell 2008, 17). This use of tropes returns to my

reflection on Cixous’ work, which posits the cliché as a method for attempting to express the

ineffable, and questioning how the personal and generic are interwoven in grief.

The title of the work, Between You and I, refers to the structure of narratives and linguistic

representation that Roland Barthes writes about in The Pleasure of the Text (1975) and

Roland Barthes (1994). In particular, it connects with the idea of shifting between first and

third person within a constructed text. This movement, between you and I, invokes the

slippages between memory and lived experiences, and the disjuncture that traumatic memory

causes for an individual. I also see this shift as positioning myself and the viewer both inside

and outside my/their own private experiences.

Between You and I also alludes to the paradox of shared experience. While it can be

interpreted as an internal monologue, it also references an intimate conversation between two

people and, at the same time, the word ‘between’ notes the absolute, impassable gap that

separates two individuals. The title also suggests a level of secrecy: through the words and

54

images, I am divulging parts of myself and my narrative and experiences of loss and trauma

with an external audience.

When developing the installation, I was especially focused on creating a space that

heightened affect for the audience, and I used sound to achieve this. A curtain was installed in

the space to form a corridor for viewers to navigate to reach the back of the exhibition space

before turning around to see the screens. The purpose of reshaping the gallery in this way was

to construct a space where viewers would hear the immersive and dark soundscape of the

work before the screens themselves became visible. It also meant that the blue light of the

image channel in the work glowed through the space, and was one of the first pieces of visual

information available. Responding again to the space, transparent white fabric curtains were

installed over the windows at the back of the room. This was both a practical way of dealing

with the existing architecture of the space, and a conceptual way of connecting the space to

the images of windows and curtains in the video. The inclusion of curtains here also

references Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ use of these symbolic facades to transform the gallery into

a threshold between our private losses and the public world around us.

Figure 4.5 Between You and I (I). Installation detail (2016).

Installation documentation, FAKE Estate ARI, Metro Arts, Brisbane.

A bench seat was placed in the space to prompt viewers to take a seat while watching the

work. Speakers were placed behind this seat—a deliberate decision that physically placed the

viewer within the work. Sound is significant for this piece, as I have come to regard it as a

powerful tool in my practice for creating affectual experiences. Sound is a component of this

work, and many others, that is consuming for viewers, especially in a relatively small or

contained installation space. This sense of the sound in this installation being consuming was

55

partly due to its volume and character, but also because it was an inherently affective element

of the work, as it could literally be felt, as vibrations moved through the viewer. By

positioning viewers in the space through these devices—the curtain, seat and sound in the

work—I intended to physically prompt them to be affected and project their own narratives

onto the work.

Figure 4.6 Between You and I (II). Four-channel video installation with sound, 9:53 minutes (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

Four-channel video mock-up: https://vimeo.com/255211320/59f4ca61d6 Video installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/258579437/c5df1857a1

For my final exhibition in January 2018, I revisited and reconstructed this work. Four screens

were wall-mounted and butted up against each other, with two text channels on the inner

screens and two image channels on the outer screens. The content remained mostly the same,

aside from a few refinements of what appeared on the video channel and the splitting of this

channel across two screens.

Extending Between You and I with an additional screen was the result of conceptual

developments that occurred in the 15 months between the two showings of this work. While

planning the recent installation, it became clear that placing the two text channels side by side

without an image channel in between would emphasise the act of reading, perhaps alluding to

the two adjoining pages of an open book. Bookending these screens with the outer moving

image channels also felt more resolved. The images were no longer the centre of the work,

which accentuated the idea of them being scenes to evoke absence and affect rather than a

literal narrative. This screen/object reference made me realise that four adjacent screens

56

would also connect to the concept of screens being like windows—therefore, they were wall-

mounted slightly above average eye-level, rather than placed on the floor as they had been in

the previous iteration of the work.

The process of creating two video channels where there had previously been only one helped

affirm my understanding of how these image fragments function as vignettes of the everyday

for the purpose of making an affective connection with the viewer, rather than as actual

representations of narrative or specific images connected to the text fragments. In this way,

the reworking process enabled me to grasp the methods used in my practice and let go of

some anxieties I have about controlling the specific connections made between images and

texts in my work.

Public and Private // Halstead St

Figure 4.7 Halstead St (II). Twelve-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018).

Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

Twelve-channel video mock-up: https://vimeo.com/255229329/16e1d3e184 Video installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/258582475/afd1d977ce

Halstead St is a multi-channel video installation that has taken various forms throughout this

project. Most recently, it was presented as a 12-channel video as part of my final exhibition,

Melancholy and the Memorial. Fragments of text and moving images of an empty home

suggest the sense of melancholy, loss and grief experienced following the selling of the

family home in which I grew up. The work is also concerned with the public/private

57

boundaries regarding space, relationships and the expression of personal grief. Parallels can

be drawn between the use of text, image and space in this work and Sophie Calle’s practice of

ambiguous storytelling and the ‘manipulation of the spectator’s desire to know more about

the purposeful conflation of art and life in her work’ (McFadden 2014, 143).

The installation initially comprised six channels: three with moving images, and three with

text. Shots of the vacated home in this work act as vignettes of the domestic space, void of all

possessions, which slowly faded in and out of focus as if to reference attempts to preserve

memories. The text excerpts were taken from existing thematic lists and arranged to form a

structure alluding to this sense of loss, memory and connection to place.

To unpack the work further, it is important to note the experimentation that took place before

its most recent iteration. Halstead St was first installed and rearranged in the Frank Moran

Gallery at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). This included various floor-based

arrangements, and one instance where the screens were wall-mounted. I felt anxious about the

content of the work, as the experience of losing my family home was very recent at that time.

During this stage, I was experimenting with ways to present scenes of the house and forge a

meaningful relationship between the screens, images and underlying narrative of the work.

Figure 4.8 Halstead St (I). Six-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2017). Installation documentation, Frank Moran Gallery, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove.

The screens were first arranged standing upright on the floor of the gallery because much of

the video content contained sections of wooden floorboards in the house, which I felt needed

to remain grounded on the wooden floors in the exhibition space. In doing this, the screens

were also easily reconfigured around the gallery (see Figure 4.8).

58

Figure 4.9 Halstead St (I). Six-channel video with sound, 8:00 minutes (2017). Installation documentation, Frank Moran Gallery, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove.

In another reworking of this six-channel installation, the screens were wall-mounted and a

curtain hung in the gallery that semi-obstructed the view of the screens upon first entering the

space (see Figure 4.9). Upon reflection, this act was an attempt to conceal the work because I

felt exposed by the content and the grief it was still causing me. This was ironic, considering

the work was primarily concerned with the tensions of public/private boundaries and

expressions of grief.

The work was revisited and adapted as part of my final exhibition, Melancholy and the

Memorial. Following several months of reflection, I decided that if the work was to speak of

loss and grief and the public expression of these experiences, it should do so more directly,

and in a way that was less concealed. The text and image channels were extended across 12

screens and situated in boxes that supported the screens at an angle. These were intended to

resemble headstones on a cemetery lawn, which I consider to be memorial objects. In a way,

the work became a physical site of mourning for the home that held many significant

memories for me when I was growing up.

59

Figure 4.10 Halstead St (II). Twelve-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018).

Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

The work was installed across the length of the space, again making subtle reference to the

idea of a cemetery lawn and its rows of headstones. While planning the installation of this

work, I had also thought about placing it at one end of the space with more rigid rows of

screens. This meant that viewers would literally walk through the rows, perhaps evoking an

embodied experience or their own memories of walking through a cemetery to visit a passed

loved one. This did not happen in the final installation because of the space required to view

other works; however, this idea of creating installations for viewers to walk through and be

aware of their bodies and the objects/screens around them is a direction I plan to continue

investigating in my practice beyond this project.

Melancholy // A Familiar Feeling

Figure 4.11 A Familiar Feeling. Two-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018).

Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

Two-channel video mock-up: https://vimeo.com/255218741/760cdb178e Video installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/258577796/82af001062

60

A Familiar Feeling is a two-channel video installation comprising back-to-back suspended

screens. The work was created as part of my final exhibition, Melancholy and the Memorial,

and explores how text, image, sound and space can create a platform for representing feelings

of melancholy.

In the exhibition, the two screens were suspended in the centre of the space, one visible as

viewers entered the room and the other placed behind it and facing the opposite corner. One

screen showed a series of fragmented texts, while the other showed a slow-moving video of a

clouded sky. The image of clouds, a motif often seen in Gonzalez-Torres’ practice, refers to

cinematic tropes of melancholy, contemplation and passing time. The text channel presented

a series of fragments that also reflected on these familiar feelings, hence the title of the work.

Both video channels had no identifiable beginning or end point. The moving images and

words did not aim to tell a narrative—rather, they offered fragments of memory or experience

that reached no close or resolution. They were persistent, repetitive, slow and unchanging,

mirroring my own experience moving through stages of grief and melancholy.

Figure 4.12 A Familiar Feeling. Two-channel video installation with sound, infinite loop (2018).

Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

When conceptualising this installation, I focused on how the space could be manipulated in a

way that prompted the viewer to navigate the room in viewing the work. I was interested in

how this movement could heighten the affect of the video content and the experience of being

in the space. The installation was constructed so that the screens appeared suspended in the

61

space, as they were mounted to a post that dropped down from the centre of the ceiling. Only

one screen was visible at first, and viewers had to walk around the structure to see the second.

The space beneath the screens was left empty so that viewers could see if another person was

watching the other channel at the same time. In this way, the physical arrangement of bodies

and screens became a metaphor for interpersonal connection and how it can be affected by

experiences of loss and grief. Specifically, it reminded me of instances where I have been

face-to-face with another person and felt completely disconnected, or that something was

obstructing our ability to see each other fully. In this case, the obstructions were grief,

melancholy and an inherent mechanism to place distance between myself and others.

The work also posited unknowns by positioning viewers in a way that made simultaneously

viewing the two channels impractical. One could never know what was happening on the

other side, just as one could never know exactly how another is feeling. The inferred

movement of navigating the space and screens, then, was intended to embody the experience

of struggling to fully grasp this connection with others, and finding the words to articulate

feelings associated with loss, grief and melancholy.

The installation also included an element of sound, a deep drone layered with a slow but

constant low-frequency heartbeat. The drone helped set the tone for the work, while the heart

beat was intended to heighten viewers’ awareness of the body while in the space.

62

The Memorial // Monument

Figure 4.13 Monument (II). Six-channel video installation with sound, 8:55 minutes (2018).

Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

Six-channel video mock-up: https://vimeo.com/256041160/5e9d0deaf1 Video installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/258585305/6bec8a2641

Monument is a multi-channel video installation that references the assemblage of memorial

structures. The work takes cues from Sophie Calle’s ‘soft monuments’: the act of creating

monuments to one’s own narrative or feelings, as opposed to the traditional ‘grand public

monument’ (Jordan 2007, 188‒189). This appropriation of the visual language of the

monument transforms private and personal narratives into a gesture that speaks to histories of

shared experiences and traumas.

Figure 4.14 Monument (I). Three-channel video with sound, 6:45 minutes (2017). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove.

63

Over the course of the project, Monument has developed from a three-channel work to a six-

channel work. Initially, the work comprised two text channels and one moving image

channel. The positioning of two adjacent text channels was intended to establish a dialogue

between the screens that could be interpreted as being between two people, or a monologue of

sorts. Like the formation of the screens, the text in the work also referenced the idea of the

memorial. It was sourced directly from personal letters and condolence cards received after

my mother’s passing. The text excerpts, while known to me, were fragmented and removed

from their context. This aimed to leave the reading of the work open, inviting viewers to

project their own experiences of loss, grief, memory or, more broadly, relationships with

others.

The video footage in the first version of this work (Figure 4.14) was presented on one screen

mounted above the text channels to form the monument structure. Imagery of a slow-moving,

soft light shifted through hues of orange and yellow and was washed out with blinding

brightness before fading in and out of darkness. While this seems a step away from the

propensity to use images of the everyday in other works created throughout this project, the

video simply showed an obstructed image of sunlight beaming through my kitchen window

which was filmed through a repurposed lens. The captured video component of the work was

used for its figurative value and was not intended to represent or allude to a literal or linear

space/time narrative in the way that the text functioned. Instead, it offered a contemplative

space or interlude from the more complex reading and processing required of the text

channels below.

64

Figure 4.15 Monument (II). Six-channel video installation with sound, 8:55 minutes (2018).

Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

While reflecting on this work and preparing for my final exhibition, I was aware of my

increasing interest in using memorial objects and structures in my practice. This reflection

included a realisation of how my experiences of loss and mourning have been significantly

influenced by my upbringing in a semi-religious family. Specifically, spaces of mourning and

memorial, such as churches and cemeteries, have become very familiar places that I find

fascinating because of the paradoxical practices of grief and comfort that occur at these sites.

The massive scale of icons and paintings across every surface of wall and ceiling in the Greek

Orthodox Church with which my family is connected have always been a focal point for

me—a result of curiosity as a child, and something to stare at during the many funeral

services I have attended there since. While the hollowness of memorial objects is presented in

Halstead St, I was considering how Monument could function instead in a more visually

effective and affecting way—the same way that these religious motifs have affected me.

In light of this, Monument was extended to comprise six screens forming a structure that

reached the height of an entire wall. The moving image of light and colour was stretched and

synchronised across the six screens, emphasising the shape and scale of the work rather than

what unfolds on each screen. This implied that the ideal viewing space for the work was

several metres away, where the entirety of the image/screen/wall could be seen. However, at

65

the same time, fragments of text appeared for brief moments across the screens, requiring

viewers to read the work from a much closer proximity than what might feel comfortable.

The potential to view the work from these different distances aimed to embody a metaphor of

emotionally confronting something that is bigger than oneself, and having to deal with it up

close and in smaller pieces.

Figure 4.16 Boltanski, Christian. 1986‒1987. Autel de Lycée Chases. Six photographs, six desk lamps, and 22

tin boxes, 170.2 x 214.6 x 24.1 cm. Accessed February 16, 2018. https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/christian-boltanski

While making this work, I was conscious of both the conceptual and visual connections it has

to the installation practice of Christian Boltanski. Boltanski’s installations are theatrical and

deal with cultural remembrance and memorial practices (Caines 2004, 4). The artist does not

simply examine memory and the past, but uses ‘the power of light and shadow to emphasise

memory’s place in the twilight between past and present’ (Caines 2004, 4). Through

Monument, I relate to this idea of light and shadow being materials that position the work as

being neither here nor there, in a space between a reflective present and a remembered past.

Through metaphor, the image of light, the memorial structure and the vague and somewhat

optimistic affectation of the text fragments, Monument acknowledges that along with loss and

grief comes cliché, empty words and sometimes a renewed self-search into spiritual or

66

religious outlets. In this way, I feel that Monument has been a development in my creative

practice that takes a small step away from the bleakness of personal narratives about loss and

grief, and begins a more specific investigation into how we verbalise, visualise and express

the ineffable affects of these shared experiences.

Beyond the Screen // Parallel Things

Figure 4.17 Parallel Things. Vinyl prints, set of 12, 623 x 1107 mm (2018).

Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

Installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/258587345/8067f68836

While the creative outcomes of this project have primarily focused on video installation and

how text, image, sound and space can be combined to reflect on experiences of loss and grief,

Parallel Things returns to a foundational interest in the materiality of text and language. This

work references Holzer’s use of fragmented language in galleries and public spaces as well as

challenging the authorial voice, which opens up a space for the viewer to insert themselves

and their own subjectivities into reading the text.

67

Figure 4.18 Parallel Things. Text (2018).

The prints were created as part of my final exhibition Melancholy and the Memorial in

response to the architecture of the exhibition space. Installed on large windows, 12 vinyl

prints were organised in groups of three with each set of fragmented text relating to the

themes of time, place, communication and feeling. These fragments were removed from their

original context in personal journals, conversations and thoughts, and reconstructed to allude

to the experience of traumatic memory, which can cause narratives to become disorientated

and disrupted.

The dimensions and scale of the prints made reference to television screens. As opposed to

my screen-based works which have been carefully sequenced and timed to challenge the

viewer’s reading and understanding of the fragments of language, the text in this work

remained static. Viewers could now control the duration and order in which they viewed and

read the fragmented panels, and could consciously or subconsciously apply their own

subjectivity and experiences to the pieces of text that may have resonated with them.

68

Figure 4.19 Parallel Things. Vinyl prints, set of 12, 623 x 1107 mm (2018). Installation detail, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

Final Exhibition // Melancholy and the Memorial

Figure 4.20 Melancholy and the Memorial (2018). Installation documentation, Z13, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Kelvin Grove. Photo: Louis Lim.

Excerpt of exhibition walkthrough: https://vimeo.com/254589528 Extended exhibition walkthrough: https://vimeo.com/255161391/2aa4219899

69

The exhibition Melancholy and the Memorial presented five key works that demonstrate how

creative practice—specifically, employing text, moving image, sound and space—can create

new conceptual and material possibilities that respond to the limitations of traditional forms

of written and verbal language in representing loss, grief and affect.

Multi-channel text and video installations were created and extended in response to the

exhibition space. The works were placed with particular consideration of the presence or

complete absence of natural light in each space. For example, clear vinyl prints relied on

exterior lighting, natural or otherwise, to make the text in the works visible in the window

panels. This light then spilled through doorways into the main space, illuminating the

structures of floor-based work. The large exhibition space contained two multi-channel

installation works: one mounted centrally on a wall, and the other dispersed across the

opposite side of the space. The installations both took visual and structural cues from

memorial objects and practices, and were placed adjacent and facing one another in the space

to create a dialogue between them. The two small installation rooms at the end of the main

exhibition space were lit only by the screens themselves, creating black box spaces typical of

video installation practices, and forming an immersive and contained viewing environment.

I also gave the element of sound specific consideration across the works. Filling the main

exhibition space, the sound from Monument was loud and filtered through to the corridor

space where Parallel Things was installed. Because of the pairing of works in the main space,

Halstead St relied on the sound of Monument rather than having its own audio track. This

meant that the works were more connected in the space, rather than being two completely

different combinations of text/image/sound. In one of the smaller install rooms, Between You

and I had its own soundtrack. The volume and intensity of the sound in this smaller and more

contained space strongly heightened the affective potential of this element of the work. A

Familiar Feeling was also in one of these smaller spaces, although I approached the sound for

this work quite differently. While some noise from the larger space spilled through, the sound

in this space was a lot softer than in the others. My intention was that the noticeable change in

sound volume and tone as viewers entered the space would prompt them to heighten the

awareness of their bodies as they moved through the exhibition.

70

Key to conceptualising the exhibition were the connections between the imagery of particular

works and the heritage building itself, which had both wooden floorboards and VJ wall

panels, repeated motifs in two of the video installation works. Similarly, the decision to keep

the window-walled space with vinyl prints otherwise vacant directed focus towards the vast

emptiness of the space, which paralleled the empty domestic spaces and environments that

appear in some of the video works.

Melancholy and the Memorial represents the key creative outcomes of this practice-led

research. The show aimed to create an affective space where images of the everyday,

fragmented texts and installations that take cues from memorial objects and monuments could

prompt viewers to consider their own emotions in relation to melancholy, loss and grief.

Reflecting on the exhibition, I now realise that the works can prompt dialogue around these

experiences, which are often silenced by the limitations of language and the cultural

expectations that cause them to remain private. This was affirmed by the numerous

conversations I had both during and after the exhibition, where viewers expressed the

connections they drew between their own lived experiences and some of the text, images and

feeling in the works.

71

Chapter 5: Conclusion

Melancholy and the Memorial: Representing Loss, Grief and Affect in Contemporary Visual

Art is a practice-led project that has explored critical and creative methods in response to the

question, how can creative practice respond to the limitations of traditional forms of language

in the representation of trauma, loss and grief?

Through research on trauma theory, affect, language and feminine writing, the project

outlines a framework for examining these core themes in my creative practice. This practice

has been further contextualised and developed by reflecting on the work of artists who also

unpack, investigate and allude to these themes in their work. Sophie Calle’s and Felix

Gonzalez-Torres’ works have helped frame several of the project’s creative outcomes through

their considered use of visual and textual language that touches on themes of loss, grief,

melancholy and representations of the everyday. Jenny Holzer’s text-based practice has been

influential in terms of understanding the authorial voice and how the materiality of language

can create affectual work, which is supported by the writings of Roland Barthes and further

extended into the field of time-based media and multi-channel video installation through the

work of Gary Hill.

The methods and materials forming the creative outcomes have resulted in a more

comprehensive understanding of the relationships between language, image, sound and

viewing experiences. While the project has greatly expanded my knowledge of constructing

these affective environments, perhaps the most significant experience for me as both maker

and viewer is the conceptual and formal necessity for the creative outcomes to be presented as

multi-channel screen installations. My understanding of screens acting as windows into other

spaces, as well as being objects that contain visual information, representations and concepts,

now also encompasses how they can function as objects that form memorial structures.

While I have employed several consistent methods throughout this project, including

fragmentation of text and moving images across multi-channel works, my work has also dealt

with ongoing paradoxes that exist within the creative practice and the accompanying

72

exegetical component. These paradoxes include my compulsive need to both share, expose

and work through my own experiences of loss and grief while simultaneously concealing

parts of the works or conversations and writings about them. The other significant paradox I

have identified during this project is the ironic and frustrating knowledge that both my works

and the writings about them can never fully be expressed with written language. In his text

Melancholy, Laszlo Foldenyi (2016, 3) explains this well:

Words say less than we wish to convey—they mislead us, divert our thoughts

away from their original goal to such an extent that possibly even as we speak

we ourselves are amazed: we wanted to say something else, not what the work,

tones, and linguistic structures imply.

This proposition returns to the original question of this project, as it fully acknowledges the

complex and paradoxical relationship between language, representation and the ineffable

experiences of loss and grief. However, this project has shown me that even though words

can be difficult to grasp, there is potential in creative practice to reconsider the materiality of

language. This, combined with moving image, sound and space, can generate opportunities

for us to encounter works that deal with ineffable shared experiences.

73

References

Allen, Graham. 2003. Roland Barthes. London: Routledge.

Barrett, Estelle and Barbara Bolt. 2007. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts

Enquiry. London: I.B. Tauris.

Barthes, Roland. 1975. The pleasure of the text. New York: Hill and Wang.

Barthes, Roland. 1986. The rustle of language. Berkley, California: University of California

Press.

Barthes, Roland. 1994. Roland Barthes. California: University of California Press

Bennett, Jill. 2005. Empathic vision: Affect, trauma and contemporary art. Stanford,

California: Stanford University Press.

Best, Susan. 2011. Visualizing feeling: Affect and the feminine avant-garde. London and New

York: I.B. Tauris.

Blocker, Jane. 2009. Seeing witness: Visuality and the ethics of testimony. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

Bordwell, David. 2008. Poetics of cinema. New York: Routledge.

Caines, Rebecca. 2004. ‘Christian Boltanski: Representation and the performance of

memory.’ Afterimage 32 (1): 4‒5.

https://search-proquest-com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/docview/212116565

74

Cixous, Hélène. 1989. ‘From the scene of the unconscious to the scene of history: Pathway of

writing.’ In The future of literary theory, translated by Deborah W. Carpenter, edited by

Ralph Cohen, 15‒34. New York: Routledge.

Cooke, Jennifer. 2011. ‘The risks of intimate writing: Loving and dreaming with Hélène

Cixous.’ Angelaki 16 (2): 3‒18. https://doi:10.1080/0969725X.2011.591581.

Cruz, Amanda. 2016. ‘The means of pleasure.’ In Felix Gonzalez-Torres. 2nd ed., edited by

Julie Ault, 52‒59. New York and Gottingen: Steidl Publishers.

Elger, Dietmar. 1997. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag.

Ettinger, Bracha. 2000. ‘Art as the transport-station of trauma.’ In Artworking 1985‒1999,

edited by Bracha Ettinger, 91‒115. Gent and Brussels: Ludion.

Foldenyi, Laszlo F. 2016. Melancholy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hand, Janet. 2005. ‘Sophie Calle’s art of following and seduction.’ Cultural Geographies 12

(4): 463‒484. doi:10.1191/1474474005eu344oa.

Hanhardt, John C. 2000. ‘Between language and the moving image.’ In Gary Hill, edited by

Gary Hill and Robert C. Morgan, 114‒121. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins

University Press.

Harris, David Alan. 2009. ‘The paradox of expressing speechless terror: Ritual liminality in

the creative arts therapies’ treatment of posttraumatic distress.’ The Arts in

Psychotherapy 36 (2): 94‒104. https://doi:10.1016/j.aip.2009.01.006

75

Hill, Gary. 1981-3. Primarily Speaking.

http://garyhill.com/work/mixed_media_installation/primarily-speaking-2.html

Holzer, Jenny. 1997. Lustmord. Berlin: Cantz Verlag.

Hughes, Gordon. 2006. ‘Power’s script: or, Jenny Holzer’s art after “art after philosophy”.’

Oxford Art Journal 29 (3): 419‒440. https://doi:10.1093/oxartj/kcl017

Jordan, Shirley Anne. 2007. ‘Exhibiting pain: Sophie Calle’s Douleur Exquise.’ French

Studies 61 (2): 196‒208. https://doi:10.1093/fs/knm014.

Joselit, David. 1998. ‘Voices, bodies and spaces: The art of Jenny Holzer.’ In Jenny Holzer,

edited by David Joselit, Jenny Holzer, Joan Simon and Renata Salecl. 42‒77. London:

Phaidon Press.

Kostelanetz, Richard. 1976. ‘Literary video: A manifesto.’ Performing Arts Journal 1 (1):

62‒64. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3245188

Kristeva, Julia. 1989. Black sun: Depression and melancholia. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Kuburovic, Branislava. 2012. ‘Collapsing alibis: Intimacy and the ethics of wit(h)nessing.’ In

Intimacy across visceral and digital performance, edited by Maria Chatzichristodoulou

and Rachel Zerihan, 39‒47. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=1

039424

76

Lageira, Jacinto. 2000. ‘The image of the world in the body of the text.’ In Gary Hill edited

by Gary Hill and Robert C. Morgan, 114‒121. Baltimore and London: The John

Hopkins University Press.

Laungani, Pittu and William Young. 1997. Death and bereavement across cultures. London:

Routledge.

Luckhurst, Roger. 2008. The trauma question. Abingdon: Routledge.

McFadden, Cybelle H. 2014. ‘Orchestrated reflexivity: Sophie Calle’s narrative body as

artist.’ In Gendered frames, embodied cameras: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and

Maiwenn, edited by Cybelle H. McFadden, 143‒181. Maryland: Fairleigh Dickinson

University Press.

Mills, Sara. 2013. Language and gender: Interdisciplinary perspectives. New York:

Routledge.

Mondloch, Kate. 2010. Screens: Viewing media installation art. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.

Morgan, Robert C. 2000. Gary Hill, edited by Gary Hill and Robert C. Morgan. Baltimore

and London: The John Hopkins University Press.

Morley, Simon. 2007. Writing on the wall: Word and image in modern art. London: Thames

and Hudson.

Morse, Margaret. 1990. ‘Video installation art: The body, the image, and the space-in-

between.’ In Illuminating video: An essential guide to video art, edited by Doug Hall

and Sally Jo Fifer, 153‒167. New York: Aperture Foundation Inc.

77

Ohama, John. 2004. Psychotherapeutic interventions for emotion regulation. New York:

W.W. Norton & Company.

Oxford English Dictionary. 2017. “preposition, n.” in Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

http://www.oed.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/view/Entry/150493

Pollock, Griselda. 2009. ‘Art/trauma/representation.’ Parallax 15 (1): 40‒54.

https://doi:10.1080/13534640802604372

Quasha, George, Charles Stein and Gary Hill. 1998. ‘Liminal performance: Gary Hill in

conversation.’ PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 20 (1): 1‒25.

https://doi:10.2307/3245872

Sellers, Susan. 1996. Hélène Cixous: Authorship, autobiography, and love. Cambridge: Polity

Press.

Sellers, Susan. 1994. The Hélène Cixous reader. London: Routledge.

Simon, Joan. 2006. ‘Ann Hamilton: An inventory of objects.’ Accessed June 20, 2017.

http://www.annhamiltonstudio.com/objects/tropos_books.html

Smith, Hazel and Roger T. Dean. 2009. ‘Introduction: Practice-led research, research-led

practice—towards the iterative cyclic web.’ In Practice-led research, research-led

practice in the creative arts, edited by Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean, 1‒38.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

78

Spector, Nancy. 1995. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. New York: Guggenheim Museum

Publications.

Talwar, Savneet. 2007. ‘Accessing traumatic memory through art making: An art therapy

protocol (ATTP).’ The Arts in Psychotherapy 34 (1): 22‒35.

https://doi:10.1016/j.aip.2006.09.001.

Van der Kolk, Bessel A. and Onno van der Hart. 1991. ‘The intrusive past: The flexibility of

memory and the engraving of trauma.’ American Imago 48 (4): 425‒454.

http://www.pep-web.org.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/search.php?sid=PEP:PEPWeb&issn

=0065-860X&volume=48&pages=425

Van der Kolk, Bessel A., Alexander C. McFarlane and Lars Weisaeth. 1996. Traumatic

stress: The effects of overwhelming experience in mind, body, and society. New York:

The Guilford Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/lib/qut/

detail.action?docID=330594

Vischer, Theodora. 1995. Gary Hill: Imagining the brain closer than the eyes. Munich: Cantz

Verlag.

Young, James E. 2016. The stages of memory: Reflections on memorial art, loss, and the

spaces between. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.