On Location

Kayla Parker (Plymouth University, UK)

kayla.parker@plymouth.ac.uk

http://www.kaylaparker.co.uk/

ABSTRACT :

A hybrid form of landscape cinema, which observes a year’s cycle of seasonal changes, centred on an unnamed hollow way in a remote area of rural mid-Devon. The film captures meteorological phenomena and the natural world in the sunken lane over a twelve month period, using experimental filming techniques and field recordings made at the site that capture the sonic architecture of the space.

To create the film, we made regular field trips to the location with cameras and sound equipment – these visits allowed us to experience the place during a varied range of weather conditions through winter, spring, summer, and autumn, to respond intuitively using our camera and sound equipment, and then to review and reflect on the recordings we had made. On Location explores the dynamic interrelationship between our engagement with the location, the process of capturing moving image sequences, and the affective interplay between the recordings and our memories through repeated presence and absence at a site that seems both unchanging and in constant flux. Our memories became an integral part of our film-making methodology, which is non-anthropocentric and informed by new materialism, and were an important influence on the form of the completed film.

KEYWORDS: artists’ moving image film, landscape location new materialism place

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Artist film-maker with over twenty years experience as a director-producer, creating innovative, experimental moving image works for cinema, gallery and broadcast television, and a range of corporate clients. The recipient of many awards, her work is shown worldwide across public, gallery and online spaces.

Her research interests centre around subjectivity and place, embodiment and technological mediation, from feminist perspectives, with an interest in the interface between still and moving image, and expanded cinema. In her practice she uses animation, photography, sound, performance, found objects, drawing, and writing, working with film-based and digital technologies to explore the interrelationship between the body and forgotten, liminal spaces. Recent publications include a co-authored chapter in Community Filmmaking: Diversity, Innovation, Policy and Practice, edited by Sarita Malik, Caroline Chapain and Roberta Comunian (Routledge 2017). She is currently working on a chapter about animation created through direct interaction with the environment and elemental forces for an edited volume on experimental animation, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan later this year.

She has worked as a full-time lecturer at Plymouth University since 2008, where she convenes the Moving Image Arts (MIA) research group, leading cinema, moving image, and animation initiatives in partnership with colleagues and cultural organisations.