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UAL Research Online

Birdsong (film installation)

Biswas, Sutapa (2004) Birdsong (film installation). [Art/Design Item]

Type of Research: Art/Design Item
Creators: Biswas, Sutapa
Description:

'Birdsong' is a double-screen film installation, shot on 16mm film and transferred to DVD.

‘Birdsong’ questions narrative structure in the cinematic context, engaging with time, desire, subjectivity, feminism and cultural identity. Using the collective memory of childhood as a tool by which to enter into the space of this film-work, ‘Birdsong’ questions the relationship between the subject and history, challenging the familiar and unsettling /subverting our usual expectations.

Based on a conversation with my son, who at eighteen months expressed his desire to have a horse living with us in our home, and who appears in and is central to the film, the context for this work also references historical British landscape genre paintings; specifically ‘Henry Fox and the Earl of Albermarle Shooting at Goodwood’ (George Stubbs, c.1759) depicting the aristocracy at play / hunting, attended by his male black servant.

‘Birdsong’ draws on texts by Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Marcel Proust and Edward Lear; also films by Jean Cocteau and Federico Fellini.

Official Website: http://www.iniva.org/library/archive/people/b/biswas_sutapa
Your affiliations with UAL: Colleges > Chelsea College of Arts
Date: 6 May 2004
Funders: Arts and Humanities Research Council, inIVA, Film and Video Umbrella (London), Arts Council England, UAL
Related Websites: http://www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk/17204.htm
Related Websites:
Related Publications: ‘Sutapa Biswas’, (monograph) published by inIVA, and The Cooley Gallery, Reed College, USA (ISBN1899846395).
Locations / Venues:
Location
From Date
To Date
Melbourne International Arts Festival, Australia
2006
Estampa 2007, Madrid, Spain
2007
Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, USA
Measurements or Duration of item: 7 minutes 7 seconds (looped).
Date Deposited: 07 Dec 2009 09:25
Last Modified: 11 Aug 2014 10:54
Item ID: 1046
URI: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/1046

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