Dissolves/Thawing

The various strands of this project aimed to open new lines of enquiry regarding the understanding of archival practice, at a time when it has increasingly become the catalyst for a number of exhibitions and new writing on the subject.

I produced a text and video suggesting new possibilities for artists and writers working in this field. My own particular avenue of investigation involved the consideration of the obscured or even dysfunctional archival practices that can be found within cinematic material. My text discussed the necessity of “thawing” cinematic archival material, detaching it from its rigid historical applications so that it can fulfil its true “potential” as a means of interrogating the structure of film narrative itself. This was further explored in the video “Dissolves” which was commissioned for the exhibition, in which all the dissolves from the 1946 film “A Stolen Life” were isolated and re-edited together to form a compressed version of this classic Hollywood film, revealing the “hidden” visual narratives “frozen” there.

Jonathan Faiers

Research Interests

Textiles and dress as socio-political constructions
Representations of the museum and art space in popular cinema
Artists and meta-museological practice
Psychologies of collecting
The development of the museum and 19th century spectacular space
Textiles and oppression

Current Research

My original doctoral research into the representation of the museum in mainstream cinema confirmed my abiding interest in the use of popular culture as a means of examining cultural beliefs and this continues to inform my practical and theoretical work. Both in writing and art projects I utilise popular or "unofficial" sources of knowledge such as film and T.V. in order to assess the continuing resonance and transformation of material culture within society. Past projects include work on the Huguenot silk weaving community and how textiles can signify religious persecution, and the fashionability of the Kashmir shawl as a means of exploring Anglo-Indian cross-cultural fertilisation. For 10 years I have worked on a collaborative archival project entitled "Do You really Want it That Much?"..."More!" a project that identifies, collects and re-edits sequences from popular film and T.V. to explore the representation of the art space, art criticism the role of the artist etc. The project has been regularly exhibited throughout Europe and has taken the form of single exhibitions, included in group shows on archival practice and media representation, and has also been used a pedagogical tool in an number of academic arenas. I have just completed a single authored work on "Tartan", proposing it as a multi-valent textile able to signify both tradition and rebellion due to its essentially fictional history. Sections in the book include tartan and the supernatural, tartan as an erotic textile and its relationship to modernity and the grid. I am currently organising a colloquium on the subject of "Textiles, Dress and the Production of Space" to be held in 2008 and am also at the initial stages of research into textiles and their association with oppressive regimes.

• http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk