The Alchemical Landscape II: Screen Media, Occulture and the Geographic Turn

Double exposure: ’pataphysics' and the Rural in Barry Flanagan’s Sculptural Practice

The lecture considers implicit and explicit traces of the land, of landscape, ’pataphysics' and folklore in Barry Flanagan’s work, drawing particular attention to his film making between 1968-71. From the outset, when as a student Flanagan claimed Alfred Jarry as his ‘anti-father figure’ whose presence remained constant throughout his life, he questioned expectations and value structures; literally through his experimentation to test the limits of the genre through material investigations in sand, cloth, happenings and performance, light and film to redefine sculpture’s conventions. The forms he created were allusive but abstract. They played games with minimalism and formalism. This continued in his film-making where his use of the medium extends the sculpture’s reach to include light and duration as vehicles for creating work.

I will explore the significance of materiality in these films to show how he uses the processes of production to critique the conventions of drawing, modelling, casting, and carving. Only two out of ten films from this period are known to remain intact. They are a hole in the sea (1969) and Sand girl (1970). By referring to these and the diverse forms of documenting the other eight, my presentation will demonstrate possibilities for a tangential reconstruction of filmic affect combing archives, anecdotes, interviews with their ephemeral traces.