Art+Archaeology

Contributors: Janet Hodgson

Duchamp suggested the word “after” should be used instead of picture implying art is a register of activities and thoughts rather than a representation or object for aesthetic consumption

I am an artist and lecturer. My research practice is predominantly sited sculptural installations. Combining traditional sculptural elements with video to examine the relationship of the viewer to the construction of time and narrative both in the videos and the places they are installed. I make filmic environments in which I use a combination of appropriated and original footage to test the spatial and structural possibilities of the video as a medium in relation to the site. Transporting the sites   “elsewhere” through time and space, using the site it histories and uses as a starting point for work, the outcomes may use diverse materials and formats. I make temporary and permanent works for both gallery and non-gallery spaces. The work is multi disciplinary, cross platform and has often been collaborative.

My work is concerned with an examination of the construction and understanding of places and histories. I make   installations, sculptures and films that record and conflate, narrative, time and history.
I have become increasing interested in the two subjects of archaeology and film. Bringing together the two disciplines in order to think about how we see or picture time. Examining the process of investigation and mapping deconstructing the looking. I am particularly interested in re using or re enacting film, to map or re-picture the past and the future as seen through film. I am interested in how the experience of a place can be like a cinematic emersion. Investigating how the archeology of such a resource could be used to draw together ideas both about place and time.

The Pitts

As a result of working with the archeological team whilst artist in residence at the Whitefriars development in Canterbury I made The Pitts, a permanent work for the a new square. This work drew Parallels with my own and the archeologists working methods as we both tried to find out about the place, both aware of our own activity as a framing device. The work registered the activities on site, presenting and re-presenting history as something mutable, the subject matter, the drawings of all the pits ever dug on site and there subsequent re-framing. The aim was to ask questions about what kind of access we have to history, how we represent and do justice to a subject matter that remains elusive to make an adequate monument, without turning it into an impermeable monad.  The aim was to Give history a fictive space, where it is as much subject to individual narratives as it is to grand narratives, both being complicated by the multiplicity of interests at play.
This time in Canterbury proved to be very influential and has since led to further and on going work with the Neolithic archeological team at Stone Henge. I am now in the process of developing an A.H.R.C. bid for a new network between art and archeology.

Re Run

An all star cast including Jimmy Stewart, Jack Nicholson, Kim Novak and Donald Sutherland feature in Re-run…well…sort of. This seven-minute film presents a cast of Bluecoat staff and volunteers who take the place of famous actors in re-enactments of chase scenes from the last 100 years of feature films such as Vertigo, Don’t Look Now, The Shining, and cult classics like The Third Man and Breathless. Shot on location in the empty Bluecoat during construction, the changing backdrop is captured during various stages of building and refurbishment adding to the sense of uncertainty about time and place. Re Run is a disorienting film where reality and fiction collide, as it recreates the past in the present.

It is no mistake that the remake coincides with the Bluecoat being remade, nor the decision to string together an endless loop of characters moving from one time period to another always moving, searching, looking but never actually arriving. Re Run is both about cinemas ability to shape how we see history and Ultimately, an exercise in appreciation for the artist and camera crew - not just in recognising the genius of directors like Alfred Hitchcock or Jean-Luc Goddard, but of acknowledging the complex process of filmmaking. The 16mm format of the film draws attention to film as a subject and more specifically at an artist looking at cinema looking. Re-Run highlights the difference through its mix of the amateur, by using volunteer actors, and the professional – the skills of the cameraman and post-production work, completed at Pinewood Studios.