Essays

Documenting the Oneiric House: Brakhage, Svankmajer and the Domestic Uncanny, 2009.  The essay takes Bachelard’s concept of the oneiric house – the house of dream-memory – as a starting point to examine the ways in which this idea is explored cinematically in two short films: ‘The Fall of The House of Usher’ by Jan Svankmajer and ‘Wedlock House’ by Stan Brakhage.  Through their application of aesthetic strategies surrounding the use of movement, the representation of domestic space in the films will be examined in relation to its engagement with the uncanny (unheimlich: unhomely) – the familiar made strange.

Memory and Materiality, 2010.  This essay proposes that memory as concept and subject matter finds its corollary in the material nature of video.  Drawing on examples from my own video practice, I will investigate the ontological basis of digital video as a metaphor for memory.  I will explore the aesthetics and technical underpinnings of the video image before considering the concepts of the sequence-image, the heterochronic image and the cluster as they explicate and inform my practice.