Wakeful

The output: Wakeful (2018, colour, 2 screens, 47minutes), is a hybrid artists’ moving image work sparked by personal memory. In Wakeful indexical processes - capturing the ‘same’ moments differently by ‘queering’ photomedia technologies, manipulating frame, shutter, format and editing - work in conjunction with ‘documentary’ archive material, to investigate a particular historical moment. This confluence offers a unique contribution to the field of experimental film. In this new strategy, industrial and military film footage, government memos, prison records, charts, personal diaries, letters and photographs - are mobilised to reinhabit and expand a temporal moment. Working meticulously with experimental studio practices, writing and in collaboration with sound artists, performers and crew on sonic memory and embodiment, the work offered counter-narratives to the WW1 centenary commemorations: ‘listening to the past’. Wakeful has been exhibited in three formations: two-screen gallery installation, cinematic presentation with recorded soundtrack and projection with live score by Limpe Fuchs, Breathing Space and Richard Wilson (total live audience of approximately 9000, with 2000 online). A catalogue was published and Robinson has presented research material at Middlesex University, PSI and APT and Newcastle symposia. Screenings include: Whitechapel Gallery, CCA Glasgow and Estonian Maritime Museum. Following two years of research (field trips to Estonia and Scotland, archives at PRO, Scottish Screen, Mitchell Library, IWM, BL, EFA, Estonian Maritime Museum and NMM), the work was constructed employing practice-led filming methodologies exploiting the ‘frame.’ It was informed by the artist’s earlier research into the perception and politics of temporality at PhD and postdoctoral level. Wakeful draws on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, (e.g. Eye and Mind), Chion and Cixous, and experimental/structural film practices, including Gidal, Raban and Jarman. Engaging with specific historical moments, Wakeful also engaged with work on war legacies including historian Joanna Bourke.