Telling Stories

"TELLING STORIES"

(film cut and abstract presented by Lee Fearnside at CHAT 2006, Bristol)

"Telling Stories" is an experimental video documentary about the process of discovering history in Rhode Island. The video discusses the re-creation of history and the politics of the historical narrative by juxtaposing the archaeological process with video interpretations created in the studio. I am a visual artist who works on a series of projects, based on research and visual exploration, which use photography and video to speak to the construction of culture. I studied history at Smith College, and received my MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

In the summer of 2005 I started taping at the Greene Farm Archeology Project. There I saw and recorded some of the different stages of the archeological process, from digging test pits, to excavating larger pits, and cleaning and cataloging artifacts. I was seeing their work in a different way then the archeologists did - I noticed the movements, the textures of the dirt and ways the land disgorged and clung to the objects. I recorded the formal and aesthetic actions taken, with only a basic understanding of the process they were undertaking. My experiences video-taping that summer made me think about the connections between place and memory in physical as well as cultural ways.

The structure of the piece will be a series of four vignettes, based on the sources of information identified by the historical archeologists at the dig. These sources are the excavations themselves, the land surveys, the historical documents associated with the site and the oral histories of the landowners. You will see a rough cut of the sequence based on the excavation. The sequences will alternate between footage from the site and the archaeology lab, and sequences from the studio. The fragmented structure of the video will speak to the constructed nature of history and to my process of discovery.

This project challenges not only interpretations of Rhode Island history, but also the form of traditional documentaries. Documentaries typically rely on ideas of objective observation and scholarly authority, suh as the use of non-personal filming techniques like fixed cameras and eye-level vantage points to suggest that the camera is invisible or doesn’t affect the scene. The form Telling Stories begins to subvert the documentary form. The subjective style of camera, both differing vantage points and switching from hand-held to fixed camera, personalizes the videomaker as an author. I have edited this sequence in a way that moves in and out of documentary form – there are voiceovers but they are not identified, there are disembodied figures and little visual context but a suggestion of a linear progression. The disjunctive editing of vignettes forces to the viewer to be more active - the viewer has to work to piece together narrative threads. This piecing together gives the viewer the authority to create meaning and different interpretations of the material. This act of interpretation itself is part of the intention of questioning the writing of history.