'Creative geography: mapping place via time in moving image media'

(PhD Thesis ongoing / Confirmation status 2012) 

 

This thesis investigates the making of ‘place’ as a practice in film and video-making, and how the  moving image is able to produce a sense of place in specific ways that depend on the nature of the medium itself: that is, as time-based and as an art form of moving images.  The thesis utilises a concept of ‘creative geography’ to describe the process by which place is mapped in film through the dimension of time. The term ‘creative geography’ was first used by theorist and filmmaker Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970)  to describe his experiments in montage which produced new ‘landscapes’ in film. 

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The thesis will investigate case study works in film and video which engage with the experience of place. The thesis will challenge notions of ‘place’ as a fixed point, and explore the idea of equivocality in terms of how place is constructed, created, documented and ultimately defined. The text will finally detail the findings of the research in practice, utilising the theme of ‘equivocal spaces’ as site(s) of exploration in the making of work in film and video, and where theories of creative geography as ‘mapping’ are tested out in three projects using two main ‘locations’: a rural landscape, and transitional urban/natural space (city/nature).

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