Christine Rogers and Catherine Gough-Brady are exploring the way that audio-visual material can “embrace the complexity of the world” and “incorporate, within their structures and production processes, multiple voices that “utter” together in the creation of content” (Aston and Odorico, 2018, p. 63). Aston and Odorico use this polyphonic approach as a way of exploring relationships between documentary works and audience, or participants, Rogers and Gough-Brady are interested in seeing how this approach can be applied between filmmakers and images themselves. Can images be ascribed what Jane Bennett calls ‘vibrancy’ (2010) and have agency in how they are cut together? How much of this becomes an expression of the filmmaker through the images?
Rogers and Gough-Brady live on opposite sides of the world, and from January through to March they will film and send images to each other capturing both the universality and the difference of their lives. They will then respond in images to what the other has sent. In a decolonizing “provocation” (Aston and Odorico, 2018) they will each relinquish power to the visuals via an intuitive call and response. For the presentation, they will cut these images together in partnership (with each other and the images) to create a short essay film that explores this process. Through this they seek to understand more about the vibrancy of images and the relational nature of filmmaking, which includes relationships to the images themselves.
ARTIS BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. Christine Rogers
Christine Rogers is a Ngāi Tahu/Pākehā writer, filmmaker and textile artist with multiple screen credits in drama, educational videos and digital stories that have screened at local and international festivals. Her writing has been published in journals, anthologies, newspapers, and blogs. Her embroidery Elizabeth and Christine Sampler was nominated for the biannual Victorian Craft awards, 2019. She recently completed a PhD at RMIT University where she was a recipient of The Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship. She is currently a film practice lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Dr. Catherine Gough-Brady
Catherine Gough-Brady is an award-winning documentary producer and director who publishes on the emergent use of video as a method of academic discourse, and the relational nature of documentary production processes in journals including Media Practice and Education, Screenworks, [In}transition, The International Journal of Creative Media Research, and Cultural Geographies. She is currently co-editing an edited book of essays on the intersection between creative practice and theory. Catherine produced and directed six ABC TV documentary series, including Legal Briefs (2016) and Ethics Matters (2017). Catherine created 11 radio features for ABC Radio National. Catherine is currently in post-production on a TV half-hour for ABC TV called The Communicator. Catherine is Head of Postgraduate Studies at JMC Academy in Australia, and is an associate editor of Screenworks.
