22nd November 2017 University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey
In June 2017 CNN sent courtroom artist William J Hennessy Jr. to a White House briefing following the prohibition on filming and live audio recording of briefings. This form of circumventing restrictions, questions the significance of the illustrative image and illustration practice in relation to contemporary forms of documentary. In turn this action reflects the diverse discourses that arise from contemporary forms of documentary practices, that mediate experiences and knowledge through direct engagement, observation, interviews, reflective experiences, archives and other forms and sources. The strategy of using illustrative methodologies and approaches to document and report the news, perhaps indicates the contemporary relevance and use of the illustrative as a documentary form. While there has been a resurgence in documentary/reportage discussion of its relationship with other documentary forms, practice, research and study has yet to be developed. The one day conference aims to promote inter-disciplinary research and to explore the development of different forms of documentary practices and discourses such as animation, film and photography, in relation to illustration. In particular, to investigate the function and role documentary forms of illustration in contemporary culture in relation to documentary forms of other fields of practice. Invited speakers are drawn from animation, photography, illustration practice and research.
Keynote Speaker: Lainy Malkani http://www.socialhistoryhub.com/
Bookings can be made via the UCA Online Store.
Conference Programme
Registration 9.30am-10:00am
10:00 Welcome/introduction
10:20-11:40 News: Reception, Perception
Gabrielle Cariolle and Paul Roberts, Arts University Bournemouth “The Jungle Camp: Reportage and Identity Formation in the UK and French Press”
Dr Nina Mickwitz, London College of Communication University of the Arts London “Comics Telling Refugee Stories: reshaping and reproducing the ambiguities of advocacy”
Charles Lambert, University for the Creative Arts, former producer, BBC TV News
11:40-1:00 Boundaries
Rachel Gannon, University of Kingston “Illustrator as Reporter”
Samuel Wingate “Casual Connection”
Professor Anna Fox University for the Creative Arts “Zwarte Piet Trilogy”
1:00—1:40 LUNCH
1.40-3:00 Gestures, marks
Professor Paul Ward (chair), Arts University Bournemouth
Gareth Proskourine-Barnett, Birmingham City University “Google Walking”
Alys Scott-Hawkins, Arts University Bournemouth
Stuart Hilton, University for the Creative Arts “Six Weeks in June”
3:00- 4:00 Panel discussion Material, Memory
Dr Bella Honess Roe (chair), University of Surrey
Vanessa Rolf artist, textiles “Poems to the Sea”
Mairead McClean, artist, filmmaker “Assembling memory, editing the past”
Dr Birgitta Hosea, Royal College of Art
4:00-4:45 Keynote Lainy Malkani journalist, author
5pm Reception in Gallery
Abstracts
Dr Nina Mickwitz, London College of Communication University of the Arts London
Comics Telling Refugee Stories: reshaping and reproducing the ambiguities of advocacy
In broad correspondence with the recent growth in autobiographical and non-fiction trauma narratives in comics and graphic novels, comics presenting refugee narratives adopt one of two distinct approaches. The first is reportage, usually featuring the author/creator as a central device, while the second re-works, and renders testimony in visual form. In both cases, the aim is to focus on the stories of individuals, as a means of advocacy.
It has been a longstanding tactic of reformist agendas and humanitarian advocacy to mobilise compassion and moral responses through personal stories of hardship, trauma, tenacity and survival. By their qualitative difference from dominant forms of factual discourse, circumventing certain problems associated with photographic representations of suffering, and by comics offer particular advantages. Comics are not, however, exempt from reproducing established victim tropes, or from the tendency of human-interest angles to obscure political dimensions.
This analysis draws on literature dealing with the mediation and circulation of trauma narratives, in an attempt to move beyond debates on truth-claims and subjective interpretation.
Gareth Proskourine-Barnett, Birmingham City University, Google Walking
I am a small yellow pegman and this is Google Maps. My body sways from side to side as I am transported across the landscape. I pause momentarily, hanging on to the big black arrow head with one arm as it hovers indecisively above a red place marker. Through the LED-backlit display of my laptop I survey the satellite imagery with a God’s-eye view and then I let go. I am in free-fall. I dive into the landscape and the mapped textures of the city wrap around me. Lines of colour spring into recognisable architectural forms and the framed scene staggers into focus. Squares of abstract colour become sky; grass; tarmac; brick; concrete. A place emerges from the data as the architecture is pulled out of the pixels. This is an elastic city made from an elastic architecture. I begin my walk.
Samuel Wingate Casual Connection
2017 in England and Wales sees the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalization of
homosexual acts between men. With this as a starting point, I have explored echoes that
remain in contemporary British gay culture from the period of homosexual criminality.
Through drawing I make a record, a discursive documentary of aspects of homosexual
identity in 2017 that begin to construct a definition of collective identity. Grindr Drawings create an archive of images men share on gay networking app Grindr. Loose, speedy drawings mean individual identity of the subjects is spared, something that
wouldn’t have happened through use of screenshots. The drawing unifies the appearance of the images – it gives them a collective identity, affirming their common source. The drawings are made from photographs without meeting the subjects in person, however each is given a brief moment of intimacy, reflective of the many connections formed on Grindr each day. Pardon Rug considers older men who have recently received a pardon from the British government for convictions held for homosexual acts that would no longer stand today. The form of a rug provides a metaphor for something that is walked over and that problems are swept under.
London Cottage is a broken, illustrated narrative that documents wordless language used
within Cottaging (the act of men seeking sexual connections with other men in public toilets). It gives a window into a world which to many goes unnoticed. Grindr Quilt considers behaviours that are inherited – somehow passed down through
generations where intergenerational connections rarely exist. It draws parallels between
Cottaging and Grindr. It acknowledges Grindr in the domestic environment, and the more intimate relationships that can be created through use of dialogue.
Rachel Gannon, University of Kingston Illustrator as Reporter
This presentation is borne from research undertaken for the academic book I am currently co-authoring with Mireille Fauchon for Bloomsbury, titled Illustration Research Methods. The book intends to establish a dialog of critical thinking and a comprehensive introductory guide to illustration research methods appropriate at HE and PG level study. The framework used to discuss illustration frequently uses ideas borrowed from other established fields, notably film theory, documentary photography and design history and much like all creative cross pollination, adds depth to debates around the discipline. But it has led to a lack of discipline specificity and can position illustration as inferior to those with more established critical discourses.
This book attempts to add to this emerging critical debate and in doing so establish a lexicon that is specific to discussing contemporary illustration practice. An alternative classification system has been developed, with the structure of the book suggestive of a series of roles or objectives that the illustrator considers when researching or developing a project. Focusing on research for the Chapter Illustrator as Reporter, this paper is concerned with the use of illustration to explore, document and explore lived experience. Place also carries much significance as reportage and documentary as human experience is always situated within physical environments.
Illustration operating in this way is described using a range of largely generic terminologies; reportage, documentary, visual journalism that have come to encompass a wealth of different approaches and outcomes that are largely grouped together because they share some concern with documenting place and/or articulating human experience. A generic use of terminology and catagorisation has meant that inherently complex or innovative, individual methods have been overlooked. What is called for is a paradigm shift, a recognition of the specific methods of research and making within documentary illustration practice. These are not just hybrid adaptations but specific methodologies. Such Illustrators are adapting, reinventing and re-using existing research methods that are both specific to illustration and responsive to contemporary concerns.
Documentary Discourses 