Year of release: 2017
Original format: HD video
Running time: 12 minutes 30 seconds
Screening format: single channel digital screening versions available
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Cinematography: Stuart Moore and Kayla Parker
Sound design: Stuart Moore and Kayla Parker
Production: Sundog Media
Thanks: Vickie Fear and Annabel Nicolson
Thanks also to: Ben Borthwick and Gavin Lewarne at Plymouth Arts Centre; Tony Hill; Anya Lewin, Roberta Mock and Liz Wells at University of Plymouth; and to Susan Matheron, Claire Butcher and Elizabeth Chapman-Lane, Research and Creative Industries
Supported by research awards from University of Plymouth
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media sundogmedia@gmail.com
Synopsis
A hybrid form of landscape cinema capturing the year of an unnamed hollow way that forms the stream bed for several springs in a remote area of rural mid-Devon, Britain. Made in collaboration with the cinematographer and sound recordist Stuart Moore, the film takes time to notice the human and non-human traces of change along the sunken lane.
Description
A single channel moving image artwork with stereo sound, centred on an unnamed hollow way that forms the stream bed for several springs, in a remote area of rural mid-Devon, which results from a collaboration with the cinematographer and sound recordist Stuart Moore over a twelve-month period. It is a hybrid form of landscape cinema that observes a year’s cycle of seasonal changes and meteorological phenomena in the sunken lane using experimental filming techniques, such as pinhole cinematography and lenses created with water from a spring that feeds into the track, along with field recordings made at the site that capture the sonic architecture of the space.
Publication and comments
"Kayla Parker’s On Location poses questions of radicalism both in terms of audio visual aesthetics and of filmmaking methodology in addition to more overtly political issues of environmental degradation, human and non-human relations and marginalised femininities. Acknowledging that her method of filmmaking is ‘predicated on there being no conscious aim either before or during the making process’, Parker reverse engineers an experimental approach to landscape filmmaking that synthesises phenomenology, écriture feminine, structural materialism and critical geography. The result is a beautiful depiction of the countryside hollow way visited by the British avant-garde filmmaker and performance artist, Annabel Nicolson, forty years previously; one that challenges conventional methods even within the ‘new materialist’ approach to landscape filmmaking." (Screenworks, 2017)
'On Location' [moving image artwork and research statement] Screenworks Vol. 7 No. 3 Special Issue 'Radical Filmmaking' ed. Steve Presence. ISSN 2514-3123. Publication date: 11 December 2017. Available: http://screenworks.org.uk
‘On Location: landscape cinema and digital memory’ [chapter/conference proceedings, with Stuart Moore] in Costa Valenta A., and Capucho R. (eds.) AVANCA | CINEMA 2017. Avanca: Edições Cine-Club de Avanca. ISSN: 2184-0520. Publication date: 26 July 2017. pp. 251-255.
"it’s like a child’s view… when you’re a child, you have time to explore, and you’re not easily distracted"; ”took me to another world"; "very transporting. I liked the way it played with perspectives of spaces and places"; "A tranquil piece that reminisces the sound and views of home" (MIA: THREE exhibition comments book, February 2017).
Exhibition screenings
2020
Strangelove Time Based Media Festival, Experimental Film programme curated by Chris Meigh-Andrews explores "ideas around experimentation and development of the moving image” (programme notes, screening from 22 June 2020)
2018
Cite Sight Site First Ever Artists Shorts and Environmental Humanities Screenings, hosted by Laura Denning, TV Viewing Theatre, Newton Park Campus, Bath Spa University; inaugural programme presents short films by Hanna Tuulikki, Laura Hopes, Kayla Parker and Stuart Moore, Amy Cutler, Rob Mackay, Richard White, and Laura Denning; includes Reach (20 March 2018)
Now&After International Video Arts Festival, ARTPLAY Design Centre, Moscow, Russia; curated by Marina Fomenko (7 to 16 February 2018)
London Short Film Festival ICA, London; New Shorts: Experiments Leftfield & Luscious programme and the LSFF showcase of the best new experimental short film (14 January 2018)
2017
Cornwall Film Festival The Poly, Falmouth; Short Film Competition: 2017 Local Showcase (11 November 2017)
Plymouth Art Weekender Media Arts @ Plymouth exhibition, Scott Building, Plymouth (23 and 24 September 2017)
In the Open exhibition curated by Judith Tucker, Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery; an exhibition of collaborative artworks around place, landscape and environment, to accompany the ASLE-UKi LAND2 CMIT conference (6 to 28 September 2017)
Balance/Unbalance conference: A Sense of Place, Plymouth; exhibition in Roland Levinsky Building and artist's talk; event produced by i-DAT in collaboration with the Sustainable Earth Institute and Art and Sound at University of Plymouth, and produced in collaboration with the North Devon’s UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Beaford Arts, the Eden Project and Fulldome UK (21 to 23 August 2017)
Primordial Soup exhibition curated by Laura Denning, Cleveland Pools Geogian lido, Bath; part of the Fringe Arts Bath Festival (28 May to 11 June 2017)
MIA: THREE exhibition, curated by Lucietta Williams, Centrespace, Bristol (24 to 28 February 2017)
On Location: Kayla Parker part of the Gallery in the Cinema exhibition programme of artists’ film, Plymouth Arts Centre Cinema, Plymouth (premiere, 10 to 19 January 2017, solo exhibition)
2016
Plymouth Art Weekender Media Arts @ Plymouth, Scott Building, Plymouth; work in progress (24 and 25 September 2016)
Practice research presentations
On Location: landscape cinema and digital memory, joint paper with Stuart Moore, AVANCA | CINEMA International Conference Cinema - Art, Technology, Communication, Avanca, Portugal (26 to 30 July 2017)
On Location: developing an eco-sensitive cinema, joint paper with Stuart Moore, Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene symposium, Bath Spa University (28 April 2017)
Dark Matter: Being In-Between On Location, paper including film screening, Embodied Disturbance workshop presented by Artistic Research Cluster, University of Plymouth (29 March 2017)
On Location: New Materialism and Film in the Anthropocene, paper for New Materialism and Film research seminar with Dr Deborah Robinson and Dr Min Wild, jointly presented by the Artistic Research Cluster (ARC), Moving Image Arts (MIA) and Performance.Experience.Presence (PEP) research groups; event includes a screening of On Location (2017) and Dr Robinson’s short film, Like a Signal Falling (2016); University of Plymouth (1 February 2017)
On location: (re)visiting the past, paper, Performance.Experience.Presence (PEP) research seminar; initial outcomes of recent scoping trips in the Devon landscape; University of Plymouth (2 March 2016)
Production notes
On Location is the initial phase of a research project that responds to Annabel Nicolson’s artist’s book, Escaping Notice (1977), and the unnamed hollow way leads to the isolated farmhouse featured in her book. To create the film, I made regular field trips to the location with the cinematographer and sound recordist Stuart Moore - these visits allowed us to respond intuitively to the place using our cameras and sound equipment in winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Filming began at the start of 2016 when ice was on the ground, and evolved during a series of field trips, following the seasonal changes through the year until the final visit in January 2017. Returning again and again to the same place, we became sensitive to the changes that occurred since our previous visits and aware of the differences in temperature, wind, light and shade, colour and pattern, sound, flora and fauna, and the occasional trace of humans, horses and dogs passing along the track from one place to another. This perceptual data - our sensory and emotional encounter with the place - informed our response to capturing images and audio.
Field trip 06 30 April 2016 filming the mud in the streambed
Field trip 09 19 June 2016 at the bottom of the track near the greenway, the air dark with rain
Field trip 10 17 July 2016 on the way down, the stream almost dry
Field trip 10 17 July 2016 filming shadows on the dried mud at the bottom
Field trip 12 16 August 2016 near the greenway where the track begins to rise
Field trip 13 18 September 2016 looking back along the bottom of the track
Field trip 14 9 October 2016 bramble shoots hanging down to the ground
Field trip 15 18 December 2016 bottom of the track starting to flood
Field trip 16 3 January 2017 frozen stream
