PARIP 2003

NATIONAL CONFERENCE: 11-14 September

CONTRIBUTORS

ELLIS: JOHN
media arts
royal holloway, university of london
research and the problem of ‘the industry’

© John Ellis, 2003, Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London, john.ellis@rhul.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

Research in film and television is always carried out in relation to a powerful set of norms set by the film and television industries. For written research work, the range of possibilities is clear, ranging from an ultra-leftist rejection to a simple celebration, all involving considerable work of contextualisation. Critical distance is at a premium. For practice as research, however, the situation is less clear. Unlike theatre or fine arts, where exhibition in prime venues is unproblematically a sign of success, broadcast on TV or theatrical film release is somehow a mark of failure as research. The work tends to be regarded as not ‘research’ enough if it can find a place within the normative confines of the mainstream media. What does this say about the evaluation of practice as research? How is practice as research to make an effective intervention? How can interventions into industrial processes of production (eg making a documentary in a new way) be assessed?

In effect the recorded media experience a fundamental conflict of criteria (industry v. academy v.experimentation). This conflict is largely absent from the areas of drama and fine arts which are more holistically self-validating.

PRESENTATION

I make no apology for speaking an analytic and sometimes administrative discourse. Neither do I for the multiple formulations of the identity of the area I am discussing: film and television; broadcast media; moving image media; recorded media etc. Such a slippage of identity is certainly the result of a rapidly developing field, but doesn’t help ‘us’ much… whoever ‘we’ may be.

The issue I wish to raise is, simply stated, that ‘practice as research’ and ‘practice-based research’ in the recorded media of film and television present particular problems. These problems are:

(a) different from those of other performance-based forms, as they are from those presented by art and design;
(b) of considerable social significance due to the cultural centrality of film and television.

It is therefore necessary to deal with them directly, and within the envelope of neither the performing arts nor art and design.

I argue this because of the centrality of a complex of practices around television and film in our culture. These centre on the broadcast media: television, radio and increasingly the internet as well. They form a culturally dominant mode (Auslander); a normative form of representation through which everything passes that has cultural significance. Anything important to any large social grouping will of necessity become absorbed by broadcasting, and in this process will gain discursive form and wider significance. It will be represented for society and for the particular interest group; without pushing definitions, it is useful to say that broadcasting performs that which is turns its eye upon.

The centrality of broadcasting (it is everywhere) carries other values as well: predictability (it is everyday); conventionality (it is designed for universal accessibility); and domesticity (it is used in the most mundane of situations). These characteristics have created major intellectual problems in discussing broadcasting.

Much academic work is characterised by a position of antagonism if not hostility to the medium that is the object of study. There are several quite comprehensible reasons for this:

• Need for critical distance
• Scale of broadcast media as too vast to comprehend
• Major input from studies of news and current affairs as ‘agenda setting’ in difficult political times
• Hostility to critical investigation on the part of much of the industry
• Lack of personnel movement between industry and academic spheres.

This critical stance marks out the moving image media, and particularly the broadcast media, quite starkly from the performing and the visual arts.

In the performing and visual arts it is relatively common that:

• Practitioners teach in academic departments as part of their portfolio of activities
• Education institutions provide public venues for exhibition and performance: galleries, theatres
• Academic work plays a crucial role in the commercial and cultural evaluation of creative work e.g. the role of art historians in the market evaluation of fine art works; the role of academic critics as champions of contemporary artists and their work; the active development of ‘new approaches’ by cohorts of students and their teachers.

There is a community of discourse and general aims. It allows ‘the venue’ to be a proxy judgement of cultural value and importance of creative work for the RAE panels 64 and 66, for instance.

It also enables the creative and performing arts (with the major and almost complete exception of the area I am discussing) to have an advanced position in relation to the Lambert Review issues, i.e. the question of how academic activity relates to ‘the industry’. In the creative and performing arts, academic activity is a significant player within the creative industries. Perhaps more should be made of this… but it is clear that in both art and design and the live performing arts, academic institutions provide ideas, support personnel and undertake economic activities within the creative industries beyond simply training operatives.

This is quite possible in performative practices which do not have a cultural centrality and everydayness, but instead have an accrued cultural status. Within the moving image media, there is no such community of discourse.
From the academic side, we have the odd situation that the more a piece of work is produced ‘within the industry’, the less it is likely to be regarded as ‘research’. The reasons relate to the nature and cultural role of these media:

1. CONVENTIONALITY. It is impossible to control the performance of the recorded media (a tape or DVD can be played in any circumstances where there is a player, unlike a live performance). In addition, the circumstances of reception can be fraught with distractions (the home, public transport etc). So the creators of a piece have to resort to inscribing within the piece itself the conditions of its reception and comprehension. Language and form are necessarily bound by convention. This is particularly the case with broadcasting. As a result, anything on a tape or DVD is likely to be read according to these conventions even when (or perhaps especially when) it attempts to be experimental in some way. Such is the power of the normal in this area, which extends to the (slightly more) live and human arena of cinema projection. One more recent response has been to abandon broadcast TV and the cinema in favour of the gallery: the option of Isaac Julien for example.

2. LACK OF VISIBILITY The actual impact of any one piece of work, however innovatory, in the flow of the broadcast media is likely to be tiny. The amount of material is so vast. Added to this, there is a relatively weak critical culture. Most TV output never gets written about or otherwise commented upon. And much that passes for criticism is in the form of ‘previews’ which do not have the same status or depth as the ‘review’ of an exhibition or a theatrical performance.

3. THE INNOVATORY QUICKLY BECOMES COMMONPLACE Any innovation within the broadcast media are likely to be taken up by the voraciousness of the medium. Whether it be the docu-soap or the narrative of This Life, the new of a few years ago has become standard practice.
In the moving image area of the creative industries, therefore, there is a collision between the two aims of academic research: innovation and contribution to industry and community.

There may be a scratchy and less than perfect relation between the two aims in other areas of the creative industry (the visual and the performing arts), but there is such a relationship since the academy is already a significant player within those areas on any number of levels.

CONCLUSION 1

Practice as research (if such exists) and research-based practice in the recorded media therefore have to establish their criteria for assessment in a number of areas: RAE, career progression, critical discussion, developing industry connections. They cannot simply be borrowed from areas where different circumstances prevail.

We need a debate around the following questions in order to arrive at a generally agreed means of both carrying out and assessing practice-based research in this area. It should include the following:

1. Means of assessing the status of work carried out within the broadcast industry that takes into account the points I’ve made. This should include the issue of the importance of industry practitioners to the research culture of a department as well as their own ‘isolated’ achievements. Such presence prevents the common low-level misconceptions about the media industry that run though much academic research.
2. Means of developing critical reflection on practice within the industry and the academy
3. Means of assessing research aimed at changing production practices rather than products (eg ‘more ethical’ ways of making documentary
4. Means of assessing works made for particular (non-normative/experimental) forms of use

CONCLUSION 2

Recorded performativity is a central cultural question for our time. Our emerging society places an importance on the way that words are uttered, the way that people look and move: we have an emerging culture of the performance of authenticity. Key moment in all kinds of exchanges: economic, political, personal…

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