I do not live close to the University (and I have two children who need me around) and so it was impossible for me to travel on a daily basis to go and learn the skills over a period of time. Besides, I was still playing. I didn’t know if I really wanted to work with ‘video’ and I had no idea of what might emerge from this work, but I did feel it held potential.

And so I figured that it would save me in the long term if I were to pay the University Media Services dept. so that I could work with a technician for a couple of days to edit the video. How wrong could I be? Editing is a lengthy, repetetive and considered process that can not be done ‘in a couple of days’. Another factor is that each of those days cost around £150. Ultimately the costs, (in both time and money), were far greater than this.

Making and editing the video (has, to date) been a frustrating, wonderful and expensive, journey of discovery that I would never have done without and that is far from ended.

Presented below (arranged in a linear sequence from left to right) are my video editing diaries, which are followed by the notes from my tutorial with Mary Kelly, and finally I present an account of my presentation and screening of the Stones video at the CASA (Cultural Analysis Summer Academy) Meeting in Amsterdam 2004.

'Stones' video editing diaries

26/04/04
I’m thinking of having two textual voices (written onto the screen, partially covering the image) but I think I would like to have one writerly voice [black ‘times’ font on a white ground], contrasted with one institutionalised, academic voice [green ‘courier’ font on a black ground]. I don’t want to present an authorial voice for the story text by using hand-writing, but to use a ‘book printed’ style narrative text as in ‘story telling’. The two voices are not entirely distinct they speak the same story in differing tongues from the same point of view... that of the subjective body that is in the stones. [Visually, a triptych layout. Narrative text ranged left, black text on a white panel, academic text ranged right, green text on a black panel, with the stones sound and video running continuously in the central panel.

Viewers will be shown only the narrative text initially, leading them into thinking they will continue to see much of the same [after strand a offers a consistent viewing mode]. By introducing the split screens and the green institutional text an unexpected intrusion is made. Its appearance [the green text] is immediately associable with audit methodology [data collection, monitoring, institutionalisation and so on]. The differing texts present the humanised narrative and the distant, more factual narrative. They do differ but they also cross refer.

05/05/04
Just come back from a full days editing. Fucking hell it was hard work for me and Phil (technician/co-editor). It’s a good job I did alot of work prior to the edit, but regardless I had to retype the text in on the spot and I’m sure there will be errors in it. But this is a part of the process. Today will have cost about £200 and I have to go back on Mon. to do some more and then I need to book another day for strand c and there’s only so much cash in the pot to get this done. So any errors will need to be a part of a very expensive process.

Its been a real effort for me, working with a stranger [however lovely he is]. He was very good with me [I can be difficult - seem mental] and he was helpful but not intrusive into my work. Nonetheless I had to stay calm and consider all suggestions carefully, at times rejecting some which is really hard for me to do. Phil was really sound. He is very skillful and he worked hard in applying his skills with my work.

10/05/04
Went back in to finish the editing and to check spellings etc. I feel like shit, and have very little belief in my work.

22/05/04
Got the edited video back yesterday. Can’t watch it yet. I mean to, I’ve put it near the monitor with my note pad ready, but I’m afraid to watch it. I’m so embarrassed, even before myself and I’m also afraid I’ll spot ‘mistakes’. At the moment I’m not having a good time. I’m getting more anxious about going out of the house than ever and social appointments.

23/05/04
I’ve watched the edited video for the first time. The duration is twenty minutes [which is quite long] but it didn’t ‘feel’ that long. I was focusing upon looking for ‘mistakes’ in this viewing and I need to rewatch the video and concentrate upon the narratives next time, because I’m worried that they might be too fragmented. Also, the green text runs off the right hand side of the screen and is generally not very clear, so I need to view it on a university screen and if the problem remains, go back to Phil with it.

With regards to the content, the pace was surprisingly, quite speedy. I’m glad I didn’t use slow motion towards the end of 'strand a' because it was becoming predicatable [but that could be because I knew when it was going to happen - hopefully]. I’m really bloody unsure about this.

Notes from my tutorial with Mary Kelly

Tutorial with Mary Kelly, Tuesday 22 June 2004
This was a valuable experience and I realise that I am very privileged to have had this opportunity to show her my work. She was really approachable, helpful, and interested.

A major point that came out of our meeting was that the video (as it is) should be put aside. Mary offered two options for alternative presentation formats; either a ten minute looped short video for installation, or a ninety minute documentary format. It was agreed that I wouldn’t have enough time (or the resources) to do a documentary and that I should therefore concentrate on putting together a ten minute short. Mary saw the video as becoming a piece of installation art with memory and subjectivity being the focus. She said that if I were to rework the video and bring together elements from all three narratives in a poetic manner, that I could have ‘the makings of a jewel of a piece’. Therefore the advice I was given relates to the making of a short installation video. However, and it’s a really big however, both of these format options do not accommodate the concept for making the video specifically for use as a pedagogic prop. I should have discussed this further but I didn’t. This has led me to the following issues.

Mary was focusing upon my making a video (as an art object) and offering me superb advice as to how I might go about this. There is no doubt that the close attention she pays to detail and the absolute consideration that she gives to presentation is so important to producing art that ‘works’. Her advice has really helped me to recognise where I can improve my methods of production.

Griselda once said something like, it’s difficult enough to make an artwork that works without also requiring that it works as a pedagogic tool. Following my tutorial with Mary it seems that at a basic level she thinks that I could (with greater consideration) make the video into an artwork that works, but that I should not be making a video to use specifically as a political/pedagogic prop (if it is not a documentary). Initially I felt that I should follow her advice by working at making an art-video as a sort of exercise in art practice and that I should simultaneously work at producing a video as a pedagogic prop (as originally intended). But thinking about it, it would be pointless to produce both an art-video and a pedagogic prop-video. I think that perhaps I should try and apply Mary’s advice by producing the most carefully considered video that I can (in terms of art production/presentation) while also seeking to communicate political issues. But then I’m returned to the problem of trying to do politics as art because as it is, the video comes over as being primarily about memory and subjectivity rather than power relations and resistance. I think I can offer an example of politicised art practice that works in both ways through the installation ‘Homelessness exists not because the system...’ by Martha Rosler. Thinking further, I’m not sure that my problems can be simply located in selecting a style or format for production. The presentation venue is so important in this respect and I don’t want to show my work (video) as a gallery installation I want to work with it in a pedagogic environment and this must impact on the production of the video. I need to think some more about whether a ten minute short would be appropriate in this context. However, my most immediate difficulty right now is that I am left with BIG SHIT problems regarding my presentation at Amsterdam in nine day’s time, where my aim was to use the video specifically as a pedagogic tool for furthering debate about the politics effecting the contemporary education sector.

The advice I was given...
• Mary liked the dialect, she thought it worked and that I should use it but that I must have my text checked with the English Literature dept., the presentation must be perfect.
• She advised me to reduce the spoken/written words to an absolute minimum, only using them when the visuals don’t speak for me. For example, maybe to have a line of text scrolling onto the screen now and then and also to bring in recorded voices from my childhood such as my dad's. (Just an aside, my mum recently found an audio tape of me and papa talking while playing the oujaboard in Iraq 1968. Its a very interesting recording that may be useful in this regard). Mary said to me, ‘You don’t have to explain, the visuals do it for you’ and ‘you could reduce the text to poetic abstraction. Take out everything written that the visuals say for you, such as how the stones feel. We can see how they feel. Only leave in that which is absolutely necessary’.
• It was suggested that I should limit the visuals to a ten minute loop and overlay the voices/text onto this and also that I should not linger on the stone traces of my feet for so long.
• Mary said that I have got a written thesis for my Ph.D. in the research I have done into politics and pedagogy. She said that I should run my own story alongside this text in book format.
• She felt (and I agree) that my current working method with Phil is impractical for this project. For example, I have to type texts onto the video in the editing suite, and I can’t check the accuracy (like I can at home) because I’m aware of Phil wanting to get on, and the expense. I am therefore having the video transferred into digital format and have requested training at uni in ‘final cut pro’ software so that I will be able to do this work from home.

A little trivia... it was great to see Mary smiling as she talked of how the video really reminded her of her time in Beirut during the 60s.

E-mail from my tutor, Dr Rowley
Dear Sue,
Sounds like the tutorial with Mary Kelly was really helpful and there is obviously a lot for us to talk about when I get to Leeds. Why not use the website for the pedagogical aspect in the way that we have always talked about. You need, though, to think about the implications of an 'art' installation, which I agree the material does lend itself to if perfected absolutely, as distinct from the function of the TV monitor video format as say Martha Rosler uses it in 'Losing' et. al. This is largely a question of audiences and modes of reception and the production of meaning in the relation between the two. We'll work on these issues when we meet.

I advise that you think about the Amsterdam version in terms of how it needs to function in that specific context with that particular audience - much more TV format (faux education doco references even) than installation it would seem to me.

25/6/04
I think that it’s because I haven’t had a training in media skills that I wasn’t aware of the set format constraints of video production. This lack of training though has enabled me to conceive of a differing format and use for video that has sort of combined art practice with documentary? I would like to continue with an untraditional format for the production of the video, still working with Mary’s advice on presentation, but aiming to keep the pedagogic and political also.



casa logo
Link to audio/visual animation from CASA
The Cultural Analysis Summer Academy, Amsterdam 2004

Presented here (and intended to be read in a top down linear sequence) are:

•My CASA Meeting abstract

•My introduction prior to the screening of my 'Stones' video

•My CASA Meeting diaries


'This year CASA meeting will be exploring the relation between thought and action, between theory and practice with particular references to communication between universities and social movements and discussions about privatization of education'.

•My CASA Meeting abstract

I would like to screen a video titled ‘Stones’ at the CASA meeting. The video is formed of two (ten minute) narrative threads that each offer a case for resistance to oppression (social and institutional) from the same subjective viewpoint. With regards to CASA, it is the second case for resistance that is particularly pertinent to the concerns of the meeting, as it is concerned with my (previous) role as a lecturer in art and design who experienced the deregulation of the English further education sector in 1992. It was at this time that further education became assimilated by a managerial ethos that originated in the financial sector with initiatives such as 'Value for Money Auditing'. Such strategies resulted in art education (as a process of critical, creative, qualitative learning), being reduced to multiple-choice question's and quantitative outcomes. The first narrative is relevant as it contextualises the diverse influences that constitute the resisting subject (who protests in the second narrative). This video presents the complexities involved with notions of resistance for there are no clear divides between oppressor and oppressed, and we have become adept in policing ourselves.


•My introduction prior to the screening of my 'Stones' video

Hello. My name is Sue Wilks and I am in the third year of my PhD in Fine Art Practice at The University of Leeds, in England.

The e-mail that I received notifying me of this meeting, was seeking contributions from people, “who have experiences with projects, that intend to link activism with academic research in universities”. Throughout my postgraduate studies I have struggled with the problems that have arisen from seeking to connect my art practice, (as academic research) with political activism. My presentation today has emerged from these struggles (which at this stage continue to be unresolved). I have brought the problems that I am encountering with me in the hope that you may be able to help me to clarify them.

My problems began when I developed an urgent need to articulate the effects that British politics have had, both upon the English further education sector, and upon myself in my prior role as an educator.

This is because in 1996 radical organisational changes were implemented throughout the further education sector that were driven by the deregulation process. As a result of this teaching institutions became gripped by a managerial ethos that was fuelled by an economically and politically charged imperative and educational policies began to be underpinned by a culture of privatization, together with regimes of audit that sought to control and measure all aspects of the educational process.

Working as a lecturer at that time, I experienced the deregulation process as being violent and cruel in its absolute disregard for my subjectivity which was continually reduced to the measurable outcomes of labour production. New curriculum constraints severely limited my teaching practice and I also found myself being repeatedly monitored, inspected, and graded. I became overstretched and exhausted from working 65 hours a week in order to maintain the excessive administrative workload needed to sustain these systems and from trying to simultaneously deliver a genuinely useful teaching experience. Eventually the situation damaged me and I retired from teaching through ill health in 1999, citing stress caused by an excessive workload as my reason for doing so.

Although I tried to take legal action against the institution that damaged me, as an isolated individual working in a divided environment where the trade unions had become powerless my voice had no oppositional impact in relation to the impenetrable rhetoric of the audit culture.

But I needed to contest the abusive treatment I had endured because I believe that articulating, or testifying to our specific lived experiences (and bear witness to those of others) is vital to furthering our understanding of the current situation. Personal, self critical contributions bring detail and texture to a bland, anonymous and desolate political landscape, sometimes resulting in profound affective outcomes. That which is local and personal may then be able to contribute towards clarifying the effects of politics upon lived existence, something which is of major cultural and societal concern.

Art practice has provided me with the only means available with which to articulate the effects that the deregulation process has had upon me and through my research I have been attempting to make art that is not predominantly concerned with being an art object but which also seeks to be used as a pedagogic resource, whereby aesthetic influences work to support the political and social issues being represented.

It is in this spirit that I would like to show you an autobiographical video that I have made. I ask you to understand that it offers an insight into research in progress and as such it is being shown in an unfinished state and in an experimental context.

The video is currently formed of two 10 minute narrative segments and seeks to represent my feelings of resistance in response to overwhelming and constraining power structures, in the first narrative as a child and then as an adult in the second. This desire to resist has affected me radically, twice in my 44 years. The second time was in education (as I have already discussed), and the first time was as a powerless child.

I have decided to take a risk and screen the first narrative today. This is risky because while the second narrative (which is about the privatization of education) relates specifically to this meeting, the first narrative bears only indirect references to the issues being raised here and is more involved with subjectivity and art practice. My concern therefore is that the first narrative may seem to be unconnected with todays event. And yet I think that it offers a necessary supporting role because it contextualises the manner in which I transferred the feelings of resistance that I experienced in childhood onto the situation that I encountered later in education. It also discloses the racial and class influences that have informed my subjective position and my need to resist objectification.

Lastly. In the space of the past nine days I have had two supervisory sessions that have altered the course of my work and from which I have learnt a great deal. However this learning process has proved difficult for me in relation to this meeting because there is now so much that I need to alter and improve in relation to the production of this video. But in a sense this is a part of the research process. Self-critically I would say that (so far) I have failed in my attempts to make art that is both aesthetic and political and that my work is caught between the two. However, I have also had positive feedback with regards to the potential of this work. It is in this respect that I invite you to respond to this video. Your critical feedback provides a vital contribution to how this work will progresses.

•My CASA Meeting diaries

Friday 2nd July
I’m at Leeds Bradford Airport sitting waiting to board my flight. Numb with the reality of this. Still don’t know which video I’ll show, edited or unedited version? At this stage I just want to get home safely.

6.55am
Plane’s started moving.
Just taken off. I’m crying. I’m so scared about doing this.
Got some '1664' and my paper. Feeling a bit more comfy.

1.45pm
I’m here. I shouldn’t be here. I know this is going to be awful. The [hotel] room is a clean, tiny hole, but anyway... I want to be home.

Do I want feedback on the video or their experiences?
I would like to know if it worked at all... maybe responses will tell me? I’m not looking for any evidence today, just to get through it.

It’s 4.05pm, I’m in the room with the other presenter and his two mates.
There’s no one else here.

The prior session [to mine] started with about three and ended up with maybe ten. It’s very sparse, not many attending in general.

There’s loads of ‘lads’ now ! I think he’s [the other presenter’s] brought ‘em with him. SHIT! (They may go when it’s my turn). Room’s full now [approx. thirty people including women thankfully], I’m on soon.

Afterwards....
That was amazing.
By the time I came to do it I was almost calm, well not calm, but in control of the presentation.
I free-talked a little and then presented my introduction prior to screening the video.
I had framed it pedagogically as an experiment up for discussion which was really appropriate because...

Although part a was not directly relevant to this event, we got through it with only one person leaving the room.

By this time I’d thought ‘fuck it, it will be over soon’. Anyway, I was wishing the second relevant part b would come on quickly and so it did, but bastard! the green text didn’t show!!!

I couldn’t believe it. It had worked in Leeds, but the blinds in the conference room weren’t very good and the room wasn’t that dark even though I’d shut them as best I could prior to my session.

At first I panicked and thought I’d put the ‘wrong’ video in, but no, it just didn’t work in this space. I leapt up with my copy of the script/text that I’d bought with me and said ‘I’m going to read it for you’. Like when teaching in the past I knew it was a useless presentation if the audience couldn’t understand the work because of a technical difficulty and I felt I had to do something to help make the work meaningful.

I just had to get on with it. My voice collided with the sound of the stones but the technician adjusted the sound and I could be heard. I saw it through until the end...

Afterwards I sat back down and said ‘I did tell you it was experimental...’. I went on to talk about my tutorials, how it [the video] had worked at home, the problems, and the possibilities. The video was presented in the sense of a problem to be discussed in a pedagogic context.

Then the chair asked if people wanted to ask questions and nobody responded. And so he asked the prior guy a question and then again requested audience comments. This time a woman put her hand up and talked about her responses to my work. Lots of people got involved in the discussion with the majority of responses coming from women all offering me positive comment. I was very grateful for this experience especially with the video not working practically. It was really good to test out the work in this way.

I agreed with a young man that one of my problems is with finding a form. We discussed this for a while and people were thinking of possible ‘forms’ with me.

Someone said it was very moving.

I was very honest. I explained what both Mary and Alison had advised me in tutorials.

Someone thought I had succeeded in making politicised art practice and that it was important I should do so.

I was surprisingly confident saying ‘I think I’ve got the lighting in the video right’, and when no one spoke at first I said ‘I came here for feedback but you aren’t giving me any’.

8.05pm
Looking back it was such an experimental disaster that I’m really surprised and grateful it was such a positive experience.

Just thinking, I’m a bit woozy from having too much booze but... there’s no way I would have come here if I’d known that the green text wouldn’t show on screen.

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