Workshop by James Newitt
Wednesday 7 & Thursday 8 February 2024
About this workshop
This workshop will explore ways of working with memory and stream of consciousness as productive strategies for creating new narrative forms.
Techniques such as free association can be used in psychoanalysis to allow people to speak freely about memories and experiences without censorship, they can also be useful techniques to begin writing or collating images and to untether ourselves from the authority of telling events exactly as they ‘happened’.
The workshop will be a chance to discuss and playfully test ways of expanding and fictionalising memory, including: how we can create images of distant or inaccessible places? How can we imagine the what occurred within the gaps and blindspots of memory and history? How we can describe spaces or experiences without filtering imagination from fact?
James will present some of his recent film projects, including HAVEN which was developed during SIC 2020/21, as well as discussing other films that question the reliability of memory and the boundary spaces between fact and fiction. The workshop will include short writing exercises and memory games to produce a short video related to your project. The workshop aims to utilise techniques of free association, stream of consciousness and visualisation to open possible new narrative pathways and to help move through the fear of where and how to begin a film.
About James Newitt
James Newitt (b.1981 Hobart) has exhibited in galleries, museums and film festivals including: Galeria Boavista (solo), Lisbon, 2023; Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art (solo), Oldenburg, Germany, 2023; Samstag Museum of Art (solo), Adelaide, Australia, 2023; Porto Photography Bienal 2021; Carpintarias de São Lázaro (solo), Lisbon, 2020; Appleton Cultural Association (solo), Lisbon, 2019; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2013 and 2019; Perth Revelation International Film Festival, 2019 and 2020; Contemporary Art Tasmania, 2007 and 2018 (solo); Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2011 and 2021 (solo); Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, 2018; Ar Sólido, Lisbon, 2016; Carriageworks, Sydney, 2015; Lumiar Cite (solo), Lisbon, 2013; Queensland Art Gallery, 2012; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2010; the Gallery of Fine Arts (solo), Split, Croatia, 2010; Rosalux (solo), Berlin, 2009 and 2010; and the Art Gallery of South Australia, 2008.
He has lectured Time Based Media, at the University of Tasmania, School of Creative Arts and has been a visiting professor at the City University of New York and the Tromsø Art Academy, University of Tromsø, Norway. He has won several prizes including the Grant for Media Art of the Stiftung Niedersachsen at the Edith-Russ-Haus (2022); the Samstag International Visual Art Scholarship (2012); and the Qantas Contemporary Art Award (2009).
He lives in Lisbon, Portugal and Hobart, Tasmania.
Practical Information
** FULLY BOOKED ** Tickets are free, on registration only (limited space)
If you would like to attend, please email us at soundimageculture@gmail.com
Dates: Wednesday 7 + Thursday 8 February 2024
Times: 10:00-16:00
Venue: Pianofabriek (rue du Fortstraat 35, 1060 Saint-Gilles)