Exploring Marginalities: Making Sense of Affective Knowledge in Home Movies through Collaborative Methods

Abstract

This work deals with the topic of home movies, usually defined as a form of naïve cinema. Attempting to broaden the scope of analysis possible for the home movie, itself consisting of a form characterised by a lack of rules that render it naïve, my research pays particular attention to characteristics of difference and creativity in the home movie, rather than those aspects rendering it a hard-to-define style. To this aim, I deploy participatory approaches as forms of collaborative ideas-making, and this research statement outlines a workshop held at De Montfort University as part of the Cracking the Established Order conference that explored ways to establish a dialogue with the archive of home movies that at the same time presented new ways to speak about this archive. A core component of this process is the use of creative and imaginative methods such as writing or drawing in combination with philosophical concepts. The knowledge gained through this workshop takes the shape of a multimedia video, representing a sort of artistic statement of the entire working process and its outcome. The multimedia video becomes ultimately an expression of what the home movie means and how it comes about.