Narrative and spatiotemporal structure in video painting

This PhD by Publication is based on practice-based research engaged in the making and contextualization of video painting - an inter-media concept between still and moving image situated in contemporary and cross-cultural art practice. It consists of five practical research outputs, and eight academic papers created and disseminated between 2005-2018. Situated in art history, film and media theory the research develops new knowledge in the practice and study of video painting as an emerging visual genre, which allows both the formal aspects and the content of still and moving image to merge into this hybrid form.

As original research contribution the study investigates the practice of ‘narrative’ video painting and poses the following research question:

How can the emerging concept of video painting be challenged with reference to the contents and narrative pictorial structures from fine art painting traditions and particularly its East Asian predecessors?

It examines the use of established concepts of film montage and related theories, with reference to Lev Manovich’s Digital Cinema (1995) and Sergej Eisenstein’s earlier theories of film montage. This is used to investigate how the narrative pictorial and spatiotemporal structures of three selected genre of still image / painting tradition, namely Still life, Landscape and Portrait can facilitate the development of ‘narrative’ video painting. The practice unlocks their narrative pictorial structures and spatiotemporal relationships through a unique method of cinematic montage that uses digital collage and video layering to combine multiple source materials, shot sizes, camera positions and viewpoints into a complex moving image composition. The arrangement of conflicting visual elements into one screen develops a complex form of intellectual montage and re-interprets Eisenstein’s concept of the counterpoint.

Taking into account the global nature of contemporary art practice this study adapts concepts of both Western and Eastern visual art traditions alike and argues that some aspects of material form and content in traditional Eastern visual practice are suitable to be adapted to video painting. Particularly, the contemplative nature of Chinese landscape painting Shan-Shui-Hua, in its scroll format and use of multiple perspectives (San-e-Ho) offers some similarities to Eisenstein’s montage theory and Manovich’s concept of spatial montage.

Francois Jullien’s philosophical concept of the Detour (2000) is used as a main method of making and re-thinking traditional art conventions, and the slowness and ‘otherness’ of the unfamiliar form of video painting challenges its audience to see its old contents with ‘fresh eyes.’ This results in what Westgeest (2016) calls a pensive spectator, one that does not only contemplate the subject of the artwork but also the conditions of the different media involved and their mode of reception.