Collective Filmmaking and the 'Workshop Movement' in the UK, 1982-2000

我的研究将考察英国艺术家和集体电影制作的重新配置，特别是‘工作室运动’及其随后的解散。我将通过对那个时期的唯物主义分析来处理这项研究，重点放在档案材料和艺术品本身上。1982年，英国电影学会、第四频道、地区艺术协会、独立电影协会和电影、电视及联合技师协会工会之间的协议《ACTT赠款资助的工作室制作宣言》创建了一个框架，用于资助工作室，这些工作室可以培训、制作和发行“另类”团体的作品。这种对独立电影和视频的财政支持导致了一系列的实验，往往优先顺序截然不同。在接下来的十年里，许多政治、女权主义者和少数族裔团体与这些组织合作，成为一家工作室。关于这场运动及其业余作品，还没有人写下概括性的描述。到目前为止，有限的奖学金主要集中在著名的集体和当代艺术家，如黑人音频电影集体、艾萨克·朱利安和琥珀电影公司。我的论文将追溯不太知名的团体的作品，如谢菲尔德电影合作社、交易商电影公司、Ceddo和W.I.T.C.H.等，以及其他艺术形式的影响。然而，我的研究目的不仅仅是扩大英国艺术史的范围。通过重新构建对杰出群体的研究，我将寻求建立电影和视频与当代艺术的相关性。最重要的是，我的研究将检验这种做法的历史中经常嵌入的假设，以及它们经常被写成的“实验”和“对立”的性质。除了扩大档案的范围外，我还试图质疑其分期。我将把我的研究延伸到1991年，也就是工作室资金的正式结束，以便了解不同团体和艺术家的再创造是如何围绕新的程序和标准组织起来的。这一历史轨迹将使我能够考虑历届政府对讲习班的持续支持如何挑战所谓的反对的二元历史。我研究的关键是反思那个时期的英国艺术是如何被历史化的。我将挑战上世纪80年代末出现明显突破的假设。此外，我不想把这些工作室的运作框定为与主要的文化形式和政治表现模式背道而驰，而是想指出，正如斯图亚特·霍尔所说的那样，这些做法表达了一种政治主体性危机，既在国家意识形态内部运作，也在与国家意识形态背道而驰。在这一时期制作的艺术品的种类和数量仍然没有得到充分的审查，只有少数作品仍在发行中。材料的多样性(包括艺术品和文献)暗示了技术的发展、资源的分配和国家支持的正规化之间的波动关系。我的研究将采取严格绘制这段分散历史的图表的形式。从1970年代关于国家讲习班网络的最初讨论到1990年代中期的最后转变，维持电影和录像制作的网络在技术和体制上都发生了根本性的改变。我认为，在这些变革中，既扩大了获得生产资料的途径，又通过纳入激进异议的基础(以及拆除以前的结构和制度)同时获得社会凝聚力的结构。通过这样的强调，我将把塑造形象的集体实践框定为政治行动和增选的一个不断变化的领域，然而，这个领域已经被20世纪90年代发展起来的结构和制度所阻止。

My research will examine the reconfiguration of artists' and collective filmmaking in the UK, with a particular focus on the 'Workshop Movement' and its subsequent dissolution. I will approach this research via a materialist analysis of the period, focusing on archival material alongside the artworks themselves. In 1982, the 'ACTT Grant-Aided Workshop Production Declaration', an agreement between the British Film Institute, Channel Four, Regional Arts Associations, Independent Film Association and the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians union, created a framework to fund workshops that could train, produce and distribute work by 'alternative' groups. This financial support for independent film and video led to a wide array of experimentation, often with wildly contrasting priorities. Over the next decade, numerous political, feminist and ethnic minority groups worked with these organisations to become 'franchised' as a workshop.No synoptic account of this movement and its amateur productions has been written. The limited scholarship to date has focused on prominent collectives and contemporary artists, such as Black Audio Film Collective, Isaac Julien and Amber Films. My dissertation will trace the work of lesser-known groups, such as Sheffield Film Co-operative, Trader Films, Ceddo and W.I.T.C.H., amongst others, as well as the influence of other art forms. However, my research aims to do more than expand the scope of British art history. By reframing the study of prominent groups, I will look to establish the relevance of film and video to contemporary art. Foremost, my research will test the assumptions often embedded within the histories of such practices, and their 'experimental' and 'oppositional' character as is often written.In addition to expanding the scope of the archive, I seek to query its periodization. I will extend my study beyond 1991, the official end of workshop funding, in order to understand how the reinvention of different groups and artists became organised around new procedures and standards. This historical trajectory will allow me to consider how the continued support of the workshops by successive governments challenges a supposed binary history of opposition. Key to my study is a reflection on how British art of the period has been historicised. I will challenge the assumption that there is a clear break in the late 1980s. Furthermore, instead of framing the workshops as operating in opposition to predominant modes of cultural form and political representation, I want to suggest that the practices express a crisis of political subjectivity, as Stuart Hall theorised, operating both within and against state ideologies.The variety and quantity of artworks made during this period remain underexamined, with only a select few still in distribution. The diversity of material (both artwork and documentation) hints at a fluctuating relationship between the development of technology, distribution of resources and the formalisation of state support. My research will take the form of a rigorous charting of this dispersed history. From the initial discussion of a national network of workshops in the 1970s through to their final transformation in the mid-1990s, the networks that sustained the production of film and video were radically altered, technologically and institutionally. Situated within these transformations, I will argue, were structures that both broadened access to the means of production and simultaneously procured social cohesion via incorporating the ground of radical dissent (as well as dismantling previous structures and institutions).Through such an emphasis I will frame collective practices of image making as a shifting field of political action and co-option, a field, however, that has been foreclosed by structures and institutions developed during the 1990s.