Feature - an alternative Western set in the Cambridgeshire countryside

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Feature is an interdisciplinary undertaking operating between the practices of live event and cinema. The live event involved staging performances towards an alternative Western in the Cambridgeshire countryside which in turn involved well known artists and musicians alongside local performers and residents taking a range of roles within the film.The performance mixed historical and fictional tropes, drawing on the legacy of avant-garde theatre: Beckett, Brecht and Thomas Bernhard in particular. By employing artists and non-professional actors the aim was to further my research of notions of acting and improvisation, already explored in a number of performance works realised to date, into the realm of cinematic representation: exploring the translation of these live events to film.The editing process is what underpins the live event as it becomes pivotal to the fictionalisation or actuality of the live event and is what focuses the film in terms of how it finally looks/is viewed and contextualised. The editing process will explore the gap between live performance and cinematic representation and provide me with the means to question and explore how one might articulate this gap. The simple but overriding logic of the title of the project Feature explores the idea of duration that is pivotal to both live art and film and I am interested in how the operation of time between these two very different spheres might allow them to be aware of one another. The film editing process will allow me to address research questions that will be further carried through the editing of the book, the touring exhibition and the public events, and will reveal the ethical problems of the suppression of truth / how much the live event is able to manifest through the film or not. What choices will I make in the process of editing that will negate my intentions to reveal live event? The edit is the process of addressing the research questions based on the choices made. The ethical answers to the questions posed will be explored in the space that allows for the manipulation of truth, therefore the grounds for the edit become fundamental, revealing through the process some of the questions posed.Feature will result in a stand-alone film, a book and a touring exhibition with accompanying public events. By setting out parameters for the performance as a document to be filmed at a professional standard I intend the film to exist as a stand-alone work in its own right. For example, Cambridge Film Festival has requested screening the film. The touring exhibition, which will include various artefacts and documentation from the project so as to look at the idea of artistic process as continuous text, has three confirmed partners: Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; East Side Projects, Birmingham and Leeds Met Gallery (as part of Leeds Metropolitan University). I will also edit a publication which will continue the life of the project, providing an opportunity to further expand upon the editing process as a means for unpicking the process of translating the live event to film. In the spirit of continuous text, I will be working with author Sebastian Roach and three artists who played roles within the film and will give different perspectives and readings. In this way I hope to present a rigorous and critical inquiry through every aspect of the performance and filmmaking process, which builds on my research and use of various media for my ongoing examination of cultural media and translation, evidenced by a series of high-profile projects and outcomes. The book will be published by Bookworks who will oversee and fund production of the book, and designed by Abake, who I have worked with previously.A series of public events will accompany the tour continuing the editing of the project out into the public realm and further unpicking the editing process and research questions that sit at the heart of the project.