The concept of 'medium' in the films of Margaret Tait, c.1960-1980

玛格丽特·泰特工作的意义长期被学者们所忽视。本论文将通过认真对待她与电影媒介的接触，旨在恢复泰特在英国前卫电影史上的地位。本文将通过密切关注泰特作品的视觉和听觉纹理，从技术和感官的角度来探讨她的电影。泰特以具象化的方式描述了她与技术的关系，她把自己的技术称为与相机“呼吸”。她的大部分电影都以诗意的叙述为特色，呼应了早期英国纪录片传统的叙述，其中包括《夜邮》（1936）。利用大卫·图普的作品，本研究项目将研究泰特的听景与蒂娜·基恩的《旅程的阴影》（1980）的频谱共振。媒体和唯灵论的概念也将被探讨，与泰特对光波的兴趣和维多利亚时代的精神摄影的相似之处，在维多利亚时代的精神摄影中，女性被视为灵魂沟通的媒介。它对胶片材料的敏感性支持了这种解读，因为它与精神转移到摄影表面的接触理论相交叉。这与当代女权主义者关注的为过去几代人的鬼魂发声的问题重叠，在历史学家卡罗琳·斯蒂德曼（Carolyn Steedman）的作品和蒂娜·基恩（Tina Keane）的电影中都有体现，这些电影为这种“光谱”阅读提供了更广泛的背景。

The significance of the work of Margaret Tait has been chronically neglected by scholars. This thesis will aim to reinstateTait within the history of British avant-garde film by taking seriously her engagement with the filmic medium. Throughclose attention to the visual and auditory texture of Tait's work, this thesis will explore her films through the perspective oftechnology and the senses. Tait wrote of her relationship to technology in embodied terms, speaking of her technique as'breathing' with the camera. The majority of her films featured poetic narration, echoing the narration of the earlier Britishdocumentary tradition encapsulated in The Night Mail (1936). Using the work of David Toop this research project willexamine the spectral resonances of Tait's audioscape in comparison to Tina Keane's Shadow of A Journey (1980). Ideasof media and spiritualism will also be explored with parallels sketched between Tait's interest in light waves, andVictorian spirit photography in which women were figured as mediums for channelling souls. Tait's sensitivity to themateriality of the film strip supports this reading, as it intersects with theories of contact in relation to the transfer of spiritsonto the photographic surface. This overlaps with the contemporary feminist concern to give voice to the ghosts of pastgenerations, present in the work of historian Carolyn Steedman and in the films of Tina Keane, which provide a widercontext to this 'spectropoetic' reading.