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

长期以来，学者们忽视了玛格丽特·泰特作品的意义。本文旨在通过认真对待她与电影媒介的接触来重新审视她在英国先锋电影史上的地位。通过对泰特作品的视觉和听觉肌理的密切关注，本文将从技术和感官的角度来探讨她的电影。泰特用具体化的术语描述了她与科技的关系，将她的技术说成是对着相机“呼吸”。她的大部分电影都以诗意的叙事为特色，呼应了早期英国纪录片传统的叙事，这些传统概括在《夜间邮报》(1936)中。利用David Toop的工作，这个研究项目将与蒂娜·基恩的《旅行的阴影》(1980)进行比较，研究Tait的音频景观的光谱共振。泰特对光波的兴趣和维多利亚时代的精神摄影之间的相似之处也将被探索媒体和灵性主义的理念，在维多利亚精神摄影中，女性被描绘成通灵的媒介。泰特对胶片材料的敏感性支持了这种解读，因为它与关于精神转移到摄影表面的接触理论相交。这与当代女权主义者对表达过去几代人的幽灵的关注不谋而合，历史学家卡罗琳·斯蒂德曼的作品和蒂娜·基恩的电影都出现了这一点，这为这本《光谱诗》的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.