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

我的研究将探讨艺术家和集体电影制作在英国的重新配置，特别关注“工作坊运动”及其随后的解散。我将通过对这一时期的唯物主义分析来进行这项研究，重点关注档案材料以及艺术品本身。1982年，英国电影学院、第四频道、地区艺术协会、独立电影协会和电影摄影、电视和联合技术人员协会之间达成了一项协议，即“ACTT赠款援助讲习班制作宣言”，建立了一个框架，资助讲习班，培训、制作和分发“替代”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广泛的实验，这些实验往往具有截然不同的优先级。在接下来的十年里，许多政治、女权主义和少数民族团体与这些组织合作，成为“特许经营”的工作室。迄今为止，有限的奖学金主要集中在杰出的集体和当代艺术家，如黑色音频电影集体，艾萨克朱利安和琥珀电影。我的论文将追溯不太知名的团体的工作，如谢菲尔德电影合作，贸易电影，塞多和W.I.T.C.H.，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。首先，我的研究将测试这些实践的历史中经常嵌入的假设，以及它们经常被写的“实验”和“对立”特征。除了扩大档案的范围，我还试图质疑它的分期。我将延长我的研究超过1991年，研讨会资助的正式结束，以了解不同的团体和艺术家的改造如何围绕新的程序和标准组织起来。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二元对立历史。我的研究的关键是对这一时期的英国艺术如何被历史化的反思。我将挑战在20世纪80年代后期有一个明显突破的假设。此外，我并没有将这些工作室的运作定义为与主流文化形式和政治代表性相对立，而是想指出，正如斯图亚特·霍尔（Stuart Hall）所言，这些工作室的运作表达了一种政治主体性危机，既在国家意识形态内部运作，也与国家意识形态相对立。这一时期艺术品的种类和数量仍然没有得到充分的研究，只有少数几件作品仍在流通。材料的多样性（包括艺术品和文献）暗示了技术发展、资源分配和国家支持的形式化之间的波动关系。我的研究将采取的形式是对这段分散的历史进行严格的图表。从1970年代最初讨论建立全国讲习班网络到1990年代中期最后转变，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变化。我认为，在这些转变中，存在着一种结构，这种结构既扩大了生产资料的获取，同时又通过纳入激进异议的基础来获得社会凝聚力（以及拆除以前的结构和机构）。通过这样的强调，我将把形象塑造的集体实践框定为政治行动和合作的一个不断变化的领域，然而，1990年代发展起来的结构和机构已经取消了这一权利。

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.