Frances Young

How does the loop as a temporal mode persistent to the “contemporary condition” inflect the loop as a formal device or process-based method in film and video?

In what ways does the loop create an intersection or oscillation between movement and stasis? And, within this intersection or oscillation, what kinds of materialities emerge or dissipate?

Informed by post-Marxist dialectical critical theory and “new materialist” methodologies, my project looks at the political force of the apparatus, and of cultural forms; and I consider moving image media in terms of technological mediation and media archaeology. I am proposing a diffraction of these theories towards a new understanding of the temporal and ideological conditions of the loop.

The research is led by a practice-based methodological framework in which different configurations of the loop act as a catalyst for theoretical writing, underpinned by case-studies of my practice in moving image. Juxtaposed with this, a reading of the loop through the work of other artist-theorists – via Formal / Structural filmmakers (1960s – 70s), to the Victorian proto-cinematic, and forward to the recent writing of Hito Steyerl – creates a temporal looping back and forth throughout the text.

Through this research I aim to create new terms which deal with the specificities of loops in particular contexts, through the practice of moving image, as an original contribution to knowledge. This contribution will take the form of a body of new work in moving image, and a written paper which proposes new readings of the loop form: outlining material, temporal, and ideological positionings of the loop from a contemporary, practice-based, viewpoint.