Experimental film practice from an international and transdisciplinary perspective.
Karel Doing is an experimental filmmaker and researcher who has worked across the globe with fellow artists and filmmakers, creating a body of work that is difficult to pinpoint with a simple catchphrase. In Ruins and Resilience he weaves autobiographical elements and critical reviews together with his wide ranging interdisciplinary approach, reflecting on his own practice by positioning key works within the context of a vibrant experimental film scene in Europe, North & South America and Asia. Doing demonstrates how experimental filmmakers have continued to renew their practice despite the almost total demise of analog motion picture film and the constant neglect of this art form by institutions and critics. Written in a fluent and accessible style, the book looks into the connections between the work of groundbreaking artists within the field and subjects such as transgression, improvisation, collectivity, materiality, phenomenology and perception. Specifically, intersections with music and sound are investigated, appealing to the idea of the cross-modal brain, the ability to perceive sounds and images in an integrated way. Instead of looking again at the “golden era” of experimental film, the book starts in the 1980s, showing how this art form has never ceased to surprise and inspire. The author’s hands-on engagement with the medium is formational for his more theoretical approach and writing, making the book a highly original contribution in the field that is informative and inspiring for academics and practitioners alike.
Karel Doing is an independent artist, filmmaker and researcher whose practice investigates the relationship between culture and nature by means of analogue and organic process, experiment and co-creation. His work has been shown worldwide at festivals, in cinemas, on stage and in galleries. He was a founder member of Studio één, a pioneering DiY film laboratory. He has invented “phytography,” a technique that combines plants and photochemical emulsion. He regularly gives workshops and talks to share his ideas and skills.
Karel Doing explores the “ruins” of cinema and the innovative ways by which the experimental artists, since the end of the 20th century, are trying to keep it alive… a unique contribution to the field by one of the most important contemporary artists in the experimental field. (Nicole Brenez, Professor of Film Studies, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris)
Publisher: Goldsmiths Press / Sonics Series
ISBN: 978-1-915983-02-2
Dimensions: 6 x 9 inches
200 pp.