Cattle, Rachel (2017) I am a stylus : play, erase, replay, overdub, broadcast. (PhD thesis), Kingston University, .
Abstract
In this project the researcher assumes the position of devices devised for the reception and transmission of sounds and gestures. The embodied stylus is a means of sensitively picking up and recording sonic, gestural and temporal events (the stylus marking and recording time, the duration of each playing creating a record of its own event). A boundless and non-hierarchical notion of radio broadcast is posited as its central mode of interrogation and infiltration. The project explores and articulates the complexities of transmission by embracing and critically recasting notions of interiority and sensitivity. My broadcast tunes in and out of established patterns and rhythms, their gaps and ruptures made clearer as a metaphorical dial is allowed to browse a vast field of cultural and subcultural manifestations. The text, in turn utilises a variety of personal, diaristic and auto fictive forms (my voice, as broadcaster, performing a key role) to acknowledge and receive unruly, divergent and dissonant gestures, utterances and reverberations. As such, my research draws upon art, sound and literary practices developed in the 20th and 21st centuries that have embraced fluidity and ephemerality, such as experimental electronic sound, auto-fictive texts, performance and live art, concrete poetry, experimental theatre, self-publishing, underground fanzine culture and mail art. A variety of activities and devices, from field recordings to analogue noise makers, provide the tools to re-articulate utterances and recast gestures marginalised within contemporary culture. 'I am a stylus' asks how these can be rediscovered and made productive towards a collective articulation of a shared future. Throughout my research, key discoveries and personal rediscoveries have been tested and iterated through live and recorded readings, experimental sound, text and video works, drawings and publications. 'I am a stylus' espouses a form of time travels in which the collection and collation of sounds, words and gestures constitute fleeting yet persistent events, sounding out alternative versions of established cultural narratives. This process of discovery and reassessment, when tracing my own antecedents, manifests a constellation historical female, queer and marginalised artists, writers and musicians allowing them to be viewed and heard from outside of linear history but within a re-conceptualisation of cultural history. My submission for PhD consists of a number of interrelated documents, namely 'Witch Dance', an experimental text, 'Air Time', a transparent vinyl record and a series of related publications. These outcomes of my practice-based research are accompanied by a contextual document 'The continuous broadcast', in which my working process is articulated, delineating the development of my research and situating it within a wider network of practices.
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