Outland: video installation
- Submitting institution
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Queen's University of Belfast
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 168351677
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- May
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Outland is an audio, video and water installation commissioned for the Malta Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, displayed from 11th May until 24th November. The work was inspired by Homer’s Odyssey as a departure point for reinterpreting the indecisiveness of humanity and the complexity of human relationships.
Outland depicts our common struggle to come to terms with reality and our desire to escape the anxiety of its perceived, privileged freedom. It rests on a key psychoanalytical assertion that anxiety is the knife edge that separates desire and jouissance (Lacan, 1968-1969/2008), and focuses on recreating Ulysses' 'Isle of Calypso' – a paradise, a place where he finds refuge – as an imaginary representation of his jouissance.
The creative process is explored through a series of multi-layered metaphors. Amongst them is a plastic, room-like enclosure that acts as a semi-transparent canvas for the constant scribbling of the male character (Odysseus), sheltering him from nature while simultaneously capturing him as a hostage within his own obsessive activity.
These metaphors also find resonance in the handling of the musical materials, where the containment and obsessive behaviour of Odysseus are contrasted with the sensuous and tactile movements of the female character (Calypso/Penelope). The working method evolved through a series of exchanges of audio sources and visual sketches, moving to transformed sounds, still and moving images, through to spatial textures and expansive video materials, each audio or visual iteration challenging and prompting the next step in the collaborative creative process.
Briffa and Alcorn aimed that the musical materials would give voice to internalized speech sounds, would create hyper-realistic sounds from close microphone techniques (such as the scribbling) and create subtle tensions in the counterpoint of the audio visual narrative, punctuated by moments of synchornised sound and audio design.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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