Still Life with Black Birds
- Submitting institution
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The Open University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 1518416
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Artists Choice Editions
- ISBN
- 978-0-9955570-2-4
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2015
- 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
- -
- 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
- This practice-based work, ‘Still Life with Black Birds’, took a less conventional approach to ekphrasis by exploring whether a new ‘intermedial’ space could emerge through dialogic collaboration with an artist and not just as a response to the artwork itself. The dialogue which emerged from a shared past between writer and artist, influenced creative and contextual approaches. Theoretical frameworks for ekphrasis generally relate to poetry, defined by Leo Spritzer as “the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art” (Spritzer, L. in Hatcher, A.(ed),1962:72). This collaboration contributes new knowledge to ekphrasis by creating prose fiction in the crime genre, the writing emerging from dialogue with the artist as much as in response to his artwork. This dialogic ‘intermedial’ space is explored in: Reardon, J. ‘Ekphrasis in Still Life with Black Birds: Finding a new space - art and prose in collaboration’ (2020) in Writing in Practice, Vol 6, pp.40-52. A key element of ekphrasis was the way the practitioners used the museographic context of the Corinium museum (where the work was displayed) to move away from traditional approaches, the aim being to stimulate consciousness in the viewer through the way words work in dialogue with the artwork, eliciting a single response to one collaborative work. This writing therefore embodies the exploration of how exchanges about the collaborators’ shared past allowed formal innovation and challenged traditional approaches. Research questions addressed via this writing include: Is it enough that ekphrasis is seen simply as an exchange between visual and textual elements or, in a collaboration, is ekphrasis this ‘intermedial’ space where the dialogue occurs? The final work attempted to answer: if all writing is essentially ekphrastic, can artist and writer in collaboration elicit a single response from the viewer/reader which is the result of this dialogic approach to ekphrasis?
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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