Research Proposal

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I am in a unique position in Trent University’s Cultural Studies Ph.D. program as

a Fine Art and Art History graduate from the University of Toronto and Sheridan

College. With my background in both traditional Art History and Fine Arts (studio

practice), I will be able to engage and contribute to Cultural Studies through what I have

come to provisionally call an embodied writing practice.

An embodied writing practice is both an artistic practice (in a studio arts sense) as

well as a method of study (in an academic sense). Such a practice takes into account the

nuances of speech and context that cannot be fully captured and transmitted, or are

inevitably altered, by writing alone. The goal of an embodied writing practice is to

preserve these (bodily) nuances in the act of writing through the emphasis of writing as

an artistic performance, as opposed to an exclusive act of linguistic transmission.

Traditional writing can be performed, (for example, the script of a theatrical production)

but the writing itself does not perform (the script itself does not perform—the actors

preform when they embody the script). Traditional writing thus remains archival, while

performance is embodied. An embodied writing practice combines the two: (1) a written

text, and (2) a performance. By combining artistic practice and academic method, an

embodied writing practice promises to extend the experience of communication that

writing already affords. It is through an embodied writing practice that I aim to bring

together disciplines that are typically considered and treated as separate: artistic practice

and academic, or scholarly, writing and research. In other words, this approach will

facilitate a re-imagining of knowledge boundaries, which is why it is worth developing: it

offers an alternative means of understanding and engaging with academic

concepts/theories and visual culture/artistic practice.

My title, A Performance’s Only Life Is In Its Document, inverts performance

theorist Peggy Phelan’s influential argument: a performance’s only life is in the present;

and I aim to elaborate upon this inversion through two methods: one, research creation

and two, an embodied writing practice. Phelan claims that once a performance is

reproduced by documentation, a photograph or video recording for example, it becomes

something other than a performance; it exists as a document, not as a performance. A

performance’s only life is thus in the present moment that it is performed. Research

creation: I will create documents that refer to performances that never occurred (I am

calling this collection of performance art documents an anthology.) By not using existing

documents that stand in for a performance that did occur, I literally invert Phelan’s claim.

An embodied writing practice: to complement this literal inversion, I will treat writing

as a performance that points to the bodily nuances of speech, reading, and context. I have

established the following strategies to do so: I will include the written symbols of

phonetics to point to the vocal sounds of individual words (spēCH); I will call attention to

the physical and mental act of reading written words (an act you are currently engaged

with) (reading); and I will call attention to context as a frame that influences meaning:

the context of the performance, the context of one’s experience with its documentation,

and the context in which my writing is experienced (this Research Proposal as an

application for the Vanier scholarship, for example) (context).

I am well positioned to complete this project because Trent University is my

Research Proposal

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nominating institution. Its faculty and location in Peterborough, Ontario are integral

supports in my development of research creation and critical engagement. Dr. Veronica

Hollinger’s performance theory scholarship will aid in the completion of my first chapter,

which will serve as a theoretical introduction of the notion of the ‘document:’ what

constitutes a ‘document?’ how does a ‘document’ capture and communicate a

performance (if it does at all)? Is it possible to experience a performance through its

‘document?’ Can a ‘document’ re-perform a performance? And if so, to what degree?

I intend to present my second chapter as a separate work in the form of research

creation: an anthology of performance art. Dr. Kelly Egan’s artistic practice, as well as

Peterborough’s art community will be integral to its creation. Working with Dr. Egan,

Artspace, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough, I will stage performances to create

various documents: photography, film, and sound clips. I will then write exhibition

reviews, interviews, and exhibition catalogue essays to accompany these documents. My

third chapter will address the typical status of ‘original’ given to a performance by the

traditional Art History and Performance Studies disciplines. I will expand my inquiry to

Media Studies for this chapter. Dr. Liam Mitchell’s Media Studies scholarship will thus

prove to be an asset. Readers/viewers often experience live performances through

simulation, through a performance’s document. This is our mediatized reality; the border

between performance and documentation is breaking down. I am calling attention to this

breakdown and exploring it: the ‘originality’ of a performance is called into question

when the performance’s only life is in its document (research creation that literally

inverts Phelan’s argument).

A deeper understanding of the process of documentation is at stake in my

research; it marks a contemporary shift in the experience of the ‘original’ performance,

further the ‘original’ity of its document. In our highly mediatized culture, it is common

for performance artists to spend more time contemplating how to document a

performance than the performance itself. In other words, to be able to draw a past

performance into a future present moment; thus the way in which one experiences a

performance has less to do with the live performance and more to do with the document

as a representation of the live performance. The ‘original’ performance can be seen as a

process of documenting; its document thus documents the process of documenting.

Further, this process of documenting, this process of capturing and conveying meaning

from a live performance to a future moment, can only convey meaning if it possesses

meaning already known. For example, the meaning of the word ‘performance’ is

understood if one has already encountered it, and thus already knows its meaning. A

performance (and subsequently its document as the process of documenting) is not

‘original’ in the sense that it has never existed before; it is at least in part meaning already

encountered, meaning already known. Meaning captured and conveyed by a performance

can thus be seen as an in part simulation of past meaning. It is not an encounter with

originality that is experienced, but an encounter with layers of meaning, an encounter

with iterations and citations of meaning already conveyed. It is my goal to emphasize

these layers of meaning through an embodied writing practice. Highlighting the bodily

nuances of speech, reading, and context (with the above mentioned strategies), I will

record as well as perform through writing (an embodied writing practice).

David Hollands 1

Program of Study

My work will present a reconsideration and an as-of-yet unused application of a currently

popular concept in the field of Film Studies: the cinema of attractions. This concept will be useful to

me in my intervention of the current study of Horror films in Film Studies. I will now define the

concept of the cinema of attractions, and explain how it will form the theoretical basis of my work.

The cinema of attractions was first proposed by film historians Tom Gunning and Andre

Gaudreault in 1986. The concept was meant to be an intervention of historical studies of early cinema

up until that time. Gunning and Gaudreault felt that early cinema had been "written and theorized under

the hegemony of narrative films" (Gunning 381). In other words, it had been assumed by most film

historians that early cinema told stories in the same narrative styles as they did up to 1986. According

to Gunning and Gaudreault, cinema before roughly 1906 operated under a different principal, that of

the cinema of attractions. In order to understand the connotation of the word "attractions," one must

first know its opposite: monstration. Monstration is a term derived from Literary Theory. It describes

narratological instances that show something, as in the actualité films of the Lumière brothers, which

were early examples of documentary cinema. Attraction, on the other hand, is the "power," or affect, of

the visual on the spectator--attraction, as Gunning and Gaudreault describe it, overwhelms the

spectator. This "power" of attraction is the "harnessing of visibility, [the] act of showing and

exhibition" which "cinema before 1906 displays most intensely" (381). In the cinema of attractions

model, the technology of cinema--the cameras and the various viewing or projection methods--had just

as much "attractive" power as the affect of the images it produced. Since the technology was new at

that time, it was primarily considered by many in terms of exhibition. Furthermore, early theorists and

critics of film were so astonished by its "attractive" power that they considered the cinema to be

potentially transformative. I now offer an example of what I mean by transformative. Gunning points

out that the affective power of attraction was not lost on Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, whose

well-known theory of cinematic montage rested on the idea that film had the power to transform

spectators sociologically, politically, and ideologically. To Eisenstein, specific kinds of visual filmic

techniques could transform film spectators from passive observers into "active" communists, who

would eventually reject all forms of capitalism.

As Gunning explains in "The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-

Garde," the cinema of attractions disappeared with the formation of popular cinematic narrative

storytelling styles following 1906, and relocated to experimental films of various avant-garde traditions

and movements. Gunning also claims that the cinema of attractions re-emerged in a diluted form in the

modern Hollywood Blockbuster, which arguably began with Steven Spielberg's film Jaws (1975).

Attraction manifests in Blockbuster films, since the stories of those films allow for constant

exhibitionism in their plots; structurally, Blockbuster films become a series of moments showcasing

supposedly awe-inspiring special effects or stunts in order to hold a spectator's attention. Many

supporters of the cinema of attractions concept take their cue from Gunning's latter claim, and analyze

attraction within the confines of narrative. It is this approach that I wish to apply to the study of Horror

films.

There is currently a considerable lack of analysis of filmic Horror texts as potentially

"attractive." Horror is a genre of films that are mostly dependent on affect to successfully engage

spectators. The trope of the jump scare, for instance, is not monstrative, since it is not demonstrative. A

jump scare, as well as many other techniques in Horror films designed to horrify audiences, attempts to

derive a physical reaction from spectators. Applying a cinema of attractions model to horror films

would allow me to offer a new perspective that has not necessarily been considered before. There have

been studies of the affective qualities of Horror films, but none that are explicitly narratological in the

David Hollands 2

same way as the cinema of attractions model. Most still rely on psychoanalytic models, as Horror Film

and Psychoanalysis (2004), a collection of essays on various horror films, shows. In psychoanalytic

interpretations of Horror films, onscreen monsters unconsciously evoke archetypal human fears in

spectators, while simultaneously allowing audiences “masochistic pleasures generated through the

imagery of suffering, violence, and death” in order for them to deal with apprehensions of “ideological

collapse and breakdown” (Prince 118). Psychoanalytic interpretations of Horror films ask a broad and

basic questions: why are spectators attracted to Horror films, and what can these reasons tell us about

humanity and society?

While I am not trying to undercut the contributions that psychoanalytic interpretations have

made to the academic study of Horror films, I still feel that a specific focus on the "attractive" aspects

of Horror can only expand the field. For one, as I stated previously, the cinema of attractions concept is

closely tied to early theories of the cinema, since the attractive "power" of cinema influenced early

critics, filmmakers, and theorists so strongly. Horror films also have their roots in early cinematic

avant-garde traditions and movements; early examples of cinematic Horror include The Cabinet of Dr

Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). These films are considered examples of German Expressionism,

an avant-garde movement. As Gunning argued, the cinema's attractive tendencies thrived in avant-

garde movements before re-emerging in popular Blockbuster films. An "attractive" study of Horror

films would therefore allow for a return to the roots of the cinematic genre, and examine the

connections between Horror films and early film theory, another area of study that remains largely

unexplored.

I also intend to use my "attractive" study of Horror films to pose a larger question: how has

cinematic attraction changed in the digital age? Since 2009, the film industry has moved from film-

based production and exhibition to digital technologies. Not only are films shot and projected digitally,

but in both Blockbuster films and less costly Horror films, many of the settings of scenes and the

majority of special effects are digitally produced, as in the recent film The Hobbit: The Desolation of

Smaug (2013). The same tendency has been present in Horror films since roughly 2007; the film

Cloverfield (2007) featured scenes wherein entirely digital environments were created. I therefore

intend to explore how attraction has potentially been changed by digital filmmaking. In other words, I

am, in part, returning to an analysis of attraction that also examines the attractive powers of the

technologies of cinema, rather than just the attractive components of popular narrative styles. Since

digital filmmaking technologies have radically altered how films are produced and distributed, it has

become crucial to analyze how those technologies have made these industrial changes possible.

Works Cited

Gunning, Tom. "The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant- Garde." The

Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Ed. Wanda Strauven. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University

Press, 2006. 381-388. Print.

Prince, Stephen. “Dread, Taboo, and The Thing: Toward a Social Theory of the Horror Film.” The

Horror Film. Ed. Stephen Prince. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

118-130. Print.

Schneider, Steven Jay, Ed. Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud's Worst Nightmare. Cambridge,

New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi: Cambridge

University Press, 2004. Print.

David Hollands 1

Interpersonal/Leadership Abilities

I have been consistently involved in two areas that demonstrate my communication,

interpersonal, and leadership skills: (1) I teach successfully as a tutorial assistant; (2) I work as an

independent filmmaker, in the position of director. Both areas of work require exceptional

communication and leadership skills, though excellence in a pedagogical position is especially

important; as a teacher, it is crucial to be able to communicate to students in a manner that is clear and

direct, but still able to hold their attention and inspire them to want to learn.

I began teaching as a tutorial assistant in September of 2010 when I led the seminars for the

classes Cinema and Sensation II: Sex and Cinema and Sensation I: Action at the University of

Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute, where I completed my Masters degree. I learned very quickly how

to communicate with students effectively in order to keep them interested in the subject matter. It is

perhaps even more important that I managed to create an environment where students felt comfortable

to express themselves. Furthermore, I learned to be a sensitive, yet effective critic when evaluating and

grading students' work, which I found encouraged students to improve academically, even if in the face

of a low grade.

In September of 2012, when I began working toward my Ph.D. in the Cultural Studies program,

I decided to apply to be a tutorial assistant in the Gender and Women's Studies department, for the

course Introduction to Gender and Women's Studies. I was granted the position, since my background

in Film Studies allowed me to teach topics of gender and popular culture effectively. There has been a

significant number of Feminist approaches to the study of film since the 1970s, so I was grounded well

in the concepts and terminology used in Gender and Women's Studies approaches. Following the end

of the course, the quality of my teaching was acknowledged by the Teaching Awards Subcommittee. I

was nominated by my students as the best tutorial assistant at Trent University. Though I was not

ultimately granted the award, I was congratulated by Gillian Balfour, the Chair of the Gender and

Women's Studies department. She praised my "fantastic work" as a tutorial assistant, and noted that my

nomination was for my great work with students. I have included Balfour's message as an attachment to

this page. So far, I have continued to expand my horizons as a teacher this year. I acted as a grader for

the courses Television Studies and Gender and Popular Culture, and am currently a tutorial assistant for

the Cultural Studies course Music Studies: The Black Atlantic, where I am applying my background in

Film Studies and Cultural Studies to the interdisciplinary study of the various styles of music of black

Africa.

My primary extracurricular activity is filmmaking. I have led both fictional and non-fictional

productions since 2005, and have worked for organizations as diverse as the Public Service

Commission of Canada and Ottawa's Jamaican Community Association. From March to June of 2006,

I acted as a cameraman and lead editor of the music video The More Love You Give. This video was

produced by the Aboriginal Women's Support Center, and was intended to portray positive images of

Aboriginal youths in the context of the Hip Hop musical genre. I have also produced and directed

several fictional films. I am interested in subjects that are potentially transformative, be it a work that

has a practical positive effect on a community, or inspires audiences thematically. My experiences

working on or producing these films helped me form my authoritative, yet reserved and collaborative

approach to leadership on any kind of project, which has consistently produced positive results. These

experiences helped me develop my skills as a tutorial assistant, and they also influenced my studious

work ethic.