Fantasticology: participatory video and the 'impossibility' of the other

Abstract

Fantasticology: Participatory Video and the 'Impossibility' of the Other, asks what are the qualities of a video art that can account for the 'impossibility' of meaningful communication between an artist and their cultural Other? In response, this research paper accounts for the nature and method of my practice rather than a detailed analysis of the images and objects produced. Cultural Otherness is defined as a discontinuous and 'impossible' space where I can never fully account for the Other. In response to this 'unrepresentability' I have developed a mode of participatory video practice called fantasticology, where fact and fiction are kept in play and both the libidinal and 'rational' are simultaneously implicated. My approach is contextualised within a variety of alternative artistic responses to cultural Otherness, phenomenology, and experimental ethnography. Ultimately this research paper argues for a meaningful and ethical response constituted not in a critical reduplication of past historical fact but through an aesthetic acknowledgment of difference where friendship develops through the negotiation of a participatory encounter. In this process both subject and 'object' are defined through the doing of artistic praxis. My overall research findings have been presented in this research paper and two video installations.