Monday 31st August 2020, 10:30am-12:30pm
In August, our C3P Seminar focuses on work in progress by HDR students. As usual, the seminar is designed to encourage C3P members to share materials around their current work so we can familiarise ourselves with each other’s research and facilitate discussion around the work.
Independent Fictional Web Series: Navigating New Pathways in an Era of Digital Content Saturation
Digital media and the evolution of streaming platforms are interrupting the status quo and transforming the way viewers consume and interact with screen content. This thesis examines how the low-budget web series format is being used as a tool and pathway for actor/producers to take control of their creative output by generating their own content, shaping their personal artistic niche and building audiences. A key aim of this research is to break down each stage of the production process of a web series. We will be discussing progress to-date on the web series production, K-Noir, which is the practical component of this PhD.
Respondent: Brian Yecies
#ResistSister: Feminist Fandoms, Commercialisation and The Handmaid’s Tale
This working paper will explore the emergence of feminist communities as fandoms in the convergence culture industry and the tensions, or indeed interruptions, in the commercialisation of feminist-inflected texts and audiences. Through a case study of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-present), the paper will begin by exploring how popular feminist television series might engender feminist political mobilisation and activities, and how media industries attempt to incorporate, commercialise and capitalise on these communities and responses. In turn, the paper will then explore the various industry attempts to commercialise popular feminist television beyond the series and the ways in which feminist fandoms respond, often refusing to incorporate discourses and paraphernalia that are seen to disrupt the feminist politics of the text. Extending on my recent article, “They Should Have Never Given Us Uniforms If They Didn’t Want Us to Be an Army: The Handmaid’s Tale as Transmedia Feminism” (2020), this paper will bring light to how feminist-inflected texts and audiences are policed by, and, simultaneously, police the commercial interests of the convergence culture industry.
Respondent: Sue Turnbull
DOCULEKTIV: Archiving as Curatorial Exercise in (Re)Imagining Gathering and Collectivity in the Time of Physical Distancing
This presentation is a discussion on the AARPS (art) collective’s curatorial exercise in documentation and archiving their virtual gatherings and creative processes during the pandemic, which resulted to the concept and production of DOCULEKTIV — a three-part video of curated conversations that was released from June to July 2020. This archiving project seeks to explore the role of curation in reimagining community, collectivity, and gathering in the time of physical distancing.
Respondent: Lucas Ihlein
Sarah de Possesse is a Sydney-based filmmaker, producer and actress. She has won numerous awards for her breakout performance in the series Starting From…Now, including ‘Best Actor (Female)’ at the 2016 Indiepossible International Film Festival, ‘Best Supporting Actress’ at the 2015 NYC Webfest and ‘Best Ensemble’ at the 2016 LA Webfest. Her latest series, Thirty, won ‘Best Dramedy’ at the 2017 NYC Webfest, was nominated for ‘Best Australian Drama’ at the 2017 Melbourne Webfest, and is due to release its second season in 2020.
As the director and founder of Catch That Wave Productions, she has worked extensively throughout Australia, and internationally since 2007. With experience as a content producer, news and video producer, and editor across a host of major networks and production houses including MTV Networks Australia, Yahoo7 and Gravity Media, her body of work covers web series, television, short films, music videos, documentaries and transmedia storytelling.
Amy Boyle is currently completing a Doctor of Philosophy (Arts) at the University of Wollongong. Amy’s research explores the representation of women, and the circulation of heteropatriarchies and feminisms through western popular culture. Her dissertation will examine how the movement from broadcast network to subscription television has cultivated a feminist niche audience and a new demand for female-centric, more explicitly feminist content. Amy has published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and has a forthcoming book chapter in an edited collection on gender in contemporary television.
Roselle Pineda is a curator, dramaturg, educator, scholar, community worker, and artist-activist. She teaches at the University of the Philippines and is the founder and artistic director of the community-based art organisation — Aurora Artist Residency Program and Space (AARPS) — and the network of performance curators — Performance Curators Initiatives (PCI). She is currently taking her PhD in Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia with a study focusing on festival curation in indigenous communities in the Philippines.