Chapter 1
Collective
Provenances: authorial reflexivity
My research motivation has a history that has formed
the assumptions that underlay this thesis. This comes out of my experience of
nine other collective sites of cultural production that I have been part of
since 1968. This other history is both intertwined with the specific provenance
of Exploding Cinema and provides an underlying frame for the interpretation
made in this thesis. In the interests of reflexivity[1]
and to show the continuum of collective activity I will outline this
experience.
I have repeatedly been drawn to collective cultural
production in the last thirty years. In the last ten years I have become aware
of how poorly these particular British collective experiences have been recorded,
documented, written about, criticised, archived and ultimately historicised.
With few exceptions[2] these
historicising processes have occurred very little. Of course some of these
collective endeavours probably need little more than a footnote in history. The
lack of historical representations of others is without doubt caused by other
factors that are contingent on the formation of historical knowledges.[3]
The tendency not to focus on them may be a reflection of history's fascination
with leading personalities and a simple set of outcomes organised as a linear
and 'readable' narrative rather than with processes, relations, discursive
formations and communicative flows, networks and diffuse social contexts.[4]
During the course of this research
I have been thinking about the weak historicisation of this area and have
been looking at the existing records left by these collectives.
[5]
In the account that follows I will emphasise the aspects
of the collectives that are relevant to this thesis.
[6]
[1] I have considered the
question of reflexivity in the introduction.
[2] The example of Hull Time
Based Arts is considered in the conclusion to this chapter.
[3] One important collective
history that appeared as I wrote this was a 'History of the LMC' by Clive Bell
that was published in the summer edition of Variant in 1999 (Vol 2 No 8
pp12-16). This was followed by a special issue of Resonance magazine, the
London Musicians Collective magazine, which was notable for including multiple
accounts of LMC's history. See Resonance (Vol 8 No 2 /Vol 9 No 1 Double Issue 2000)
[4] Foucault's Archaeology of
Knowledge
(orig. 1969) points to this sort of complexity in the formations of all
knowledge. A detailed discussion follows in the chapter, which discusses
critiques of Habermas.
[5] Published records are scarce
and as this chapter focuses on my own experience it is often to my own records
that I am referring. It was beyond the scope of the current PhD research to
fully research archival sources in all these areas.
[6] I have followed these
challenges to historical truth through the works of Keith Jenkins. From Rethinking
History
(1991) to Why History: ethics and postmodernity (1999). This discursive
field challenges the selective nature of historical method and its reductive
and ideologically motivated effects. It also reveals the literary nature of
historical narratives. It is these considerations that lead to the personal
dimension in this text and also my choice of open-ended structure, which is
intended to be more of a collage or mosaic than narrative.