Debra Fear

Artist statement

I have evolved an individual practice that investigates but quite often misunderstands the philosophical concepts of time from writers such as Gilles Deleuze.

It involves trying to interpret/translate philosophical theories like hors-champ /repetition/time-image/crystalline structures/décadrage but within my own aural-visual and audio-poetical frameworks, and is centered on the idea of process leading to comprehension. It is not always successful in expressing or properly representing but is interesting in its failures.

A kind of bastardised version of arte povera permeates my process-led practice. I believe that any ostensibly ‘flawed’ piece of film/sound has the potential to become exceptional and to express film-thinking’ . From opportunistic filming, sound recording through to composition and postproduction I may re-appropriate from my own archive of work and within it counterpoints of a poetics sensibility where rhythmic elements vibrate in gentle collisions of stillness within motion. Layers create motion patterns and conduits or grids of influence decompose and recompose temporally. It can be noted that an evolving part of my practice is fine art videos in collaboration with musicians.

Arte difettoso, as I like to name it, allows me to transform shaky ‘on the hoof’ filmed footage into forms of representation around ideas of metaphysical transcendence usually in cinematic constructs. Often in sound pieces/soundtracks an element of ambiguity over what is heard is present – is all not what it seems? In aural visual pieces viewers have felt that there is ‘a dark feel with elements of humour that come through’, and a suggestion of the Gothic, possibly, because of recurrent sinister soundscapes and bird motifs. It does not hurt to be playful where appropriate in art, as humour, even if crooked, is part of the human condition and this really comes through my rarer standalone sound pieces.

1 out of field/sight
2 deframing
3 Frampton, D. (2006). Filmosophy. London: Wallflower.