My practice inflects experimental fine-art moving image and sound with poetic sensibilities and sci-fi vibes. I tend to film opportunistically, so that the footage I acquire necessarily embodies its flaws. I have come up with the term arte difettoso, which I consider a bastard offspring of arte povera in its reference to poor quality materials. The footage is then subject to reframing to produce immersive audio-visual installations. This process is at once literary and scientific, with observation and invention informing one another. Observation becomes poetic inquiry, a means of seeing potential, while invention is informed by philosophical research and material interrogation. The intention is that any verbal representation of a work would necessarily acknowledge this multiplicity and avoid simple description of image and effect.
My practice inflects experimental fine-art moving image and sound with poetic sensibilities and sci-fi vibes. I tend to film opportunistically, so that the footage I acquire necessarily embodies its flaws. I have come up with the term arte difettoso, which I consider a bastard offspring of arte povera in its reference to poor quality materials. The footage is then subject to reframing to produce immersive audio-visual installations. This process is at once literary and scientific, with observation and invention informing one another. Observation becomes poetic inquiry, a means of seeing potential, while invention is informed by philosophical research and material interrogation. The intention is that any verbal representation of a work would necessarily acknowledge this multiplicity and avoid simple description of image and effect.
Film cognition theory, technological advances and philosophic discussions of the digital context are vital to my practice, since they affect and express collective and individual understandings of moving digital imagery in the gallery and out in the world.
My ever-increasing archive facilitates re-appropriation internally; audio is subject to frequent reconstitution into different works. I refer to these remixes as ‘circuits’, which can be considered analogous to echoes within experiences of time and memory. They are sculpted to absorb the viewer in subjective and intuitive experiences of duration, as qualified by Henri Bergson’s concept of durée.
The works are highly structured, edited compositions with layered timelines that challenge limits of reality, in that their hyper-realistic appearance might be fabricated through entirely fictitious means. In this way they are obviously a digital form of painting, albeit extending out of avant-garde film history and using cinematic archetypes. Films, for me, are not only philosophic, cognitive instruments, but should incorporate aesthetic enjoyment; an absence of traditional characters or plot necessitates a different sort of absorption and identification.
My current research resides in the arte difettoso misunderstanding of quantum physics with particular regard to concepts like time’s quanta ‘chronons’, Euclidean space etc which I investigate aural-visually in my studio practice, often also manifests within a creative writing context.
Nationality: British/Irish
Website: www.debrafear.co.uk
Contact: debra.fear@network.rca.ac.uk
2014 MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
2010 BA (Hons) Fine Art in Time-based Media at Wimbledon, UAL
2007 Foundation in Art and Design, Camberwell, UAL
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2015 TOAST – New Curators- Schoolhouse Gallery, York, UK
RCA Secret 2015
2014 ‘videoART’ Exsperiment - Szczecin European Film Festival, Poland
2014 Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh, UK
RCA Secret 2014, Dyson Gallery, London, UK
2013/14 Resident artist, Buddhist Army Records
2013 ‘Badly Natured', NEST, The Hague, The Netherlands
PNTG NOV, Henry Moore Gallery, RCA, UK
100x100=900, multi-country screening project
‘Notes to Self’ and RCA Secret 2013, Dyson Gallery, London, UK
International Streaming Festival
WiP, Lower Gulbenkian Gallery, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2012-13 Collaborative project with Collectives & Curiosities, St Lukes, London, UK
2012 ‘Colour Blue' music video for little horse
International Streaming Festival
St Mungos – two charity videos -‘Without Walls', Guardian, London, UK
Artists School – ICA/LUX Biannual Moving Image Festival, London, UK
Exploding Cinema, Cinema Museum, London, UK
Tooting Construction ‘pop-up' Gallery, London, UK
2011 International Streaming Festival
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scottish Borders, UK
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Piccadily, London, UK
Music videos- Zook, Parkbench and Tommy Hinkley & Wandering Horse
Ottica TV Annual Screening, Bankside, London, UK
2010/11 Resident TBM Artist at Art Academy, London, UK
2010 ‘Erased Walls’, Berlin, Germany
‘Outside the Box', UAL, London, UK
‘Testing the Chains', Electricians Shop, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, UK
High Five, Croydon, London, UK
Annual Ottica TV Show, Bankside, London, UK
2009 International Streaming Festival – Student Edition
‘Q-Art London presents', APT Gallery, London, UK
2008 ‘Reflections of Choice' - Camberwell Arts Festival, London, UK
Making Connections, Open screening, APT Gallery, London, UK
