Documentality in contemporary art

: paraesthetic strategies in the works of Salomé Lamas, Jeremy Shaw and Louis Henderson

Abstract

This thesis intends to critically reflect on the particularities of the field of documentary film in the context of contemporary art. For that purpose, it seeks to mobilize various theoretical and aesthetical approaches to the field in order to answer the following questions: How do documentary film and contemporary art relate to each other? What are the aims and applications of self–reflexivity in documentary filmmaking? Drawing on Hito Steyerl’s notion of “documentality,” which she describes as being of crucial importance to the development of the documentary film in either becoming a form of governmental policy or a critical stance against it, it is asked: how can the concept of documentality be relevant to the study of the self–reflexive documentary? And finally, how does self–reflexive documentary filmmaking probe contemporary notions of documentality? This thesis undertakes four distinct tasks: first, it draws a historical path that puts into perspective the conjunction between documentary and art. Secondly, it explores how documentary practice and theory have influenced one another and how this influence ultimately affects the boundaries of documentary film’s very definition. Thirdly, through the direct engagement with the work of Salomé Lamas, Jeremy Shaw and Louis Henderson it conducts a close reading of films that experiment with the boundaries of documentary and fiction, and identifies different strategies as being “paraesthetic”– in that they do not blur the limits between fiction and documentary, but aim at challenging these limits beyond their normative understanding. Lastly, it engages with the Steyerlian concept of documentality in order to grasp the oscillations between, on the one hand, what constitutes documentary practice conventionally, and on the other, what constitutes documentary as a critical practice. Effectively, the dissertation is essentially a two-fold investigation: first, it aims to identify how contemporary artists are working with the frame of documentary and what strategies they employ in doing this; and secondly, the thesis aims to present these strategies as constituting a documentality of its own within contemporary art.

Date of Award	29 Mar 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Isabel Capeloa Gil (Supervisor) & Frederik Tygstrup (Co-Supervisor)