Abstract

Today will mark the conclusion of this years Screen Media Group seminar series ‘Mnemotechnics and the Archive’. This seminar: ‘To Quill at Film’: A Talk on ‘Film Poems’, places Redell Olsen’s recent book ‘Film Poems’ in context in relation to ideas of performance, poetics and film. Olsen writes, “I drew a plan of the filming instrument. The writing drew within the field of the camera and the filming commenced. The hunting, filming and capture of wild form. I drew a plan of the writing instrument as a poetics as a film for showing in live performance as a writing of day for night. Situations in which I might be expected to film writing occurred and I was drawn to the archives and made them in the everyday. The bear was filming a commercial in the Western Isles when he swam off to take a partlet in the making of (a film) as a writing implement, or a piece of lace, or a feather. The filming of this is put last as pure speculation to give the camera time to catch up, or to open it to the viewing public for redistribution by other means . . . .” from ‘To Quill at Film’.