Abstract
In Swandown (2012), Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair 'pedal a swan-shaped paddle-boat from the seaside in Hastings to Hackney [upstream] using England's inland waterways'. Their swan-based performance is either an absurdist critique of Olympic landscapes, documentation of a vanishing Englishness, or a publically funded 'insufferable mancrush'. Amongst their musings on Blake and Conrad and cameos by a number of like-minded men, artist Marcia Farquhar speaks other people's words, while another woman, actor Kristin O'Donnell, silently performs in the water. The men debate their lack of female collaborators but happily resolve the problem by declaring their swan to be female. This is not a feminist film.
Since 2019, Penrose and Piccini have spent summers inflating a series of swans - less durable, more prone, but nimbler and lighter than their pedalo cousins - and floating with them down the River Tamar which forms the border between Devon and Cornwall. Initially either a caustic-queer response to a prickly feeling around Swandown and the male appropriation of swan culture, a legitimate use of a gifted inflatable golden swan, or a portrait of borders and flow, Swan Out has become an experiment in reclaiming derring-do. What is it to be brave and foolish as women and to pontificate mid-stream and to take ourselves seriously while doing so? The river divides countries, materially expresses multiple, entangled layers of regulation, mixes the pasts and presents of the human and other-than-human, registers the impacts of privatisation and shareholder greed.
In this paper, we explore the newest 12-minute version of Swan Out as an essay film that investigates the regulatory currents of this river. We adopt the positions of Inés de Atienza and Flores de Aguirre, the two female characters in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972). Where those women served as near-silent witnesses to the violence of Spanish colonisation, here we imagine them as time- and space- travelling agents connecting the contemporary spaces and infrastructures of the Tamar with the forces of coloniality through a feminist lens.
Since 2019, Penrose and Piccini have spent summers inflating a series of swans - less durable, more prone, but nimbler and lighter than their pedalo cousins - and floating with them down the River Tamar which forms the border between Devon and Cornwall. Initially either a caustic-queer response to a prickly feeling around Swandown and the male appropriation of swan culture, a legitimate use of a gifted inflatable golden swan, or a portrait of borders and flow, Swan Out has become an experiment in reclaiming derring-do. What is it to be brave and foolish as women and to pontificate mid-stream and to take ourselves seriously while doing so? The river divides countries, materially expresses multiple, entangled layers of regulation, mixes the pasts and presents of the human and other-than-human, registers the impacts of privatisation and shareholder greed.
In this paper, we explore the newest 12-minute version of Swan Out as an essay film that investigates the regulatory currents of this river. We adopt the positions of Inés de Atienza and Flores de Aguirre, the two female characters in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972). Where those women served as near-silent witnesses to the violence of Spanish colonisation, here we imagine them as time- and space- travelling agents connecting the contemporary spaces and infrastructures of the Tamar with the forces of coloniality through a feminist lens.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Submitted - Jul 2024 |
| Event | Times In-Between - Grand Hotel Entourage, Gorizia, Italy Duration: 10 Jul 2024 → 13 Jul 2024 https://bucanevisnewsletter.com/conferenza/ |
Conference
| Conference | Times In-Between |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Italy |
| City | Gorizia |
| Period | 10/07/24 → 13/07/24 |
| Internet address |