Dark Fringes: Complexity and Emergence in Realist Collage

The paper will present practice research at the intersection of collage, animation, found footage film and documentary. The research investigates the capacity of the fragmented, layered language of collage to engage the stratified, laminated reality advanced by the philosophy of critical realism. In contrast to empiricism and idealism, critical realism recognises the socially embedded, material and historically situated basis of knowledge production. In response, the research pursues a multivocal and pluralist approach to representation that the paper claims is necessary in apprehending the dense complexity of social relations.
The project examines the status of archive footage as evidence of the multiple mechanisms and structures that have generated historical events. This draws from the critical realist concept of emergence in interrogating how the meaning of archive materials is mediated thorough the convergence of layers in collage aesthetics. This suggests that the spaces at the fringes of collage fragments can address the tension and exchange between facts and values in the negotiation of reality. The paper argues for the recognition of the interstitial space between and around evidence and facts, advancing an approach to realism open to the role of imagination and narrative in how we understand the world.
In reference to the politics of layered realities, collage is suggested as a tool for challenging reductive accounts of the social world that obscure the power relations that determine events. Specifically, through aligning a critical realist engagement with intersectionality with postcolonial and Marxist perspectives, the work aims to contribute to the decolonisation of the mainstream media’s representation of the working classes and social history.