Doubt is a loaded word. There are associations and histories that weave the word through theological, philosophical, political, legal and psychoanalytic thought. It is entangled. However, it is precisely because of the complexity and ambiguity of the term doubt that it holds my interest. The associative relationships that doubt has with truth, proof, faith, belief, testimony, witnessing, fact and fiction are all active components in my practice and research. There are three artworks that act as case studies that explore these relationships: a single screen video (April, 2018), a video performance (The Narrator, 2018) and a video installation with accompanying performance (The Unreliable Narrator, 2019). The written thesis is a reflective text that is structured around the description and analysis of these three artworks.
While acknowledging existing studies that examine the generative potential of doubt or ‘not knowing’ within creative processes (Cocker, 2013; Herbert, 2014), the aim of my research is to investigate the critical potential of doubt when made manifest within an artwork, as an attribute or affect. To do this, my practice-led research pursues doubt as both its subject and as a consequence of the work itself. The latter approach (as consequence or affect) positions doubt as a cognitive or sensory experience that may be produced in a viewer by way of the work. There are various structural methods that I have explored to achieve this, for example the use of repetition in narrative or filmic loops that can be seen in my single screen film April (2018) and video performance The Narrator (2018).
My investigation of doubt as content is evidenced most explicitly in my video performance The Narrator that asks: what if you knew no doubt, held no inconsistencies, had no contradictory thoughts, feelings or urges? By putting these questions into play, The Narrator entertains the improbable, perhaps impossible, notion of a narrator whose reliability is absolute. However, What is Seen, What is Said to be Seen also considers the one who sees and what they say they saw. Prophetic sight and stage magic are the subjects central to April and The Unreliable Narrator respectively; both present moments of uncertain seeing that sit close to the limits of vision and perception and it is this uncertain seeing that the artworks attempt to reenact.