Author: Shaun Wilson
Wilson, Shaun, 2025 Metamodern affect, trauma memory and slow cinema in the 51 Paintings Suite, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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This contextual statement responds to The 51 Paintings Suite, a long-term study that investigated metamodern affect, trauma memory, and slow cinema through practice-based film art. It consolidated a significant body of long-form slow films published between 2012-2023 across public screenings and online scholarship. The aim of the study was to consolidate perspectives about trauma memory and slowness through the moving image that led to the discovery of a new way to model metamodern affect in slow films which I term a ‘structure of reason’. My films developed an epistemological response to metamodernism that challenged existing scholarship focused on an ontological structure of feeling. Throughout this research I have reflectively aligned metamodern theory to the production of these films that sought to establish new knowledge about trauma memory and slow films in my practice. This was consolidated through a written statement that documents the body of research generated across the suite of films. The outcome of the published study demonstrated, first, a significant dossier of practice-based slow films I argue to be unique and significant to the field, second, a new theoretical model to consider trauma through metamodern affect in slow films; and third, an original and significant advancement of film-based metamodern scholarship.
Keywords: Metamodernism, Slow cinema, Slow films, Trauma memory, Video, Video art, Film, Fine arts, Shaun Wilson
Subject: Natural History Film Making thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2025
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Assoc Prof Claire Henry