SCREEN THOUGHT: METAMODERN FILM Volume 8, July 2024


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Shaun Wilson: The 51 Paintings Suite: a long term study of trauma memory and metamodern affect in slow films

Keywords: metamodern film, slow cinema, trauma memory, affect, epistemology, practice based research 

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The 51 Paintings Suite (2006 - 2024) is an 18 year long term study about trauma memory and slow films intersecting metamodern affect. The project recontextualised poses of characters from medieval German plague era paintings into new locations and contexts through slow films. The developmental phase of the study occurred between 2006-2012 and the application phase occurred between 2012-2024. The nature of the study results have sought to digress trauma memory through metamodernism that led to the discovery of an affectual working model which established a new way to comprehend metamodern film. The context of such  established an epistemological reading of affect embodied in a structure of reason. This differs from what current scholarship determines as a structure of feeling since challenged by applying epistemological modelling through the oscillation between modernism as a singularity and postmodernism as a relativism. The resultant body of work attests to this challenging by making a significant contribution to metamodern film and contemporary art.