MA Creative Practices for Narrative Environments 2006-2008 – Student Film, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, London, United Kingdom.
Londiniensium was a film that came out of an investigative project based upon hypothetical inquiries about open- authorship and free-form narrative. It was a participatory film project that drew upon the reference of Lawrence Lessig’s (founder of Creative Commons) philosophical questions about ‘user generated content’ as a definitive characteristic of contemporary culture.
The film was shot over a period of four months from Nov 2007 to February 2008 by voluntary participants of the experimental narrative building exercise. The volunteers were approached to bring forward their feelings about London city, and to tell short stories about London stories by shooting small clips on a cheap low resolution camera.
As the project grew it churned out a huge amount of content which came to me in various forms such as footage, sound, comments, opinions, personal accounts, conversation, scribbles, notes, and even merely ideas or thoughts. Although it posed a rather robust editorial challenge; at the same time the diverse content itself suggested the methodology of weaving all these forms into a cohesive narrative, which in turn guided the development and refining of this experiment into an organizational and logistical approach for working in film as a participatory media.
The title of this film ‘Londiniensium’ (Latin for ‘of the Londoners’) comes from a 2nd century marble plaque that was discovered on October 11, 2002 by a group of rescue archeologists (Pre-Construct Archeology Limited) on a site in Tabard Square near Southwark, London. The use of the title simply implies that the film belongs to the Londoners, it was made by them and they own it.
Excerpts from Londiniensium
This experiment ‘s success has been in creating a working model for participatory film/video projects that can be used as effective tools for communities and focus groups to create collaborative expressions. This is a versatile model that can be adapted to any kind of local, national or international communities to address issued of politics, economics, history, culture, heritage, environment etc.
