Introduction/History: Biog: Jennie Savage: has a research based practice which draws on documentary techniques. She has a particular interest in exploring the place between public spaces, town planning, constructed landscapes and the human story: the lived lives and personal narratives connected to those sites. Working through a process that uses archiving and intervention she seeks to map the other life of a place or community in order to reveal a complex situation, a micro- structure or simply an unheard voice. Statement: I work in the place between public spaces, town planning, constructed landscapes and the human story, lived lives, personal narratives connected to those sites. In the dialogue between meta narratives and the phenomena of the everyday. Working through a process that uses archiving and intervention I seek to map the other life of a place or community in order to reveal a complex situation, a micro- structure or simply an unheard voice. Using methods associated with documentary practice, historical research, psycho geography and imagined other lives the work adopts a multifaceted approach to the discovery and representation of a place. In fact, I would describe myself as a documentary artist in that my research methods interrogate a subject, situation or place however the work manifests as intervention, installation, archives, events, or temporary structure in order to return those narratives back to the public domain. For example STAR Radio concluded with a 1 week radio transmission & exhibition of the audio archive at the National Museum of Wales, Anecdotal City put stories back on the street via a bus tour & The Museum Of The Moment made local knowledge visible (or more accurately audible) via a simultaneous wireless transmission travelling up Harrow Road in London. Representation and notions of ‘the truth’ are fundamental concerns at the core of my practice. Through research and social intervention I seek to question the mechanisms and institutions that are in place for the recording and representation of our stories i.e. the media, museums, history, the internet, academic practice, political structures or channels of information. I do not seek to make alternative mechanisms- more to negotiate and develop strategies that explore the possibility of extending or expanding the parameters of how content is collected and how that is manifest in the public domain. Ways in which I can make visible invisible, local, knowledge. It is the subtleties of our everyday lives that are intriguing, the quiet beauty of our everyday experience that gets lost in the chatter of our lives or erased by the passage of time. The feeling of being here & now, that disappears. Although museums and history may record markers in time it is the fragment, the moment that disappears and it is in those moments that our lives are lived. I am further exploring this thread by creating events and situations that invite people to re- explore their everyday world. For example “The Documentary Series is a 1 day event which invites people to take a walk and complete a set of tasks that seek to un - mask the un - seen, got used to, everyday- ness, of their place. Alternately the Guide to Getting Lost invites them to take a narrated audio guide to another city. Follow the directions in order to get lost in both the sounds of another place and the geography of their home town. Manifestations of the work are created in response to the material and could emerge as public events, installations, interventions, audio guides, guided walks, public information boards, web based archive, broadcasts or museum / gallery installation.
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