The Tangle – Anna Best Archive

The Tangle is a video film and project made for a commission from Arts+Culture, The University of Exeter, called Archipelagos of Knowledge, in 2018.

With The Tangle, as with much of my work, I made decisions about form and content based on chance coincidence and found material. In the video process I use these as ingredients to collage together something less like a traditional film and more like a notebook, list or album. I find the material or knowledge, in my house, on the two designated sites and in the conversations that ensue. I wonder how we can change our thinking about knowledge. It is everywhere, not just in the university. I am interested here in the binary opposition we see in the relationships between the commissioners agenda and their position, the ever present hierarchies we exist in. The university and the new town/housing development, higher education and domestic life. The classification project of the 18th century and beyond is perhaps starting to crumble. The hierarchy is a problem, do we now need to understand everything as connected? The Rhizome shimmers into view. I want to subvert knowledge’s heirarchy, the commissioner’s suggest an archipelago, or collection of islands of knowledge.

Randomly I use the golden goose fairytale for its image of people becoming connected together by chance encounter, following the gold (wealth – spiritual, intellectual or financial?), I also use the tale as a way of me meeting some people, who I then enlist to work with me. I explore this surreal and tangential crossing of subjects – the tale, the two places, formatting of knowledge, the collection of colonial trees on the campus, the idea of an underground tunnel, the function of the video equipment – camera, green screen, editing – all as very physical props – the artifice of making film as much a part of the project as the film.

Date

2018

Aknowledgements

Commissioners: Arts & Culture, University of Exeter: Stephen Hodge and John Hartley

Gingko Projects: Alex Murdin

Additional filming /editing: Graham Shackleton

Players: millie daborn, katie nicol, amber carlton, Parents: charlene nicol, rebecca daborn, amy carlton, Goose handlers: Osbornes, Vicar: reverend lythan nevard, exeter university research: claire turner, exeter university academic: sharon marshall , headteacher at cranbrook education campus: stephen farmer, town councillor cranbrook: kim bloxham, estate manager cranbrook: peter prior, cranbrook show home: persimmon homes, video green screen equipment: exeter phoenix

Eve’s Creation, Bridport Arts Centre, “Strength in Fragility – An evening of film screenings and discussion on community, our connection to nature, vulnerability and feminine strength”