PhD Student Emma Bolland’s ‘Instructions from Light’ published

Part of alumni Culture and Creativity Research Institute (CCRI)/Art, Design and Media (ADMRC) PhD student Emma Bolland’s doctoral work is now available in published form.

The book, Instructions from Light formed the practice submission of Emma Bolland’s SHU PhD, titled Scripting Silence: The Expanded Screenplay as Present-traumatic Language (completed 2022). The PhD was in the area of fine art, art writing and artists translation, and was supervised by Dr Sharon Kivland and Dr Peter E Jones. Emma was invited to develop this publication, and her book sits alongside written artworks by other innovative and respected artists.

The study investigated the politics of communication in relation to silence and silencing, especially in regard to psychiatric patients and other marginalised voices, and produced the new term and concept ‘present-traumatic language’. At the core of this practice investigation practice was Emma’s process of translation of a French silent film screenplay, and experiments in moving image, performances, collage, scores, symposium as practice eventually coalesced as an image-text hybrid prose poem/screenplay/novella.

Commentators say:

‘As the book takes shape, shapes break down, positions shift, the ‘I’ splits and we, as readers, are swept along. Where to? With who? I, she, they – in a room, in a story, in a script, in a film, in an archive, in a photograph, cut/to you (or was it her?) in an object, as one. Complex, crafted, acerbic, un-nerving, Instructions from Light is writing at its most lucid.’ – Kristen Kreider

‘A startlingly bold act of adaptation that renders a lost screenplay as an illuminated manuscript, where text itself is transfigured into moving images. A compelling drama of language and silence.’ – Jake Arnott