Anna Gibbs | Western Sydney University (original) (raw)

Papers by Anna Gibbs

Matlit Revista do Programa de Doutoramento em Materialidades da Literatura, 2018

Working against the instantaneity of the hyperlink, new forms of feminist praxis work with moveme... more Working against the instantaneity of the hyperlink, new forms of feminist praxis work with movement and the unfolding of new networked and digital spaces which remake histories of women’s work. In this paper we introduce the concept of feminist exscryption to characterise the kind of performativity which refuses the evaporation of sexual difference and which draws on the lived materiality of bodies and their insertion back into the network.

DISPERSAL SITES This series of works spread over four rooms maps some of the tragic consequences... more DISPERSAL SITES

This series of works spread over four rooms maps some of the tragic consequences of the colonial dispersal of people, ideas, ways of life, plants, animals, goods and money from England across the map of Empire. In particular we focus here on a series of secondary dispersals to particular colonial ‘crime scenes’ – from England to Norfolk Island, then to the Norfolk Plains and finally to the Lunatic Asylum, New Norfolk (1827 – 1859), later the Hospital for the Insane (1859 – 1915).

The connections between the colonial occupiers of the Norfolk Plains and New Norfolk ran deep: both groups were sent to these places on the closure of the first penal settlement on Norfolk Island and these people would all have known each other. They were almost all originally convicts or jailers who were former members of the NSW (‘Rum’) Corps, and the culture of the penal system ran deep in them, their families and their descendants. Granted land on the country of Aboriginal First Nations, they were thereby turned into an occupying force, defending, enclosing and forever changing the nature of what they henceforth saw as their land. They were quickly joined by various ‘free settlers’ who also arrived in both areas, some already extremely wealthy, others finding ways to enrich themselves in colonial society, many taking up and enclosing further massive land holdings on Indigenous country.

‘Crime Scene’ is an investigation of murder and violence on the Norfolk Plains, each of the four short films taking a particular incident to examine from its own unique angle: the shooting and attempted murder of Indigenous woman Dalrymple Briggs by Jacob Mountgarrett in 1825, the murder of Joseph Edward Wilson by John McKay & John Lamb in 1837, the violent murder of Ellen Moriarty near the Railway Inn in Longford in 1867, and the alleged murder of Captain Thomas Hammant by George Cox in 1832. There are also family connections between some of these stories and some of the artists.

Drawing on case files and other research, the four short films composing ‘Past Due’ focuses on the fates of four women sent to the Asylum from the Norfolk Plains and the life stories that led them there. Even white women in colonial culture were often victims of sorts, not so much always of individual crimes but rather of norms and expectations of a social and cultural colonial world that – in different ways and to different degrees - marginalised and often criminalised those it made into its others: Indigenous people, women, children, and people deemed to be ‘insane’. The Asylum was in some ways an extension of the penal system, an instance of the colonial crime scene. Inmates were held apart from and sometimes out of sight of family and community until they were released, or died. Treatment of inmates varied according to the prevailing wisdom of the day and the whims of those in charge at any given time. Nevertheless, women in colonial times could be highly resistant and resilient to a violent patriarchal culture, and of necessity, invented their own often ingenious ways either to survive in it or to escape from it in whatever ways they could.

A further room presents works in a variety of different object-based media, all responding to aspects of colonial culture and colonial violence, while the Mortuary Room evokes the daily world of life and death in the Asylum in sound.
https://longfordproject.com

Herzogenrath, B. (Ed.). (2022). New perspectives on academic writing: The thing that wouldn’t die. Bloomsbury Academic., 2022

The in-between is a site where things happen. As Elizabeth Grosz writes: The space of the in-betw... more The in-between is a site where things happen. As Elizabeth Grosz writes: The space of the in-between is the locus for social, cultural, and natural transformations: it is not simply a convenient space for movements and realignments but in fact is the only place-the place around identities, between identities-where becoming, openness to futurity, outstrips the conservational impetus to retain cohesion and unity.

Public Spheres of Resonance Constellations of Affect and Language, 1st Edition, eds Anne Fleig & Christian von Scheve, 2018

‘…lately it’s been a really great time to study/the political art song format’, mused Laurie Ande... more ‘…lately it’s been a really great time to study/the political art song format’, mused Laurie Anderson in her ‘Empty Places’ performances of 1989-1990, anticipating by almost a decade the early work of affect theory centred on political figures (Ronald Reagan, Pauline Hanson, George W Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Angela Merkel). Political songs are no longer (if they ever were) complete compositions: they come to us in snatches and bursts, catchy hooks and binding rhythms. A refrain or ritornello attunes to an affective state, resonates with it and amplifies it, renders it contagious and re-performs it until it becomes habit. As writers and performers (and anthropologists like Catherine Clément) have long understood, not only political or literary but all language works in the mode of the spell: it aims to transform rather than to represent a state of affairs; to seduce rather than to persuade. It is about action, not truth. Moreover the animating powers of language are not absolute nor even determining, but relative to the media that transport it, including especially the increasing powers of the digital world, which exceed those of the human. Starting from within the milieu and at the advent of the assemblage, this paper examines the affective powers of language as it interfaces with human the nonhuman agencies of viral media, the algorithm and the image.

Writing Architectures: Ficto-Critical Approaches, eds H Frichot & N Stead, 2020

If in the use of the term 'fictocriticism' the usually dispensed-with hyphen attempts to join th... more If in the use of the term 'fictocriticism' the usually dispensed-with hyphen attempts to join the 'ficto' with the 'critical' it also inevitably severs them and holds them apart. Here the typographic device creates a complex conceptual space and a space of potentiality, that is to say, a space for both thought and action. In this tense and quivering gap arises the possibility of a writing otherwise: a writing in which the confident authority of argument gives way to hesitation and doubt, and the house of fiction begins to fall apart, perhaps into a chasm. Here the plot is uncertain; place is displaced; setting becomes unstable; site gives way to constantly shifting situation. We are in the middle of something, immersed in the materiality of writing as doing and making, a thinking taking shape in action, and then shifting that shape again at the very moment it forms. It is in this process that we could say that 'writing takes place'.

Published in Animism in Art and Performance edited by Christopher Braddock (Cham: Palgrave Macmil... more Published in Animism in Art and Performance edited by Christopher Braddock (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. pp 91-107). This chapter addresses the work of non-digital text-based art in the age of digital media through a discussion of an installation by Australian artist/writer Lynne Barwick. It highlights the movement of the reader and the animation of space, considering text as simultaneously writing and image. Key to the discussion is the animating power of the word and the ways in which entangled bodies depend on media as a data-driven life-form with its own kind of (non-human) consciousness. Referencing writers such as Craig Dworkin and Marjorie Perloff, Gibbs explores the language of text as an assemblage that we cannot stand apart from, operating beyond a necessity for strategic communication. Accordingly, the focus is not about the individual ego but about language itself as a conduit or collaborator.

This is a late draft version of a paper (published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humani... more This is a late draft version of a paper (published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 20:3 2015). It explores the idea that mimesis constitutes a way of knowing, focusing in particular on the example of the mimetic relations between human and non-human species orchestrated by Jean Painleve’Às film- making, itself a mimetic practice in which such relations are mediated by the camera’s lens.

Cultural Studies Review, 2011

This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view.... more This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view. It draws on the work of Japp Panksepp, who argues for the importance of distinguishing between fear as a response to physical threat, and panic as a response to the loss of the attachment object. While fear flees, panic, perhaps contrary to appearances, seeks security. This view of panic throws a new light on classic analyses of crowd behaviour, among them those of Le Bon, Tarde and Canetti, but it also has implications for how panic takes hold via electronic media, and for how outbreaks may be calmed. Finally, the essay argues that mediatised panic is a distraction from fear—in which anything at all may represent physical danger, but which at least offers a range of possible responses for addressing the problem, and offers the opportunity for the transformative work performed by cognition on affect. Here the paper draws on the script theory of Silvan Tomkins to provoke questions of the...

TEXT, 2011

This paper argues that writing programs need to consider forging more active alliance with the vi... more This paper argues that writing programs need to consider forging more active alliance with the visual arts, on the grounds that the digital revolution is beginning to bring about changes that will see writers and artists (and technicians of different kinds) working together in collaboration more frequently than at present, and that new practices in creative research mean that we may have more in common with the visual arts than with other, traditional, disciplines when it comes to arguing politically for the value of what we do. This case is made by examining in detail selected instances of the work being written on 'complex surfaces' (Cayley 2005), new kinds of work being made with code, and the reconvergence of text with the visual in new media work.

Cultural Studies Review, 2011

This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view.... more This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view. It draws on the work of Japp Panksepp, who argues for the importance of distinguishing between fear as a response to physical threat, and panic as a response to the loss of the attachment object. While fear flees, panic, perhaps contrary to appearances, seeks security. This view of panic throws a new light on classic analyses of crowd behaviour, among them those of Le Bon, Tarde and Canetti, but it also has implications for how panic takes hold via electronic media, and for how outbreaks may be calmed. Finally, the essay argues that mediatised panic is a distraction from fear—in which anything at all may represent physical danger, but which at least offers a range of possible responses for addressing the problem, and offers the opportunity for the transformative work performed by cognition on affect. Here the paper draws on the script theory of Silvan Tomkins to provoke questions of the...

Keywords Affect Theory Images Perception Media Silvan Tomkins

The Handbook of Media Audiences, 2015

... Taken together, the dis-crete affects form the primary human motivational system. ... Trans. ... more ... Taken together, the dis-crete affects form the primary human motivational system. ... Trans. E. Clews Parsons. Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA. Tarde, G. 2003 Les Transformations du Pouvoir. InstitutSynthélabo, Paris. Tomkins, SS 1962 Affect, Imagery, Consciousness: Vol. ...

RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Vi... more RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, trading as RMIT Publishing (the Publisher) grants you, the User, access to the text of the selected and purchased copyright works included in the INFORMIT PAY-...

Australian Humanities Review, 2015

Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect leaps from one body to another, evoking... more Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect leaps from one body to another, evoking tenderness, inciting shame, igniting rage, exciting fear – in short, communicable affect can inflame nerves and muscles in a conflagration of every conceivable kind of passion1. We are all ...

TEXT, 2013

is a poet, journalist, academic and fiction writer. She has had a long career in journalism resea... more is a poet, journalist, academic and fiction writer. She has had a long career in journalism researching and writing for mainstream magazines (Vogue, Mode, Cleo, HQ, Elle, New woman), metropolitan daily newspapers (Sydney morning herald, The daily telegraph, Australian financial review) and national radio (ABC Radio National, AWA Radio Network). Jill's poetry has appeared in Meanjin, Overland, Aspect, Your friendly fascist and Womanspeak. Her PhD (UWS) thesis examined fictocriticism through a work entitled 'The glossary' and its novel 'Through glass'.

... Tags. Bodies of Words: Feminism and Fictocriticism - explanation and demonstration. by: AnnaG... more ... Tags. Bodies of Words: Feminism and Fictocriticism - explanation and demonstration. by: AnnaGibbs. RIS, Export as RIS which can be imported into most citation managers. BibTeX, Export as BibTeX which can be imported into most citation/bibliography managers. ...

Cultural Studies Review

RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Vi... more RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, trading as RMIT Publishing (the Publisher) grants you, the User, access to the text of the selected and purchased copyright works included in the INFORMIT PAY-...

Información del artículo Geospatial aesthetics: time, agency and space in electronic writing.

Matlit Revista do Programa de Doutoramento em Materialidades da Literatura, 2018

Working against the instantaneity of the hyperlink, new forms of feminist praxis work with moveme... more Working against the instantaneity of the hyperlink, new forms of feminist praxis work with movement and the unfolding of new networked and digital spaces which remake histories of women’s work. In this paper we introduce the concept of feminist exscryption to characterise the kind of performativity which refuses the evaporation of sexual difference and which draws on the lived materiality of bodies and their insertion back into the network.

DISPERSAL SITES This series of works spread over four rooms maps some of the tragic consequences... more DISPERSAL SITES

This series of works spread over four rooms maps some of the tragic consequences of the colonial dispersal of people, ideas, ways of life, plants, animals, goods and money from England across the map of Empire. In particular we focus here on a series of secondary dispersals to particular colonial ‘crime scenes’ – from England to Norfolk Island, then to the Norfolk Plains and finally to the Lunatic Asylum, New Norfolk (1827 – 1859), later the Hospital for the Insane (1859 – 1915).

The connections between the colonial occupiers of the Norfolk Plains and New Norfolk ran deep: both groups were sent to these places on the closure of the first penal settlement on Norfolk Island and these people would all have known each other. They were almost all originally convicts or jailers who were former members of the NSW (‘Rum’) Corps, and the culture of the penal system ran deep in them, their families and their descendants. Granted land on the country of Aboriginal First Nations, they were thereby turned into an occupying force, defending, enclosing and forever changing the nature of what they henceforth saw as their land. They were quickly joined by various ‘free settlers’ who also arrived in both areas, some already extremely wealthy, others finding ways to enrich themselves in colonial society, many taking up and enclosing further massive land holdings on Indigenous country.

‘Crime Scene’ is an investigation of murder and violence on the Norfolk Plains, each of the four short films taking a particular incident to examine from its own unique angle: the shooting and attempted murder of Indigenous woman Dalrymple Briggs by Jacob Mountgarrett in 1825, the murder of Joseph Edward Wilson by John McKay & John Lamb in 1837, the violent murder of Ellen Moriarty near the Railway Inn in Longford in 1867, and the alleged murder of Captain Thomas Hammant by George Cox in 1832. There are also family connections between some of these stories and some of the artists.

Drawing on case files and other research, the four short films composing ‘Past Due’ focuses on the fates of four women sent to the Asylum from the Norfolk Plains and the life stories that led them there. Even white women in colonial culture were often victims of sorts, not so much always of individual crimes but rather of norms and expectations of a social and cultural colonial world that – in different ways and to different degrees - marginalised and often criminalised those it made into its others: Indigenous people, women, children, and people deemed to be ‘insane’. The Asylum was in some ways an extension of the penal system, an instance of the colonial crime scene. Inmates were held apart from and sometimes out of sight of family and community until they were released, or died. Treatment of inmates varied according to the prevailing wisdom of the day and the whims of those in charge at any given time. Nevertheless, women in colonial times could be highly resistant and resilient to a violent patriarchal culture, and of necessity, invented their own often ingenious ways either to survive in it or to escape from it in whatever ways they could.

A further room presents works in a variety of different object-based media, all responding to aspects of colonial culture and colonial violence, while the Mortuary Room evokes the daily world of life and death in the Asylum in sound.
https://longfordproject.com

Herzogenrath, B. (Ed.). (2022). New perspectives on academic writing: The thing that wouldn’t die. Bloomsbury Academic., 2022

The in-between is a site where things happen. As Elizabeth Grosz writes: The space of the in-betw... more The in-between is a site where things happen. As Elizabeth Grosz writes: The space of the in-between is the locus for social, cultural, and natural transformations: it is not simply a convenient space for movements and realignments but in fact is the only place-the place around identities, between identities-where becoming, openness to futurity, outstrips the conservational impetus to retain cohesion and unity.

Public Spheres of Resonance Constellations of Affect and Language, 1st Edition, eds Anne Fleig & Christian von Scheve, 2018

‘…lately it’s been a really great time to study/the political art song format’, mused Laurie Ande... more ‘…lately it’s been a really great time to study/the political art song format’, mused Laurie Anderson in her ‘Empty Places’ performances of 1989-1990, anticipating by almost a decade the early work of affect theory centred on political figures (Ronald Reagan, Pauline Hanson, George W Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Angela Merkel). Political songs are no longer (if they ever were) complete compositions: they come to us in snatches and bursts, catchy hooks and binding rhythms. A refrain or ritornello attunes to an affective state, resonates with it and amplifies it, renders it contagious and re-performs it until it becomes habit. As writers and performers (and anthropologists like Catherine Clément) have long understood, not only political or literary but all language works in the mode of the spell: it aims to transform rather than to represent a state of affairs; to seduce rather than to persuade. It is about action, not truth. Moreover the animating powers of language are not absolute nor even determining, but relative to the media that transport it, including especially the increasing powers of the digital world, which exceed those of the human. Starting from within the milieu and at the advent of the assemblage, this paper examines the affective powers of language as it interfaces with human the nonhuman agencies of viral media, the algorithm and the image.

Writing Architectures: Ficto-Critical Approaches, eds H Frichot & N Stead, 2020

If in the use of the term 'fictocriticism' the usually dispensed-with hyphen attempts to join th... more If in the use of the term 'fictocriticism' the usually dispensed-with hyphen attempts to join the 'ficto' with the 'critical' it also inevitably severs them and holds them apart. Here the typographic device creates a complex conceptual space and a space of potentiality, that is to say, a space for both thought and action. In this tense and quivering gap arises the possibility of a writing otherwise: a writing in which the confident authority of argument gives way to hesitation and doubt, and the house of fiction begins to fall apart, perhaps into a chasm. Here the plot is uncertain; place is displaced; setting becomes unstable; site gives way to constantly shifting situation. We are in the middle of something, immersed in the materiality of writing as doing and making, a thinking taking shape in action, and then shifting that shape again at the very moment it forms. It is in this process that we could say that 'writing takes place'.

Published in Animism in Art and Performance edited by Christopher Braddock (Cham: Palgrave Macmil... more Published in Animism in Art and Performance edited by Christopher Braddock (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. pp 91-107). This chapter addresses the work of non-digital text-based art in the age of digital media through a discussion of an installation by Australian artist/writer Lynne Barwick. It highlights the movement of the reader and the animation of space, considering text as simultaneously writing and image. Key to the discussion is the animating power of the word and the ways in which entangled bodies depend on media as a data-driven life-form with its own kind of (non-human) consciousness. Referencing writers such as Craig Dworkin and Marjorie Perloff, Gibbs explores the language of text as an assemblage that we cannot stand apart from, operating beyond a necessity for strategic communication. Accordingly, the focus is not about the individual ego but about language itself as a conduit or collaborator.

This is a late draft version of a paper (published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humani... more This is a late draft version of a paper (published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 20:3 2015). It explores the idea that mimesis constitutes a way of knowing, focusing in particular on the example of the mimetic relations between human and non-human species orchestrated by Jean Painleve’Às film- making, itself a mimetic practice in which such relations are mediated by the camera’s lens.

Cultural Studies Review, 2011

This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view.... more This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view. It draws on the work of Japp Panksepp, who argues for the importance of distinguishing between fear as a response to physical threat, and panic as a response to the loss of the attachment object. While fear flees, panic, perhaps contrary to appearances, seeks security. This view of panic throws a new light on classic analyses of crowd behaviour, among them those of Le Bon, Tarde and Canetti, but it also has implications for how panic takes hold via electronic media, and for how outbreaks may be calmed. Finally, the essay argues that mediatised panic is a distraction from fear—in which anything at all may represent physical danger, but which at least offers a range of possible responses for addressing the problem, and offers the opportunity for the transformative work performed by cognition on affect. Here the paper draws on the script theory of Silvan Tomkins to provoke questions of the...

TEXT, 2011

This paper argues that writing programs need to consider forging more active alliance with the vi... more This paper argues that writing programs need to consider forging more active alliance with the visual arts, on the grounds that the digital revolution is beginning to bring about changes that will see writers and artists (and technicians of different kinds) working together in collaboration more frequently than at present, and that new practices in creative research mean that we may have more in common with the visual arts than with other, traditional, disciplines when it comes to arguing politically for the value of what we do. This case is made by examining in detail selected instances of the work being written on 'complex surfaces' (Cayley 2005), new kinds of work being made with code, and the reconvergence of text with the visual in new media work.

Cultural Studies Review, 2011

This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view.... more This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view. It draws on the work of Japp Panksepp, who argues for the importance of distinguishing between fear as a response to physical threat, and panic as a response to the loss of the attachment object. While fear flees, panic, perhaps contrary to appearances, seeks security. This view of panic throws a new light on classic analyses of crowd behaviour, among them those of Le Bon, Tarde and Canetti, but it also has implications for how panic takes hold via electronic media, and for how outbreaks may be calmed. Finally, the essay argues that mediatised panic is a distraction from fear—in which anything at all may represent physical danger, but which at least offers a range of possible responses for addressing the problem, and offers the opportunity for the transformative work performed by cognition on affect. Here the paper draws on the script theory of Silvan Tomkins to provoke questions of the...

Keywords Affect Theory Images Perception Media Silvan Tomkins

The Handbook of Media Audiences, 2015

... Taken together, the dis-crete affects form the primary human motivational system. ... Trans. ... more ... Taken together, the dis-crete affects form the primary human motivational system. ... Trans. E. Clews Parsons. Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA. Tarde, G. 2003 Les Transformations du Pouvoir. InstitutSynthélabo, Paris. Tomkins, SS 1962 Affect, Imagery, Consciousness: Vol. ...

RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Vi... more RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, trading as RMIT Publishing (the Publisher) grants you, the User, access to the text of the selected and purchased copyright works included in the INFORMIT PAY-...

Australian Humanities Review, 2015

Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect leaps from one body to another, evoking... more Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect leaps from one body to another, evoking tenderness, inciting shame, igniting rage, exciting fear – in short, communicable affect can inflame nerves and muscles in a conflagration of every conceivable kind of passion1. We are all ...

TEXT, 2013

is a poet, journalist, academic and fiction writer. She has had a long career in journalism resea... more is a poet, journalist, academic and fiction writer. She has had a long career in journalism researching and writing for mainstream magazines (Vogue, Mode, Cleo, HQ, Elle, New woman), metropolitan daily newspapers (Sydney morning herald, The daily telegraph, Australian financial review) and national radio (ABC Radio National, AWA Radio Network). Jill's poetry has appeared in Meanjin, Overland, Aspect, Your friendly fascist and Womanspeak. Her PhD (UWS) thesis examined fictocriticism through a work entitled 'The glossary' and its novel 'Through glass'.

... Tags. Bodies of Words: Feminism and Fictocriticism - explanation and demonstration. by: AnnaG... more ... Tags. Bodies of Words: Feminism and Fictocriticism - explanation and demonstration. by: AnnaGibbs. RIS, Export as RIS which can be imported into most citation managers. BibTeX, Export as BibTeX which can be imported into most citation/bibliography managers. ...

Cultural Studies Review

RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Vi... more RMIT Training Pty Ltd (ACN 006 067 349) of Kay House, Level 3, 449 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria, trading as RMIT Publishing (the Publisher) grants you, the User, access to the text of the selected and purchased copyright works included in the INFORMIT PAY-...

Información del artículo Geospatial aesthetics: time, agency and space in electronic writing.