Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

This paper discusses film as a source and medium for design-historical research. It is animated by two interacting questions of inquiry: 1) in which ways might archival footage illuminate the various roles played by designed things and spaces in urban everyday life in the period in which it was shot; and, 2) to what extent might the film essay form serve as a medium for the production and presentation of knowledge about this subject? In other words, our research explores epistemological and methodological issues arising from the use of formal and aesthetic strategies of audio-visual post-production – for exampling, sampling, remixing, and re-editing (found) film footage – to interrogate, analyse and speculate about material cultures of the past. In this paper, we discuss these issues in relation to our work on and with a particular product – the automobile – at a significant period in the modernisation of the Thai capital, Bangkok (1940s-to 1970s). By montaging and contextualising fragments harvested from Thai feature films, documentaries, and home movies, we interrogate and speculate about the role of the automobile in the production of new forms of social and spatial relations in a rapidly urbanising Thai city. Through discussion of our pilot audio-visual essays on automobility in Bangkok, we argue that: 1) film materials can provide significant and sometimes unique insights into design histories; and, 2) the film essay form provides alternative ways of questioning and communicating ideas about past material cultures. Our research is carried out in collaboration with the Thai Film Archive.