Radio Off

RESEARCH STATEMENT

Radio Off (Stenbom, 2023) considers everyday driving through the lens of the road movie. The creative practice-led research had two aims: firstly, to capture everyday driving audio-visually utilising the cinematic tropes of the road movie, and secondly, to deconstruct and re-imagine as an alternative road movie in the format of a moving image installation.

Research Background

The road connects remote wilderness, rural locations with suburbs and cities, catering for work, domestic and recreational pursuits. The automobile, as a mode of personal transport, promises both freedom and convenience, under the conditions and confines of traffic law.

The road movie, categorised by a storyline that primarily takes place on the road, is less concerned with convenience of driving or the responsibility of drivers but more so with the potential freedom it offers. According to David Laderman, in the road movie, the journey itself becomes cultural critique; by seeking unfamiliarity and thrill of the unknown (2002, 1-2). The genre offers its audience a glimpse of ecstatic freedom (Sargeant and Watson 1999, 13), setting liberation of the road against oppression of hegemonic norms (Cohan and Hark 1997, 1). All this rings true for motorcyclists Wyatt and Billy in Easy Rider (Hopper 1969) but less so in Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1979) where a homeward bound travelling salesperson is forced to confront a terrorising truck driver. 

While it has been suggested that the road movie is mostly synonymous with North America Cinema (Archer 2017, 11; Laderman 2002, 2), numerous road movies unfold against diverse global backdrops, ranging from the existential landscapes of Sweden in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) to the Australian outback in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Elliott 1994), and even the roads of Britain in Chris Petit's cult classic Radio On (1979).

The genre has sparked discussions surrounding gender imbalance, suggesting it privileges the white heterosexual male in terms of narrative and visual point of view (Laderman 2002, 20) with women just along for the ride (Williams 1982, 8). This is of course less true with the female protagonists running away from the law in Thelma & Louise (Scott 1991) or Sheryl, mum of a dysfunctional family travelling across North America in Little Miss Sunshine (Faris and Dayton 2006).

The gasoline fuelled road movie is an antiquated and ethically unsound idea at a time of climate crisis, where the individual’s right to set off on the road in search for freedom clashes with the need for collective responsibility. While automobility empowers individuals to negotiate the challenges and opportunities with work, home, and leisure (Sheller and Urry 2000, 737), it is also the car's efficacy in facilitating mobility and connectivity, particularly in urban areas with limited public transportation options, that leads to automobile dependency (Newman and Kenworthy 2015, 38-40).

While various interpretations and subgenres exist within the realm of road movies, the genre rarely serves as a straightforward representation of day-to-day driving in the urban context. This project sought to juxtapose the road movie with everyday driving, using personal experience as a starting point, in this case an admittedly automobile dependent car owning professional with sole caring responsibilities. The routine car trips explored, such as school runs, commute, and supermarket trips, are rather dull and un-cinematic, far away from the cinematic journeys associated with the road movie.

Contribution/methodology

Radio Off (Stenbom, 2023) is the result of practice-led research generating insights through parallel processes including contextualising research, documentation, reflecting, deconstructing, and reimagining.

Before documentation could commence, contextualising research was imperative to identify themes and recurring motifs of the road movie. Movement and cinema are intimately connected, the road movie is bound together by the idea of mobility, it is not just what makes the road movie distinctive, but what gives a cinematic quality (Archer 2016, 6). A recurring feature of the road movie is the travelling shot conveying a visceral sense of travelling whereby the vehicle is used as a camera mount, simultaneously capturing what is going on inside the vehicle and the road outside (Laderman 2002, 15). In stark contrast to the cinematic, but still a travelling shot, stands the dash cam footage, an insurance of sorts in the event of an accident with another driver at fault.

The strategy for documenting everyday driving was to deliberately mix the visual opposites of the cinematic road movie with the digital crispness of dash cam footage. This was achieved by employing several strategies, including Go-Pro mounts, handheld and DSLR camera rigs to capture and frame the drive. To capture the drive sonically, the car stereo was turned off, capturing only the sound of the engine and vehicle moving forward. Audio was recorded by a variety of microphones placed in various parts of the vehicle to collect sonic textures of the driving. Filming and recording were limited to carefully planned, personal essential journeys to reduce unnecessary carbon emissions. Journeys were recorded in Tyneside, North East of England, during October and November 2022.

The act of documentation – integrated into everyday driving - evolved into a means of embodying and enacting the research. This process enabled a reflection over the material gathered. Visually it was the monotony of local driving, such as the stops and starts, the imperfections, bumps and holes on the road, non-verbal communication and, sometimes unfriendly, exchanges between drivers. The sonic recordings from various places in the vehicle conveyed an internal experience of driving, the mechanics of the car and engine generated complex rhythmic patterns. This reflective process ran in tandem with the documentation process, creating an iterative cycle where the act of capturing the drive was shaped by the contemplation and analysis of the recorded material.

As more audio-visual material was gathered, a third process - that of deconstruction – began to isolate motifs from the footage. There were three loose categories of footage: the driver caught in rear-view and side mirrors, the interior shots of driving and the urban landscape surrounding the drive. Simultaneously, three distinct geographical locations crystallised. Firstly, an underground supermarket car park in central Gateshead. Secondly, the Tyne Tunnel connecting North and South Tyneside, and the final setting, the A167(M), commonly known as the Newcastle Central Motorway.

The final stage of the process was to assemble and reimagine the material as an alternative road movie in the form of a moving image installation. All together there were three moving image pieces and one sound score, installed alongside detritus from the car. The looped projection Supermarket Loop consists of a single take of a driver, framed by the rear-view mirror, endlessly circling a nightmarish retail underground car park. The looped piece Tunnel Stretch was edited together as a perpetual ride through the Tyne tunnel. The work was installed across two monitors on a shelf unit, the film output was monochrome and in 4:3 aspect ratio to generate a look of vintage footage, alluding to early road movies. The multi-screen work Round Trip captured a daily commute, playing out across three synchronised wall-mounted screens. In addition to travelling shots, the work also included handheld footage, and external footage of the roads. Alongside the screen works, a sound piece, Mixed Tape - Driving in Hell, played in the space. The work was a collection of audio tracks developed from the recordings from inside the car. The tracks were also transferred onto a c-cassette tape, which was placed in the space.

Significance

The resulting immersive installation offered the visitor an alternative road movie, combining motifs from the cinematic genre with mundane aspects of everyday driving. Radio Off does not celebrate automobile culture, here the car is occupied by a single driver encapsulated and immobilised, rather than liberated, by the vehicle. Instead of transformation offered through cinematic kinesis, this road movie installation forefronts the unavoidable dullness and restrictions of everyday driving.

Radio Off was installed and exhibited at Gallery North, Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) 17 February – 11 March 2023. The sound score, Mixed Tape - Driving in Hell, was developed in collaboration with Jamie Sexton. Additional footage for Round Trip was made by Evripidis Karydis and Michael Booth and additional audio was captured by Sami Stenbom-Moss. The exhibition at Gallery North was curated by Matthew Hearn. Supermarket Loop was shown at Switch in Nenagh, Ireland in October 2023. The project has led to the early development of a longer form narrative film project, which builds on the narrative structure of a road movie but centred around local everyday driving.

PEER REVIEW 1

Which aspects of the submission are of interest/relevance and why?

The work offers viewers a chance for new insights into the experience of modern urban living in North-East England, through the perspective of suburban driving and daily commutes. As such, I find it to be an interesting and relevant social critique in a time where reimagining city life is an urgent necessity.

Does the submission live up to its potential?

My main critique of the submission is that I am unsure of its expressed goal to re-imagine the format of the road movie. It is here, where I feel the submission falls short. For one, the road movie is such a broad genre that the shortness of a typical research statement for creative practice cannot do it justice. It leads to generalisations and over-simplification – like such generalised claims that the road movie is primarily about freedom, when this is evidently not the case in Little Miss Sunshine (Faris and Dayton 2006), an example used in the text itself. There would have been a chance for more geographical precision by clearly embedding the work into the English context – suburban roads have a very different layout, function and cultural meaning in the European context compared to Asia, the Pacific, South America, Africa, or even Australia and North America. Secondly, and possibly more importantly, the creative work submitted is not a movie but an installation. A movie, whether on the road or not, gets its tension from protagonists and narrative, while an installation lacks both and works much more on an experiential and intellectual level. As such, I find the underlying theoretical premise that the work offers an “alternative road movie” misleading and unnecessary. The dullness and claustrophobia of suburban driving in an English context (which I do think the creative work expresses quite successfully) holds value in and off itself – especially in a time of climate change, rental crisis, and cost of living explosion that makes it imperative to imagine alternative ways of existing in an urban context.

The author acknowledges that “various interpretations and subgenres exist within the realm of road movies” but “the genre rarely serves as a straightforward representation of day-to-day driving in the urban context” [sic] – highlighting both criticisms above: a short creative practice research statement cannot do justice to the various “subgenres” of road movies, and road movies are, by definition, on the road – which are ultimately too short in an urban context to sustain the narrative tension needed for a movie. An installation might indeed be the better format to visualise suburban/urban driving. It is here, where a re-contextualisation of the work into the realm of moving image installation might have been more fruitful. There are various moving image installations that might have provided better contextualization of the work as an art installation dealing with urban driving: John Gillies (2008), Kari Sturluson (2016), Daniel Crooks (2006 and 2015), or described by Melanie Wilmink (2023).

How does the submission expose practice as research?

The work has the potential to expose practice as research. But I struggle to see the innovation when reading the current research statement. I do not think that a contextualisation within the road movie genre creates anything new. Gillies (2008) did this 16 years ago. But more importantly, as I explained above, it appears to be a fruitless intellectual endeavour. I would suggest a stronger and clearer framing of the innovative aspects of the work towards providing new insights, interpretations and experiences on urban driving itself, our lives on the (suburban) road, or even what Ivan Illich (1981) called “Shadow Work.” In other words, I suggest a rephrasing into social critique rather than genre reinterpretation.

PEER REVIEW 2

Which aspects of the submission are of interest/relevance and why?

Radio Off (Stenbom 2023) is particularly intriguing in its exploration of the intersection between everyday driving and the cinematic genre of road movies. By framing mundane activities such as commuting and running errands within the context of the road movie genre, the research delves into the cultural, social, and environmental implications of automobility. The installation (documented through a video) evokes a sense of familiarity – driving the everyday streets while simultaneously challenging conventional perceptions of driving. Through directed attention to detail, the viewer is immersed in the sights and sounds of the road, from the rhythmic patterns of the engine to the interactions between driver and her surroundings. The submission is strongest in its discussion of methodology, which provides a replicable methodology for other creative practitioners to follow. Overall, the submission's interdisciplinary approach to exploring automobility through creative practice and scholarly inquiry makes it both intellectually stimulating and socially pertinent.

Does the submission live up to its potential?

The work largely lives up to its potential by effectively realising its aims of capturing and reimagining everyday driving through a creative lens. The methodology employed, which integrates practice-led research with documentation, reflection, and reimagining, is robust and innovative. The resulting moving image installation offers viewers a thought-provoking alternative to traditional representations of the road movie genre, challenging perceptions of automobile culture and mobility. However, there may be opportunities to further expand the project's impact by deepening its analysis of broader cultural and social issues related to automobility such as climate crisis and gender representation, as this is more apparent in the research statement than in the creative work.

How does the submission expose practice as research?

The work demonstrates practice as research by integrating creative practice with scholarly inquiry. Through a combination of documentation, reflection, and reimagining, the project transforms everyday driving into a site of artistic exploration and cultural critique. The iterative process of capturing, analysing, and reimagining driving experiences contributes to a nuanced understanding of automobility as both a physical and sensory practice. By foregrounding the materiality of driving (the use of camera equipment and technology and editing practices) and the sensory experience of the road (being exhibited in a multi-sensory environment), the submission exposes the research potential of creative practice. 

RESPONSE TO PEER REVIEWS

I would like to start by thanking the peer reviewers for their considered responses to my work. I will address the points raised in my response below.

Firstly, it is important to clarify that one of the project's aims was to deconstruct and reimagine the road movie in the format of a moving image installation, not to reimagine the format of the road movie. Labelling Radio Off as an alternative road movie can be misleading, as it is not a narrative film. Instead, road movie serves as a metaphorical description of the installation, much like how Stan Douglas's dual-screen installation Doppelgänger (2019) aligns with science fiction or Julian Rosefeldt’s five-channel film installation American Night (2009) mines tropes of the western genre.

I agree that the word count of a research statement is insufficient to fully explore the intricacies and nuances of the road movie genre. Admittedly the original statement did not include a wider recent discussion on the thematic diversity within road movies that would have relevance to Radio Off, such as revisiting women’s role in the road movie and the “dangers” of women taking to the wheel (Monteyne 2018), the British road movie—including Petit’s Radio On (1979)—and the cultural landscape (Ward 2012), the fictional road movie as automobile research (Archer 2017), or the road movie in the context of experimental filmmaking and embodied practices of driving (Boczkowska 2021 and 2023). However, the aim of the statement, and the project itself, was to explore notions surrounding popular road movies—specifically the perceived generalisations and oversimplifications—and how these ideas permeate everyday life. Thus, the original statement effectively contextualises these widely held beliefs, such as counter-cultural rebellion as a narrative motif, the patriarchal bias, and the North American emphasis, to position the work and approach effectively.

The English context is significant, as indicated by the reference to the British road movie Radio On (Petit 1979) in the title. However, the primary aim of the work was to recreate the aesthetics of popular North American road movies within the suburban setting of North East of England, and thus adding an ironic twist. However, through the very act of filming it, Radio Off as a document of a moment in time, inadvertently uncovers insights into suburban driving in the Tyneside area such as the delipidated state of infrastructure and built environment due to years of underinvestment and public spending cuts.

I agree that the statement lacks a contextualisation of Radio Off as a moving image installation that deals with urban driving. Radio Off shares similarities with John Gillies’ Road Movie (Part 1) (2008) in its use of the road movie motif set in the context of local traffic. However, Gillies’ work focuses on Sydney, a metropolitan area with a population ten times larger than Tyneside in the North East of England. While Radio Off is filmed in connection with planned personal driving activities such as commuting, shopping, and school runs, featuring the female filmmaker herself, Road Movie (Part 1) (Gillies 2008) is scripted around a male protagonist played by actor Matt Prest. Other notable moving image installation works that feature the road movie motif’s includes Clio Barnard’s Road Race (2003) shot on dual cameras documenting an illegal horse road race, offering a dual perspective of the race, the main film travelling with the convoy, shot on 16 mm film, and a screen-in-screen shot from inside one of the travelling cars shot on mini DV; Olaf Breuning’s ambiguous road movie narrative in the installation King (2000); Stan Douglas’ cinematic installation Le Détroit (1999-2000) redeploying horror and road movie aesthetics; and Rachel Khedoori’s 102nd Street (1997) a two-hour 16 mm film loop consisting of travelling footage through rows of houses in Los Angeles.

The travelling shots in Radio Off are mounted, so although they feature movement, the shorts are at the same time static. While the road movie as a genre is thematically anchored in movement, the individual shots are often aesthetically static and centripetal (Hurault-Paupe 2014, 11). This project sought to aesthetically draw from the road movie, however as no work exists in a vacuum, the influences can be traced from wider cinematic references. For example, a static camera with long takes generates an observational quality akin to contemporary European art house cinema in films such as Involuntary (Östlund 2008), and Stations of the Cross (Brüggemann 2014). As filmic vignettes, the individual pieces in the installation lacks dialogue and focuses on the mundane, which again can be found in diverse art house cinema films from Roy Andersson’s contemplation on the human condition in Songs from the Second Floor (2000) to Chantal Akerman’s three-hour suffocating drudgery of domestic life in Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Wider cinematic reference can be traced to the directness of Italian neorealism in the way Radio Off captures the urban landscape, drivers and pedestrians unfiltered and French new wave in its ironic play with urban life.

Finally, I disagree that the statement should be reframed into social critique rather than genre interpretation. While the work contains implicit social critiques, such as those related to gender, the environment, and urban design, the intention of the project is not to prescribe social solutions or to offer insights into regional driving. Cinema constitutes part of our cultural memory and Radio Off builds on this as part of its genre interpretation. The significance of the work sits in its personal contemplation of everyday driving seen through the cinematic road movie genre. My approach, to re-deploy audio-visual tropes from popular genre film formats and re-enacting these in the local context, is part of an ongoing body of creative practice research with outputs ranging from narrative film to moving image installations, often presented in both film and art contexts, and exhibited and screened in UK and internationally. For example, The Case (2013) re-imagined Scandinavian Noir crime drama in the northern English town of Berwick Upon Tweed, SYSTEM (2014) explored social anxieties in retail spaces through tropes of the phycological thriller and Parallel (2016) transposed scenes set in the landscapes of both ends of North Sea. Radio Off builds on this approach and offers a cultural critique by subverting popular notions of the road movie genre by counterposing it with the banality of local commuting.

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