Landscape, loss and imagination: the potential for an experimental documentary to explore and invigorate cultural connections with the land

In what ways can an experimental audio-visual document mediate ethnographic research on Cornwall's traditional working practices, and aspire to widely distribute new perspectives on regionalised material cultures? My aim is to identify three land-based livelihoods in Cornwall and, through the medium of experimental documentary film, critically examine how working practices can impact the cultural landscape. My objective is to make a feature-length experimental documentary that bridges gaps between research, education and entertainment. The film - a digital audio-visual document - would encourage a socially broad critical discourse through a filmic re-envisioning of cultural identity in relation to the Cornish landscape. I am interested in auto-ethnography as a qualitative research strategy, seeking to investigate and reflect upon personal experience in order to understand and connect to a wider social and cultural identity. As a creative filmmaker who produces experimental documentaries, my own experience within a project is central to how I make sense of what is being uncovered. Working with film as both research method and output allows for a critical creative process to develop as my audio-visual processes evolve into the public sphere. The exploration of cultural landscape, loss and reconnection, is pertinent to my own identity - as someone with Cornish heritage whose grandfather was a farmer. My methodology would expand on themes from the Tracing Granite project (2017), a collaborative interdisciplinary field trip that I was commissioned to participate on as both researcher and filmmaker. Although much of my doctoral practice-based research would be carried out independently, I have also been invited to participate on a forthcoming project titled Crafted Geologies - an interdisciplinary research project that "will examine the ways in which geological matter influences, sustains or disrupts the mobilities of skill and the livelihoods of individuals." (Paton 2018).