Wednesday seminar: Site-Integrity: The Ethics and Agency of Collaborative, Site-Responsive Filmmaking

This seminar is part of the Wednesday seminar series this autumn, where we explore ways of sharing. Here you can learn more about the series and discover upcoming seminars!

Site as both material and relational – a dynamic network where architectural, social, political and institutional forces interplay and are materially enacted through filmmaking. Unlike conventional image production that frames and distances experience, S-i foregrounds filming as performing the site: placing camera, device, collaborators and audience within the site’s live spatial, temporal and social conditions. Through this approach, films are generated in dialogue with the specific materiality, histories, practices and rules of place, enabling ethical co-creation and socio-spatial agency. The seminar will begin with a site-specific installation created in response to the host location. Drawing on Site-integrity’s practice, the installation will activate the site as both subject and collaborator.

Julie Marsh is an artist-filmmaker and researcher at the Centre for Research and education in Arts and Media (CREAM) at the University of Westminster. She developed  the site-integrity methodology in 2017 as part of her practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London. Her research redefines the boundaries of documentary filmmaking, exploring the relationships between art, society and spatial agency through collaborative, arts-based research conducted across local and international contexts. Central to her practice is the notion of "place as apparatus", framing filmmaking as a site-responsive and collective act that foregrounds embodied experience, participation and co-creation. 

Jonny Fuller-Rowell is an artist, designer and educator working across computation, fabrication and moving image technologies. He completed an MA in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2020. A key focus of his practice is the design and fabrication of bespoke motorised rigs for site-integrity, which function as both recording and playback devices. Through this work, technology is positioned not simply as a tool, but as an active collaborator in the creative process, shaping encounters between site, image and audience. Jonny teaches art and computation at London College of Communication and the University of Westminster.