Discovery in Silence
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Discovery in Silence is my ongoing artistic research project exploring how mental illness— specifically bulimia nervosa—can be used in the making of artwork, and whether artistic methods can lead to discovering hereditary patterns. Using feminist methods of repetition and transparency, I investigate three generations of eating disorders in my family: my late grandmother, my aunt, and myself. Central to the project is my grandparents’ 30-year Super 8 film archive (1967–1997), which I have digitised into over 11 hours of footage. This material forms the basis of an inquiry into inherited trauma, illness repetition, and the possibility of breaking the cycle for future generations
My master’s graduation installation, How Would You Like Your Bulimic Film Served? includes films 32–34 of the project. Over the course of this research, I’ve created 34 experimental short films using archival Super 8, photographs, autobiographical writing, voice recordings, diary entries, and interviews with relatives. Each film acts as a conceptual marker, showing how my thinking evolves through repetition, transparency, and now the artistic method I have created, bulimic filmmaking. This method draws structure and rhythm from the patterns of binging and purging: fragmentation, repetition, excess, contradiction, difference, compulsion and sudden shifts. Rather than hide gaps or smooth transitions, I want to embrace instability as an expressive tool. Ultimately, I see bulimic filmmaking as a long-term method of this enquiry. It’s not just storytelling—it’s a way to ask questions, resist closure, and make space for the collective, the feminist, and to challenge the absence of transparency. Looking ahead, I aim to deepen this method in a new experimental documentary film.
https://files.aneccessaryother.org/publication.pdf
@vqvarfordt
vanjaqvarfordt.com
vanjaqvarfordt@gmail.com
