25 Expanding Documentary 2011: Conference Proceedings. Vol. 1, No. 2, December 2011 Evidentiary to experiential – a poetic approach to documentary Bettina Frankham PhD Candidate and Lecturer, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia In this paper, I discuss a poetic approach to documentary and the ways in which the creation of an aesthetic experience can maintain a rhetorical or persuasive intent while simultaneously allowing for complexity. In particular, I look at examples of what I am calling intersectional practice. By this, I am referring to works that draw on techniques more usually associated with audio-visual media art in combination with methods associated with moving image documentary. These works may be produced within an art based practice or come out of a documentary model of production. The main criterion is that they are engaging with the real in poetic ways. This makes it possible to consider screen based works that do not claim documentary status but are nevertheless adopting a poetic approach to representing the real, alongside poetic works that are labelled as documentary. Acting as limit cases that push the form to the extremes of what is recognisable as documentary; these intersectional works can productively disrupt common sense understandings of the documentary project. By drawing upon techniques from poetry, documentary, visual and audio art these works take advantage of the peƌŵeaďle ďouŶdaƌies ďetǁeeŶ foƌŵs iŶ a ďid to, as MiĐhael ‘eŶoǀ desĐƌiďes it, uti lize ŵoƌe effeĐtiǀelLJ the poteŶtialities of [the] ĐhoseŶ ŵediuŵ to ĐoŶǀeLJ ideas aŶd feeliŶgs (1993, p. 35). The works that I am considering have all used non-naturalistic aesthetic treatments of sound and image that loosen the indexical and iconic bonds between the real events and the representations of them. In this sense, I am using the word aesthetic to refer to the way we perceive material as a result of formal choices and judgements made by the maker. For this definition, I am drawing on the work in sensory ethnography by Nadia C Seremetakis. As she outliŶes the Gƌeek oƌigiŶs, The ǁoƌd foƌ seŶses is aesthīsis; emotion-feeling and aesthetics are respectively aēsthiŵa and aesthitikī. They all derive from the verb aesthāŶoŵe or aesthisome meaning I feel or sense, I understand, grasp learn or receive news or information, and I have an accurate sense of good and evil, that is I judge correctly. Aesthisis is defined as action or power through the medium of the sense, and the media or the semia (points, tracks, ŵaƌksͿ ďLJ ǁhiĐh oŶe seŶses (1996, pp. 4-5). Here judgement and understanding require sense-ability. What we might generally conceive as an intellectual process folds back into a sensory methodology Rather than indicating the originating event, the works become metaphorical representations pointing to ideas and experiences beyond the immediate range of the subject. Resemblance is de-emphasised and the sign becomes more abstracted and expressionistic. These works take a deliberately figurative approach to their subject material, through visual abstraction, fragmented editing, extended duration and experimental sound. However, rather than thinking of these as marginal or illegitimate documentary works it is more helpful to consider them as intersectional works sprouting from an overlap between documentary, literary practices, audio and visual arts. This overlap can be an extremely fertile ground permitting the creation of critically engaged and aesthetically rich work. As I discuss in more detail, there is a strong interplay and sympathy between ideas and form. Synchronicity between concepts and representation is emphasised.