METHODOLOGY
Site integrity is a site-specific and collaborative artistic methodology that fosters a dynamic exchange between the site, artist, filming device, and audience. This approach views ‘place’ as a complex, living entity shaped by the architectural, social, cultural, political, and institutional narratives present within. This methodology avoids reductive representations by working with and empowering communities to become narrators of their own stories.
With its roots in structural filmmaking, site-integrity 'performs' place by presenting recorded material back in the site where it was originally filmed, using bespoke motorised recording/playback devices. This enables an exact transfer of scale and time as the pre-recorded films map the architectural site, matching the world with its representation. These artistic devices are used as creatures of autonomy, a source of possibility through which site materiality might be found and shared.
This practice builds upon "place as emergent, relational and beyond representational regimes" (Massey, 2005). Positioning the viewer within a dynamic live setting creates an opportunity for audiences to experience their relationship and reading of the site. This avoids the controversial 'framing' of place and instead offers an experience in the 'here and now', in spatial extension and temporal duration. In site-integrity place is apparatus – i.e. it depends on which elements are operationalised and should be assessed in terms of affective experience.