Collection 1 (May 2025): Submitting is an act of letting go
Our Definitions
- ‘Fragment’ – what you submit for inclusion in the journal via our online submission form
- ‘Collection’ – a monthly editorial gathering and reflecting on the Fragments submitted.
We are very excited to publish this, our first Collection of Fragments, and welcome you all to this new journal of experimental videographic form and method. To find out a little more about our intentions with this journal please take a look at our Manifesto (always in revision and currently on version 1.5) and if you like what you read and have a fragment hidden away, please consider submitting it for inclusion. And if you have any questions about what you read, watch, or hear on this website, or any thoughts you’d like to share, please email us on editorial@fragments.video
Submitting is an act of letting go
We (Cormac, Jemma, and Will) have been working on this for a while now, but it was only in the last few weeks that Will dropped this phrase into our group chat and it seemed the perfect title for this first editorial. This inaugural Collection features a number of fragments which find their way here having been worked through, worked on, and abandoned at various points in the making, and we are very pleased their creators have chosen to dust them off and submit them for our viewing pleasure (and possible edification). Unsurprisingly, all three of us had little trouble identifying works to include as well, which we felt was important for this first collection, deviating from more traditional peer review processes as outlined in the Manifesto.
So perhaps submitting to Fragments is an act of letting go of a work, or of an idea which never solidified into a finished piece. But more than that, we believe it’s also about letting go of the feeling that all our work needs to be presented as ‘finished’. The notion that the value in the work is only in its completeness, rather than perhaps in its very existence as a representation of our ideas, our experimentation, our failures, but significantly our ambitions for a resonant videographic practice. More on this, including some of the works that have inspired us to create Fragments, can be found in our Manifesto.
First Fragments
One challenge with collating this first Collection is that the sorts of work we aim to feature are, by their very nature, usually private. The Collection is thus openly curated, including a fragment from each of us, and others generously submitted to us by fellow practitioners.
We feel this Collection shows that creative practice work can be ‘let go’ at any stage, from software experiments that were curtailed, to proof of concept exercises and longer video essays that resisted completion, but these works and ideas tend to persist, preserved in our personal videographic archives (disk space allowing), and therein lie treasure troves of hidden fragments.
We hope you enjoy reviewing the inaugural Collection of Fragments and thanks for taking the time to visit.
Lana Turned by Johannes Binotto
Johannes’ fragment and his accompanying words encapsulate, for me, an uncertainty that is inherent in this kind of videographic exploration. It is haunting, unsettling and alludes to both the ethical and technical concerns that can arise when working with materials and software, not least when the familiar is made unfamiliar in unanticipated ways. At first watch I paused it, checking the volume, before accepting that its silence is a relief from the overwhelming visuals and testament to the discontinued experiment. An apt reminder that anyone pursuing videographic inquiry, whether new or seasoned, should proceed with caution! JS. More on this fragment here.
Green screen Template (An increasingly heated & snarky dialogue) by Colleen Laird & Dayna McLeod This short experiment packs it all in. Colleen and Dayna provoke at almost every turn, bringing the poetic/explanatory to the fore and then distracting us briefly from it by having AI battle it out for our very videographic souls. Is this how Jason Mittell and Johannes Binotto might be rendered in some alternate Tron universe where the fight is for the future of the video essay? And then it’s wrapped up with a helpful hint at how to use green screen. As the makers themselves note “The video is part satire, part provocation, and part community experiment and we invite viewers to continue the “conversation.” CD. More on this fragment here.
princess [GRACE] kelly – the BAFTSS cut by Will DiGravio
The titular acknowledgment that this is a particular cut of a project for a particular purpose reflects the ways in which many of us label our ‘in progress’ outputs, disregarding numerical systems in favour of words that make personal sense. Seeing such a title here is oddly comforting! I experienced this rough cut as an archive of Will’s intentions, a showcase of how various videographic techniques were being deployed to achieve them, and an invitation for wider consideration of how fiction and documentary film can be brought into discourse through such practices. JS. More on this fragment here.
Rachael’s Eyes by Barbara Zecchi
Is it an injustice to label this a fragment? It feels complete in the same way that a rhyming couplet out of context is still complete. I have always been a fan of how Barbara uses sound and music, and this is no exception. A sinuous soundtrack, alluring, and engrossing, and where she refers to the ‘pulse’ in her statement it drives this piece along. And in answer to her final question, I’m not sure a replicant would make a fragment like this, Barbara. CD. More on this fragment here.
Seeing ‘Blow-Up’ through sound by Cormac Donnelly
I was genuinely excited by the idea of ‘seeing through sound’ that Cormac’s fragment explores, with an immediate feeling of ‘I want to try that!’. Having not seen Blow-Up, I wonder what has been hidden by the waveform that could alter my first impressions of this clip. More broadly, I’m intrigued by the potential this method has to visualise different voices, accents and even dubs, and to discover what implications may arise for the images that these sounds accompany or overlay. JS. More on this fragment here.
Slow Folk Draft 3 by Richard Langley
Apart from anything else I love the title of this fragment, it immediately evokes the experimental (perhaps all fragments should come with a number suffix!). But then I also love this show, and this poetic mediation on it. The tone of Richard’s piece is so in keeping with Detectorists, with the rhythms of the walking, the conversation, and the countryside depicted, that it feels like an extension of an episode. Is this a slow videographic practice? I might even call it ‘furniture videographics’ but then that would do it a disservice. CD. More on this fragment here.
Watching us Watching Telly by Jemma Saunders
I think Jemma undersells this a little in her own comments. This is fascinating and perhaps (surprisingly?) coherent digression about Birmingham, but framed as it is in this Zoom interface, I imagine for many of us it is a reminder of the virtual gatherings that became so ubiquitous during the COVID lockdowns. In this context then the discussion of how green Birmingham actually is, roads (and dead ends), social distancing, and even the artefacts of the Zoom interaction all become that much more relevant and poignant when reviewing these past conversations. CD. More on this fragment here.
Woke Trek by Rich Matthews
Are all trailers fragments? I suppose so, yet they also generally have a completeness to their truncated forms, based on the whole [film] that they represent. As a teaser for a video essay that has not (yet) materialised, this approach is succinct and logical but certainly leaves one with questions about what may have followed, also making me think about the ‘abstract trailer’ videographic exercise and the ways in which we adopt, adapt and blend scholarly and industry concepts in our making. Rich’s bio is also testament to this hybridity and augments my comprehension of his fragment. JS. More on this fragment here.
Final first thoughts
In requesting a description for submitted fragments, rather than a ‘creator statement’ or ‘methodology’, that might imply more traditional academic expectations, it seems we are seeing a freedom of written expression across this first Collection that mirrors the diversity of audiovisual approaches. The titling of work as a specific draft or cut also attests to this, as commented upon above! From posing questions of her materials in almost poetic prose (Barbara) to describing a work as ‘unloved, unseen and unfinished’ (Richard), we hope this sets a precedent for Fragments to be a space for openness in both our musings and uncertainties about the ways in which we create, experiment and abandon.