Helen Bendon

Lecturer, Film, Video and Interactive Arts

Department: Media Arts

Contact

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons) Fine Art
  • MA Fine Art
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
  • Post Graduate Diploma in Management, Chartered Management Institute (CIM)

Research Interests

Working predominantly in video and photography, her practice is anchored around intimate narratives : often understated or tacitly conveyed, and the visual exploration of the relationship between physical and psychological space.

Being There: Detailing the City Experience (Exhibition)
Exhibitors: Helen Bendon and Jess Thom
Title: Being There: Detailing the City Experience
Venue: Hooper:'s Gallery, Clerkenwell, London
Dates: 14-23 June 2006
Exhibited Work: The commissioned works Skirting DV (14.30mins),2006 and Flight DV (9.00mins),2006.

These works were commissioned by a EPSRC funded research consortium Vivacity2020 and AUNT-SUE (Accessibility and User Needs in Transport, Sustainability in the Urban Environment), a research consortium studying Sustainability and the 24-hour city. Two artists were commissioned to work with their material and their test bed research areas.
The artists (Bendon and Thom) have contributed to the ongoing discussions with the research teams and have a blog on the vivacity website (http://www.vivacity2020.org/).
The exhibition was part of London Architecture Week and the London Architecture Biennale (June 2006), an internationally recognised event. (Exhibition listed at http://www.architectureweek.org.uk/event.asp?eventURN=2141). The expected audiences for the 2006 event were in excess of 100,000 visitors.
There were related discussions with the researchers and public audiences: two discussions were held at the gallery during the exhibition and a paper was developed with the artists ('Opening up the Open Spaces through Space Syntax', Reem Zako, Julienne Hanson, Jess Thom and Helen Bendon) and was presented at Sensible Spaces: Space, Art and the Environment in Iceland (29 May 2006).

Skirting Around the Edges: Continuity of Life Experience in the City Fringes (case study area: Clerkenwell, London, UK) (Conference Paper)
Contributor/Author: Helen Bendon
Title: Skirting Around the Edges: Continuity of Life Experience in the City Fringes (case study area: Clerkenwell, London, UK)
Venue: Design and Livability Conference The Interdisciplinary Institute, Washington State University Spokane, Washington State, USA
Dates: 5-7 October 2006

This conference paper was selected by an interdisciplinary board headed by Professor David Wang, at WSU.
:http://www.spokane.wsu.edu/academic/design/Livability/Schedule.html
This paper presents the practice-led research project in association with Vivacity2020 and AUNT-SUE (as outlined in Output 1) through focusing on the production of one of the commissioned works - Skirting, (DV Projection 2006).
The paper looks at the research methodologies of an artist, and looks at how the moving image as a research methodology can contribute to the wider concerns of the consortia. Drawing on Bendon:'s existing body of work, the paper investigates the city fringe area (Clerkenwell, London) in terms of a complex dynamic between physical and psychological space: the relationship between people and the space they inhabit. The paper highlights the artist:'s research into notions of history and includes research from W.P. Pinks History of Clerkenwell, and Ackroyd:'s London: The Biography.
The paper also looks at the role of the artist within an interdisciplinary project, and details discussions around consultation of communities, interview processes and the relationship between the artwork and the wider research concerns. Through the collaboration between artist and a research group, the process explored in the paper, draws attention to models of change that the fringe can be part of rather than excluded from. The paper provided one of the focus topics for the conference roundtable event and is currently being developed in collaboration with colleagues at WSU into a workable interdisciplinary project in Spokane, WA. The paper has subsequently been submitted to The Interdisciplinary Institute:'s peer reviewed online journal.

A Place For Ambiguity - Articulating Practice As Research (Journal Article)
Author: Helen Bendon
Year of Publication: 2005
Title of Article: A Place For Ambiguity - Articulating Practice As Research
Title of Publication: Journal of Media Practice.
Volume Volume No.6(3)
Pages: p157-165

This essay was developed from the paper, Stuck: Moving Representations of Psychological Stasis that Bendon presented at Articulating Media Practice As Research: Funding, Ratings And Research Contexts, London South Bank University (17 June 2005). In both the paper and subsequent essay, Bendon investigated the articulation and reflection on the types of understanding and knowledge that she uses as a creative practitioner. The outputs explicitly focus on a recent video piece Egg & Spoon, to reflect on the role that creative process plays in research culture. By definition moving representations of psychological stasis pose some interesting questions around dealing with stillness in a linear format such as film or video. Whilst there is much discourse around photography's decisive moment to explore notions of stasis and containment, these outputs centre on the problematics of representing stasis in durational work through both contextual and practice based research. The written and practical work draws on the writings of Deleuze and reflections on the films of Chantal Akerman by Ivone Margulies. Within the current discourse around practice based research, the paper challenges the hierarchy of knowledge and language to widen participation in research culture.

The Scene of the Crime: A dialogue between creative practice and forensic science. (A practice based research project) (Conference Paper)
Contributor/Author: Helen Bendon and Salomé Voegelin
Title: The Scene of the Crime: A dialogue between creative practice and forensic science. (A practice based research project)
Venue: The International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics Baden-Baden, Germany
Dates: 7-9th August 2006

The paper draws on a practice based research project in which Lansdown Centre researchers Bendon and Voegelin collaborate for the first time. The Scene of the Crime consists of photographic, video and sonic explorations of the crime scene. With backgrounds in different disciplines (Bendon: photography and video, Voegelin: sound) this work and paper represent part of the dialogue between collaborators on a creative research project. The paper explores the crime scene in factual and fictional means and details explorations in both in the production of the work. The authors explore the relationship between notions of evidence, fact and fiction in the crime scene in relation to visual and sonic knowledge, applied by science and the arts respectively. The focus of the work and the paper is the complexity of learned procedural behaviour and conventions and actual experience and phenomenological encounter (Merleau-Ponty and Hegel). This project was funded by the Lansdown Centre and Arts Council England.
Bendon and Voeglin also presented a new paper on their The Scene of the Crime project at Narrative/Non-Narrative/Anti-Narrative Conference at University of West of England, Bristol, November 2006.This conference is attached to the Brief Encounters International Film Festival. See www.cmrg.uwe.ac.uk/abstracts.htm

Teaching Interests

The integration of theory and practice, and articulating media practice as research.

Biography

  • Programme Leader for BA Film Video and Interactive Arts and MA Moving Image.
  • Researcher in the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts.

Conferences:

The Scene of the Crime, a practice based investigation in rational and experiential knowledgeSalome Voegelin and Helen Bendon, presented at The Choreography of Space, the International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics Baden-Baden, Germany (7 August, 2006).

A Community Pattern Book for Housing, authored by Reem Zako, Julienne Hanson, Jess Thom and Helen Bendon, presented at Sensible Spaces: Space, Art and the Environment in Iceland (29 May 2006).

Stuck: Moving Representations of Psychological Stasis presented at Articulating Media Practice As Research: Funding, Ratings And Research Contexts, London South Bank University (17 June 2005).

Honours and Prizes
In 2001 Helen won the coveted Fondation CCF pour la Photographie prize and her work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the Arts Council of England and the Fonds National D:'Art Contemporain, France.

Public Collections
National Gallery of Australia.
Fouds National D:'Art Contemporian, France.
Arts Council of England.
Private Collections: Contact Yvon Lambert, 108 rue Vieille du Temple, 75003, Paris.

Links with partner/business organisations

In 2005 Helen was awarded The Conversation Gap Award commissioned by Career Innovation, a UK based research and development company, and worked on narrative-based projects with some of the world:'s leading businesses.

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