Jordan Baseman is a visual artist and filmmaker. His work adopts some of the strategies (specifically the recorded interview) used by journalists, oral historians, anthropologists, criminologists, social scientists and other academics, and combines this approach with the literary device of creative non-fiction.

At Cove Park, Baseman will focus on writing and recording a screenplay for a short film. The residency will give him the freedom to take a quite different approach to his usual working practices: he intends to bypass the interview process and will instead focus on experimental narrative invention, through site-writing and free association. He has stated that, ‘The screenplay will be inspired by and located within an imagined landscape and environment similar to that of Cove Park itself. I will deploy the technique of conducting spontaneous recordings of spoken word narratives, improvised moments and off-the-cuff descriptions. Flights of the imagination and willful free-associations, culminating in a kind of word salad, will be summoned from within me as I channel the spirits of Philip K. Dick and Mary Shelley. The narratives will also stem directly from my impressions of the particular cultural/social environment and the location of Cove Park, with a focus on the flora and fauna of the area, with special attention being paid to the sky: the glorious transition of daytime to nighttime and back again.’

Image: Disobey, (Production Still), 2017, Courtesy Jordan Baseman and Matt’s Gallery