An inventory of traces: documenting Punk through the use of image, audio, graphic and text

"The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.” – Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Drawing upon Gramsci’s ‘knowing thyself’, I will discuss strategies I have used to document a range of A/V ‘histories’ of Punk exploring some key critical questions arising from the construction of historical narratives using image, audio, graphics and text which contextualise and ‘expand’ the documentary knowledge around such ‘inventories’. Gramsci, points out there an infinite number of potentials in the telling of history, yet the history of Punk gravitates around certain themes; liberation, resistance, community etc., which are themselves re-appropriated from previous manifestations of inventories from the past or the imagined future. My work will explore the possibility for multi-inventories of histories around Punk in France and other nationally defined parameters while exploring the benefits of organising history as a positioned narrative with political purpose, using various art forms to express itself. Drawing upon Gramsci’s ‘knowing thyself’, I will discuss strategies I have used to document a range of A/V ‘histories’ of Punk exploring some key critical questions arising from the construction of historical narratives using image, audio, graphics and text which ‘expand’ the documentary knowledge around such ‘inventories’. Gramsci, points out there an infinite number of potentials in the telling of history, yet the history of Punk gravitates around certain themes; liberation, resistance, community etc., which are themselves re-appropriated from previous manifestations of inventories from the past or the imagined future. My work will explore the possibility for multi-inventories of histories around Punk in France and other nationally defined parameters while exploring the benefits of organising history as a positioned narrative with political purpose, using various art forms to express itself.