We, Myself and I: Testimony, community and ambiguous subjectivities in the 3D immersive film Parragirls Past, Present

Abstract

Parragirls Past, Present (2017) is an immersive 3D film created during the final two years of the Australian government Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse (Australia, Royal Commission n.d.). All five women involved in the project's creation participated in this inquiry (Case study 07 2014) either via direct testimony or through their concomitant and ongoing involvement in individual compensation cases against the New South Wales state welfare agency. This digital media artwork was intended to provide an alternative arena for collective memory, selfhood and agency against the distressingly explicit yet isolating individualisation and disaffection these women experienced when providing personal testimony of childhood sexual abuse for the purposes of public justice in the Royal Commission. The work both challenges and complements the way judicial testimony is mobilised in this case.In this presentation, Lily Hibberd (artist and co-creator of the piece) reflects on the emergence of alternate identities through which victims position themselves in ambiguous relation to subjecthood, testimony and truth. She explores why victims might opt for a reconstruction of the self and analyse where the 'I' is situated in this immersive digital artwork. Naomi Toth (critic) engages with the same questions from the point of view of the audience, seeking to understand how the work orients reception through its creation of a highly individualised experience which nonetheless clearly contributes to the construction of a community. Particular attention will be paid to the political implications of catharsis provoked by such a work which may be situated on the border between the document and the aesthetic object. The joint presentation will also consider the possibilities offered by novel immersive technologies to create dissonant and contested figurations of the self in trauma testimony.