Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr. Julian Henriques

Programme Convenor, MA Script Writing
Course Leader BA Music as Communication and Creativity

My work in film and television over many years has given the basis for continuing links with professionals in those industries. This is most valuable for ensuring that as the programme convenor for MA Script Writing the course is up date with current industry ideas, trends and practices, see also "In Our Own Words." To this end I am also involved with the Department’s Skillset Media Academy and the Goldsmiths Screen School which among its events each year presents the Olive Till Memorial Debate with leading film directors. These have included the late Anthony Minghella, Danny Boyle, Michael Winterbottom, Stephen Frears and Sir Alan Parker.

My professional experience as a film maker has also informed my research interest in sound, teaching and leading the BA option course Music as Communication and Creativity. This in turn has inspired further practice work that includes script development and gallery installation projects such as the Sonic Space Ship.

Current Local Projects
Grime: Still Risin’ from the Dust, expert on Heritage funded research and documentary project with the Midi Music Company, Deptford.

Research interests

My current research interests have been developed from my filmmaking work to include:

1. Street cultures, music and sound: Reggae Sound Systems and Dancehall style, fashion, aesthetic, attitude, sensibility of this “bass culture” in Jamaica and the UK have been a particular interest of mine for some time. Also important are sonic diaspora and the production, consumption and circulation of this Reggae ‘vibe’ between street and global corporations. (Sonic Bodies, Sound Systems and Bass Culture, forthcoming).

2. Embodiment, rationality and technologies: My interest here is how the practices and mechanisms of auditory propagation can be used as the basis for a critique of the conventional ocularcentric accounts of meaning and communication. This aims to give an account of rationality in terms of evaluative judgment, ratios and analogia, rather than representation or inscription. This emphasises the value and values of auditory as well visual culture and thinking through sound, as well as images. This work on subjectivity and experience began with Changing the Subject.

3. Music and musicals: As a filmmaker my particular interests are in the genre of the musical (feature film Babymother), which also inspires a research interest. This includes how image and sound work together to make cinematic experience, as well as how musical harmonics, melody and rhythms, and auditory timbres and vibrations can provide alternatives to conventional linear narrative structures. In both fiction and documentary film production improvisation techniques can have similar innovative effects, as was pioneered by the French anthropological filmmaker, the late Jean Rouch (see Rouch in Reverse, We the Ragamuffin).

Selected publications

(Selected)
Sonic Diaspora, Vibrations and Rhythm: Thinking through the sounding of the Jamaican dancehall session. African and Black Diaspora, Vol. 1 No. 2, July 2008, pp 215 - 236

"Creative and Knowledge Economies on the Reggae Dancehall Scene" in Sonic Synergies: Music, Identity, Technology and Community, (eds.) Bloustein, Gerry, Peters, Margaret and Luckman, Susan, London: Ashgate (2007) pp 133-146

"Cultural and Technological Processes in the Reggae Sound System," chapter in Sonic Interventions, (eds.) Marijke, Joy and Mieskowski, Sylvia, Amsterdam: Rodopi (Thamyris series) (2007)

"Sonic Dominance and Reggae Sound System Sessions" in The Auditory Culture Reader, (eds.) Bull, M and Back, L, Oxford: Berg, (2003) pp 451 - 480

"Thinking Without Trace" in Visual Culture, Vol 1 no 2 (2003) pp 369-372

"'Sonic Scriptwriting' Writing Memorable Movies" in ScriptWriter, issue 3, March (2002) pp 39-41
 
Changing the Subject: Psychology, social regulation and control (with others,) RKP (1986, second edition 1998)

"Psychology, Ideology and the Human Subject" (with others) in Ideology & Consciousness, No. 1, May 1977

(Forthcoming)
Sonic Bodies and the Logic of Practice (monograph, 2008)

Fiction
“Father Island”in Fatherhood (ed.) Sean French, Virago (1992)

“In Baramita” in Seeing in the Dark, (ed.) Ian Breakwell and Paul Hammond, Serpents Tale (1990)

Feature Film
Babymother, Writer/Director, Formation Films for Film Four (1998)
See more information on screenonline.org.

Television Drama
Single Voices  (30 min.) Director, Carlton Television (2000)

We the Ragamuffin (30 min.) Co-Writer/Director, Rockstead Productions for Channel Four Television (1992)

Exit No Exit (30 min.) Co-Originator/Director, Formation Films for Channel Four Television (1988)

On Duty (30 min.) Producer, On Duty Productions for Channel Four Television (1984)

Television Documentaries (Selected)
The Sex Warrior & the Samurai (30 min.) Executive Producer, Formation Films for Channel Four Television (1996)

Jungle Mix (30min) Producer for ZDF Germany (1995)

Rouch in Reverse (60 min.) Executive Producer, Formation Films for ZDF/Arte (1998) see more information on newsreel.org.

Derek Walcott: Poet of the Island (60 min.) Producer/Director, Arena, BBC Music & Arts (1993)

The Green Man (60 min.) Producer/Director, Omnibus, BBC Music & Arts (1990)

States of Exile and Dictating Terms (50 min. each) Producer/Director, Made in Latin America, BBC Music & Arts (1988)

Publication on my films (Selected)
Cooper, Carolyn (2004) Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large, "Mama, Is That You?": Erotic Disguise in the Films Dancehall and Babymother (pp 125-144), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 125-144

Moseley-Wood, Rachel (2004) "‘Colonizin Englan in Reverse’ – Julian Henriques’ Babymother" Visual Culture in Britain, 5:1, 91 -104

Korte, Barbara and Sternberg, Claudia (2004) Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian Films Since the 1990’s, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp 112-122

Hall, Stuart (1998) A Rage in Harlesden, Sight and Sound, September 1998

Professional activities

Currently I am participating in two research networks outside Goldsmiths:

Beyond Text (AHRC)

Methodologies of Affect (ESRC)