Ballin, D., Genn, R., 2023.

BATTLEDRESS: using immersive documentary methods to aerate working class women's oral history

This case study reflects on a multi-disciplinary research project BATTLEDRESS that investigates how methodologies of oral history and archive can be entwined with immersive techniques to create alternative 'encountered' histories of marginalised working-class women's experiences. The text reflects on a two-screen immersive film that draws on two oral testimonies with working class women writers reflecting on their teenage motivations for fighting and fashion choices and the little-explored themes of: Place and Belonging, Plenitude, Scarcity, Vulnerability, Invincibility, Femininity, Performance and Stepping Out that emerged from these. It discusses how working-class stories can be aerated through a layered two screen immersive approach where archive, audio/still and moving image sit in conversation with each other. These multiple iterations elicited unexpected findings and contradictions, encouraging the viewer/listener to delve into the underlying themes in the testimony, --prompting original insights into the confusion around gender roles and class uncertainty that can be at the heart of teenage female violence. It posits that experimenting with framing and eschewing a straightforward narrative can disrupt commonplace representations of grit, madness and despair whilst acknowledging the vulnerability, fragility, -- but also ambitions and dreams of-- the working-class teenage girl.