My practice combines artists moving image, experimental filmmaking and creative writing. I have a professional background in documentary television having previously worked at the BBC as a director and producer. This informs my research, critical analysis and pedagogy.

My PhD was a practice led enquiry that concerned the visual and discursive construction of masculinities in British military recruitment, through promotional films and photographs produced during the first two decades of this century. Focused on the ethical and political implications associated with a visual blurring of the gendered subject in the mediated framing of state-controlled violence, the project utilised deconstructed filmmaking practice combined with critical approaches, including gender studies, and formal approaches in film theory.

A current and ongoing research project uses photography, experimental and documentary practices to explore concepts of place and belonging. This practice-led research project is conducted during a time of growing insecurities surrounding the personal and the political, identity and statelessness, shelter and hostility. To have a sense of belonging could be understood as gaining coherence in a community, or in the fraternal pact, or conversely may be associated with exclusion, exile or threat.

https://www.kirstenadkins.co.uk/

List by: Type | Date

I welcome research projects on the following themes.

•    Gender and subjectivity
•    Images of war
•    Deconstructed filmmaking
•    Documentary filmmaking
•    Experimental film
•    Practice as research

• Gelbelman, Eugina A
  A Woman Voyeur: Interrogating the Female Auteur and Spectator
• He, Rong
  Self-presentation of a Ukrainian Refugee Family in Social Media: A Journey of Exploration with Documentary Filmmaking

I teach experimental, narrative and documentary filmmaking practice on undergraduate and post-graduate programmes. I have further teaching expertise in documentary film production, screenwriting and research methodologies including practice as research methodologies.

Selected exhibitions, broadcasts and screenings

At Home in Moseley Road Baths. Single channel film by Paul Zinder and Kirsten Adkins at https://flatpackfestival.org.uk in Birmingham 2023

Home: Conversations on Place and Belonging at The Hardwick Gallery in Cheltenham. 2022. A project space, symposium, film screening and multi-channel film screening. Funded by University of Gloucestershire in collaboration with The Hardwick Gallery in Cheltenham.

Army Photographer Captures Her Own Death. Film and Screening at Desktop Cinema, the Alternative research forum as part of the Alternative Film and Video Festival in Belgrade. December 2020.

Napoleon Dynamite by Me. Film screening and artists talk. Masculinity and National Identity. AHRC Masculinities Network. Berlin.

||Element|| Dual exhibition at Stryx Gallery, Birmingham. A six week film installation which opened with Digbeth First Friday and was supported by New Art West Midlands.

Stand Up Get Down. Single Channel Film. The Lighthouse Arts Centre Wolverhampton. Diamond Reynolds, Performed paper and film at ‘Living Research’, Royal College of Art.

Force Strikes the Body. Film and dance installation and screening as part of the conference; Seeing in the Age of Big Data in Hong Kong.

Force. Stryx Gallery, Minerva works in collaboration with Digbeth First Friday and New Arts West Midlands.

Shroud Room. Photography Installation and Artists Talk. The Coffin Works Museum. Arts Council commission for book and lecture as part of Birmingham Museums at Night. May 2015. Reaction No Action, Art Rave at the Bonded Warehouse Birmingham.

Shame on You. Multi-channel video installation: Contemporary Art at the Wirksworth Festival and Birmingham City University. Kings Heath Creative Pop Up.

Conferences

IUAES 2019 Inter Congress: World Solidarities, August 27 - 31 2019, Adam Mickiewicz Univerisity Poznan, Poland. Close With and Kill The Enemy: Investigating gender and military conflict through a deconstructed film making practice.