Diving to The Cinema Beneath the Lake: a novel as immersive, synthetic-magical exploration of the surrealist prose of Claude Cahun, Ithell Colquhoun and Leonora Carrington

Sunderland, S

Abstract

This practice-led PhD explores the role of mimicry (simulation, impersonation, imitation) in the surrealist prose of Claude Cahun, Ithell Colquhoun and Leonora Carrington. It evaluates mimicry both as a feminist critical technique and as a form of camouflage or evasion which provides space and opportunity within their prose for reflection and personal growth.
Driven by a desire to cross thresholds, the investigation takes the form of a film-novel, The Cinema Beneath the Lake. The novel is generated using surrealist techniques of mimicry identified in these women’s work and is further constrained in its method of development by the submission to chance. This approach pushes the writing to evolve its own surrealist practice, inevitably echoing the preoccupations of the writers under study; in particular, the occult and hermetic philosophies figuring in their prose.
By adopting surrealist methods, I allow my own traumatic experiences to inform the work. The immersive nature of its exploration thus provides an opportunity to personally reflect on mimicry’s importance both as a creative strategy and as providing an initiatory function within the development of self-knowledge and recovery from psychic trauma. The novel is accompanied by a sustained creative-critical reflection on the process of its production.
In this way, the project aspires to stand as a demonstration of the therapeutic value of creative-critical engagement, reaching out to similar uses of automatism and surrealist reverie in the prose of these three women writers during their turbulent experiences of life in the shadow of war.

Citation

Sunderland, S. (2022). Diving to The Cinema Beneath the Lake: a novel as immersive, synthetic-magical exploration of the surrealist prose of Claude Cahun, Ithell Colquhoun and Leonora Carrington. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 28, 2026
• Award Date: Mar 27, 2022