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- Convenors:
-
James Oliver
(Monash University)
Sarah Pink (Monash University)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Creative practice
- Location:
- McMahon Ball Theatre
- Start time:
- 4 December, 2015 at
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This one-day panel centres on a practice as research workshop, through which participants will present and co-create propositions (statements/performances/video/sound), for a creative public anthropology.
Long Abstract:
Creative practice has always been at the heart of ethnographic practice, and retains an enduring aim, articulated through the reflexive turn of the 1980s, 'to open up its future possibilities… in an attempt to come to terms with the politics and poetics of cultural representation' (Clifford and Marcus 1986: vii-viii). Thus setting a continuing moral agenda for anthropology that attends to representation through questions of aesthetics and power. More recently with an increasing but contested broader recognition in the academy of creative practice as research, the tensions, poetics and politics of theory and practice have come to the fore. Taking this context as background this workshop explores the role of creative practice as a moral responsibility for a public anthropology, in order to explore the possible. Is there an imperative to do/make things with anthropology for the public? How do we activate (shared) stories in practical ways so that they can do some work in the world? Is creative ethnographic work 'sensible' for public engagements with knowing/not knowing? How might we harness the uncertainty that lies at the core of both ethnographic and creative practice to create a future-oriented applied and public anthropology that goes beyond the constraints of conventional anthropological practice?
This panel centres on a practice as research workshop, through which participants will present and co-create propositions (statements/performances/video/sound), for a creative public anthropology. Send abstracts (50words) for 5minute provocations for incorporation in the workshop. Submissions for a small film stream are welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
An observational film about Yolngu connections with other beings and the land. Garrthalala is a homeland community in Arnhem Land, where all ages venture out onto the coast and into the water. Three members of the community offer individual insights into different ways of being on Country.
Paper long abstract:
'Yolngu Homeland: living with ancestral beings' (2015, 60 mins) is about Garrthalala as a place and how the Yolngu community who live there are connected with other beings, including ancestors, animals and plants. Aboriginal people have lived in Arnhem Land for over 45,000 years, which means that over time they have developed a deep, spiritual connection to the land. Totemic beings of significance include the saltwater crocodile, crows, dogs and dingoes, crabs, sea eagles, turtles, and yams. The film follows 'Yolngu time' where the pace is measured and not run according to the institutional timeframes of wider Australia. Homeland communities are increasingly under threat from a lack of financial support and investment into infrastructure from the Australian government with a push for Yolngu to move into town centres, despite the fact that the quality of life on outstations is significantly better in terms of both mental and physical health. Unlike the negative portrayal of Aboriginal communities in the mainstream Australian media, the intention of this film is to show a positive side to a homeland community (in the tradition of Ian Dunlop and the Yirrkala Film Project series) and how living on homelands are a means of maintaining a connection to Country and a unique way of life.
Paper short abstract:
A collaboratively made film about mobile phone ringtones and a Yolngu poetics of connection. 30 mins, Miyarrka Media
Paper long abstract:
Yolngu Aboriginal families offer glimpses into their lives and relationships through their choice of ringtones. From ancestral clan songs to 80s hip hop artists and local gospel tunes, these songs connect individuals into a world of deep and enduring connection. And yet, simultaneously the phone opens Yolngu to new vectors of vulnerability and demand. Made collaboratively by Miyarrka Media, a new media arts collective of indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers, the film offers a beautiful and surprisingly moving meditation on the connections and intrusions brought by mobile phones to a once-remote Aboriginal community.
Directors: Jennifer Deger and Paul Gurrumuruwy
Paper short abstract:
Away From Home engages in the lived experiences of displacement from the perspectives of transnational Burmese family members. Through ethnographic approaches, this series of documentary photographic works develop new understandings of the complexities of being a refugee both at home and away.
Paper long abstract:
At a time of increasing displacement and familial upheaval, it is surprising how little is known about who, where, how and why people get on in transcultural familial situations or how difference is lived on the ground. This visual research project seeks to fill a gap in the literature regarding themes of displacement, migration and notions of home. Away From Home aims to engage in the lived experiences of displacement from the perspectives of Burmese family members living 'here' and 'there'. Drawing on the 'ordinariness' of interactions across familial divisions, this project will consist of a series of documentary photographic works. These works, along with the exegesis, aim to develop new understandings of the multidimensional complexities of being a refugee - both home and away - and expand on longstanding traditions of documentary practice. Ethnographic approaches such as open-ended informal interviews, visual ethnography and sensory ethnography will be key when investigating the experiences of families from Burma. The use of visual methods and media are important to provide insights into the unspoken relationships between researcher and participant, refugees and their environments.
Paper short abstract:
Self representation: Sharing Stories and Communicating the Everyday
Paper long abstract:
In this provocation I raise questions around collaborative practice and technologies (Photoshop, Digital Animation, Sound editing and Film) used as both sensory method and intersubjective representation. Using my existing research I propose that this creates a between (Stoller 2009:96) where collaborators navigate representations of their experiences alongside their interpretations of the future audience.
Paper short abstract:
Using creative performance about teenagers in a disadvantaged school, this provocation explores how we might communicate ethnographic research of 'over studied' groups in ethical, accessible ways.
Paper long abstract:
In this 'sound-bite' age, how do we as anthropologists communicate nuance in succinct and accessible ways to mitigate the risk of inadvertently verifying assumptions about marginalised, 'over studied' groups? Using creative performance about teenagers in a disadvantaged school, this provocation explores how we might activate stories in productive, practical ways.
Paper short abstract:
“We lack the language to articulate what takes place when we are in fact at work. There seems to be a genre missing”: Following Geertz (1995:44), the creation of ‘ethnographic’ art complemented the writing of my thesis on emotional trauma in migrant women.
Paper long abstract:
In the midst of my fieldwork with 'Burmese' migrant workers in Thailand (2011-2013), I had wondered about the complexity of emotional suffering and my ability to convey it adequately in research. How could the depth of their suffering ever be translated into words? By drawing upon the visual arts (painting), I developed a more in depth grasp of the core themes to emerge from my research. Kant spoke of aesthetic philosophy and grasping art through disinterested contemplation. When an audience observes a work at a distance, the work is detached from the will and has no purpose, but is somehow purposeful in its own right: "purposiveness without purpose" (Kant, 1987: 73). Through painting, I observed the women's suffering at a distance. I did not set out to paint 'suffering'. I just painted. The act of painting shifted 'suffering', the subject matter, out of my focus and into the periphery. There in the periphery I saw it with more clarity, in contrast to when I was trying to grasp at it, make academic meaning of it, and put it into writing. The visual images that evolved through the research process will hopefully also act as an alternative point of entry through which others may access the subject matter of my thesis.
Paper short abstract:
This short documentary features the voices of New Zealand children diagnosed with the rare metabolic disorder, MCADD, recorded during ethnographic fieldwork. The voices underpin photos taken by the children and myself, 'body maps' and graphics; none of which reveal the identity of the children.
Paper long abstract:
Scholars have critiqued both prenatal and postnatal biomedical testing and screening technologies for their social impact on families who have to live with the discovery of a genetic disorder that relegates an infant to life-long liminality on the border of pathology and health. In the case of medium-chain acyl-coA dehydrogenase deficiency (MCADD), once diagnosed the disease is easily managed with the regular intake of food and thus the relationship between the growing child's sense of agency, food and identity is linked to the disorder. The body of the child and related food practices become a contested space.
This presentation will use multiple media sources from ongoing research to examine how a researcher can create an ethnographic work inclusive of childrens' perspectives and representative of their voice. It aims to chart a path towards presenting the developing personhood of children diagnosed with MCADD; and how to visually explore the impact of these children and young people on the new "ethics of life", despite a potentially 'geneticised' identity.
Paper short abstract:
Can audio-visual art works be utilised as a device for mapping place and environment? This paper considers the modes of artist sound and film practice as a site for anthropological research and data collection, as well as a creative tool for more traditional forms of research.
Paper long abstract:
*
Paper short abstract:
Is the representation of the ethnographic world of children through animated shorts and children's story books a valid contribution to public anthropology?
Paper long abstract:
Is the decision not to show children's faces in a film featuring their voices protecting them from being identified as 'disordered' for perpetuity or further marginalising them? What value does a collaborative film of this nature hold for a public anthropology and is this animated approach misleading?
Paper short abstract:
In Ireland, "If you're hungry enough, you'll dig up the tar on the road with your teeth to get a vote." Based upon three decades of ethnographic research, "All Politics is Local" is the first feature-length documentary depiction of Irish politicians from an ethnographic perspective.
Paper long abstract:
In Ireland, "If you're hungry enough, you'll dig up the tar on the road with your teeth to get a vote." It's not only the other parties that are a threat to you, it's your running mate. Indeed, it's the internal rivalry that can be the most bitter and acrimonious, as well as the most entertaining. Based upon three decades of ethnographic research, "All Politics is Local" is the first feature-length documentary depiction of Irish politicians from an ethnographic perspective. A narrative of the 2007 electoral campaign in Cork South-West, it portrays the fray from within. As such, it aims to make an academic contribution to Irish studies that is designed to inform and explain as well as to entertain.
Paper short abstract:
Freedom Stories is a collaborative documentary (99’) exploring the stories of 'boat people' who arrived around 2001 and are now Australian citizens.
Paper long abstract:
Freedom Stories is an exploration by filmmaker/researcher Steve Thomas of the achievements and struggles of former 'boat people'. More than a conventional documentary, the film explores aspects of reflexivity as a methodological approach to making a documentary cognisant of the ethical issues inherent in the filmmaker/participant relationship.
Now Australian citizens, the film's participants arrived seeking asylum from the Middle-East around 2001 - a watershed year in Australian politics sparked by the Tampa affair and Prime Minister John Howard's declaration: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come".
Some were only children when they found themselves in indefinite mandatory detention in remote places such as Woomera or Nauru and then placed on temporary protection visas, which extended their limbo for years. It has taken astonishing resilience and over a decade for them to build secure lives and start contributing to their new country.
These are ordinary people who found themselves caught up in the extraordinary consequences of political brinkmanship but have long since dropped out of the media spotlight. They live among us now and given the Government's boast that it has 'stopped the boats' it is time for their voices to be heard.
Paper short abstract:
This practice-based PhD essay film involves in-depth, interdisciplinary and 15-month fieldwork in community Yumbulakhang on the Tibetan Plateau of PRC, applying Jean Rouch's cine-ethnography method towards ‘local point of view’ and ‘being there’.
Paper long abstract:
This PhD essay film draws from my 15-month fieldwork of ethnographic filmmaking in community Yumbulakhang, on the Tibetan Plateau of PRC. The project combines cinematic filmmaking with an anthropological methodology of Jean Rouch's cine-ethnography towards an understanding of the 'local point of view' in Yumbulakhang, with a crucial ethnographic emphasis on 'being there'. The local Tibetan Buddhist doctrine of "Each Moment is the Universe" is introduced in the process of filmmaking to analyse, interpret and re-present the 'local point of view' and to comprehend contemporary Tibet, informed by through its own perspective. The latest digital 4K film technology and a "one-man-crew" filmmaking methodology have been implemented to produce more than 400hrs of raw film footage and 1000 photos during the fieldwork in which an edited 3-hour version of ethnographic film are rendered.
Paper short abstract:
Collaborative research beyond academic or institutional settings can reframe initial aims and create novel outcomes. A successful project with Indigenous rangers produced 3 films, none specified in initial project planning and only one visible to the state actors who funded it.
Paper long abstract:
Indigenous ranger programs are important to contemporary regional Australia, popular with both program participants and the communities where they operate. Substantial government and corporate investment in these programs means that state and institutional actors are increasingly interested in the outcomes being achieved - environmental outcomes, but also wider socio-economic effects. A project funded by the Federal government through the National Environmental Research Program designed to investigate and classify these outcomes contained a clear objective for community 'engagement'. Enacting this objective in a Yolngu context in northeast Arnhem Land where I as an ethnographer was already enmeshed in long term reciprocal relationships and associated moral responsibilities resulted in the re-casting of the project to encompass collaborative film production as well as textual communication. Evolving field circumstances, ranging from the death of a close Yolngu relative, the availability of local cameramen, and bad weather on the most crucial day of filming, repeatedly transformed the nature of the project. Two ancillary films, one a 'training video' for local rangers, the other an extended record of the funeral of the son of a key research collaborator, emerged from these transformations, neither reported in formal project outcomes. The third film, presented here, explicitly engages with the state funders of the project, combining pedagogy, political assertion, and an invitation for reciprocity, whilst also incorporating structural and content elements deemed important for local community consumption.
Film: 'Let's care for this country': the Yirralka Rangers at Baniyala homeland
Directors: M Barber and D Marawili 22 mins
Paper short abstract:
Following the trajectory of objects from makers, to anthropologist, to museum, this paper asks what transformations occur when practice becomes archive? What are the methodological potentialities and constraints on taking up an archive and reactivating it as practice?
Paper long abstract:
This presentation reflects on my research with Warlpiri visual culture collections — the material outcomes of eight decades of creative practice by one central Australian Aboriginal community. It begins with a critical reflection on the recent emergence of repatriation as a new moral frame and stimulus for humanities scholars working with indigenous communities. It considers the ambivalence that often greets the 'return' of object-based collections to the places where they were made. The paper hones in on a particular form of creative practice that occurs at the interstices of cultural worlds; a fusion of sense making, aesthetic pleasure and attempted cross-cultural communication. Following the trajectory of objects — from the hands of makers, to those of the anthropologist, to the museum — a complex interplay of conflicting temporalities is revealed. The paper asks what transformations occur when practice becomes archive? What are the methodological potentialities and constraints on taking up an archive and reactivating it as practice? In what ways can research that is alive to such questions contribute to a reinvigorated public anthropology?
Paper short abstract:
Working with contemporary dance companies on the one hand, and with Papua New Guinean villagers on the other, stimulates an investigation of knowledge forms and their appropriate presentation.
Paper long abstract:
My contribution will describe some recent work with diverse practitioners contributing to their modes of self-presentation and the representation of the knowledge forms that they generate. I report on the use anthropological methods (understanding context, gauging assumptions, and introducing comparative material) to provide an engaging collaborative space for such actors to develop interventions appropriate to their intentions. In the process, the possibilities these kinds of close working relationships provide to understand social forms and creative practice become apparent.
Paper short abstract:
In this provocation, I contend that essential for the formation of a 'creative public anthropology' is a scholarly reconfiguration of perceived relations between medium and knowledge with specific references to Australian Indigenous epistemologies of knowing through doing.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past half-century, the phenomenological writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964) have challenged Anglophone scholars to think of human cultural expressions as products of our sensory entwinings with the world, and the meanings we ascribe to them as inseparable from our own existence within it. Within the academy, it is the medium of text through which our observations of lived experiences are primarily codified, disseminated and evidenced as veracious representations of our contributions to human knowledge. Yet in the wake of European colonisation in countries such as Australia, this mode of knowledge production has all but displaced preexisting Indigenous systems for recording, communicating and evidencing knowledge of the observable world. I contend that the intertwined songs, dances and designs through which Australian Indigenous knowledges are classically codified are no less capable of supporting fact than books, journals and spreadsheets, and show how contemporary Indigenous knowledge-holders can be engaged as equal partners in producing new knowledge by surpassing the academy's default relegation of such media into exceptionalising categories such as 'creative' and 'practical'. Just as Merleau-Ponty theorises that our construction of meaning is inseparably entwined with our sensory perceptions, I show how gnosis and praxis are similarly inseparable in Australian Indigenous modalities of thought, through which knowing is largely understood to be a necessary product of doing. Ultimately, I contend that a perceptional reconfiguration of this kind is essential for the formation of a 'creative public anthropology'.