Paper short abstract

Based on recent ethnographic research that employed participatory and non-participatory film-making as a method for fieldwork and knowledge production, non-fictional video is discussed as an “in-between” representational and relational form of scientific and artistic practice.

Paper long abstract

Based on recent ethnographic research that employed participatory and non-participatory film-making as a method for fieldwork and knowledge production, non-fictional video is discussed as an "in-between" representational and relational form of scientific and artistic practice. In the present case, the author's fieldwork on youth violence and delinquency in Capeverdean prisons has been accompanied by an open ended film-making process with a couple of youths in a "problematic" low-income neighbourhood in the crime-ridden city of Praia, Santiago Islands. The non-directional videotaping of the "clique's" daily routine in an improvised shack at the margins of a middle class district was conceptualized as an experimental and decidedly "incomplete" artistic practice that would - eventually - bring along anthropological/sociological insights into the dynamics of youth culture, violence and society from an inside/outside (prison) perspective. Film-making within the context of social sciences is thus discussed as an inextricably "artistic" and "informed" praxis for the constitution of personal/artistic/scientific relations and knowledge.