- Convenors:
-
Arjang Omrani
(University Of Ghent)
Kris Rutten (University of Ghent)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel Discussion
- Start time:
- 22 March, 2021 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel tends to explore "the tensions between quality and equality”; the conundrum between the rights of authorship and the aesthetic choices in collaborative projects.
Long Abstract:
The collaborative nature of anthropological knowledge is an ever-increasing issue of consensus. However, efforts to snare and engulf the notion of collaboration with a methodological framework for fieldwork and dissemination of knowledge have never been a fully accomplished mission. This is probably due to the uncanny embodied in the notion, that makes it experimental, innovative and radical. It, therefore, constantly requires to be redefined for each project and to be reappraised at any time throughout the process. In engaging with the social phenomenon, these characteristics encourage many audio-visual anthropologists to take this path, to explore and unveil the untouched, invisible and often excluded aspects of the 'real' in comparison with other investigative methods.
However, the issue of authorship that lies at the core of any collaborative project, remains as an unsettled concern in this path. The challenges, especially on the occasions of cooperating with people with less artistic or academic background, are more evident and critical.
This panel, therefore, tends to explore the dilemmas posed by the issue of the authorship in collaborative projects and thereby, invites presentations to address "the tensions between quality and equality" (C. Bishopin 2012; italic mine) in the authorship of collaborative projects. This implies a process that leads to the aesthetic choices of the work, while at the same time considering both the rights of authorship and the narrative and aesthetic strategies that tend to mediate invisible, embodied and affective conditions — meanings — with their diverse audiences.
Although this remains the main focus of the panel, we welcome those presentations that offer additional insights and perspectives related to the concerns of this panel. Especially we encourage presentations that are raised from empirical and fieldwork experiences.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Margot Mecca (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Paper short abstract:
The paper focus on the triangulation between ethnographers, filmmakers and research participants in TRANSGANG project, reflecting on the ongoing filmmaking process in Catalan fieldwork, where documentary becomes a space for training, exploration of the self and collaborative cinematic representation
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to share the experience of triangulation between ethnographers, filmmakers and research participants in the framework of TRANSGANG, an ERC project focused on youth street groups as agents of mediation. The project involves three filmmakers in the production of documentary films linked to the ethnographic research. This responds to different aims: to build counterhegemonic representations of stigmatized youth groups; to match young people’s familiarity with audiovisual language; to complement ethnographic knowledge through cinema and to speak to a wider audience. The paper focus on the work developed in Catalonia by filmmaker Andrés Duque and a group of young migrants. Some of them trained in cinema in their home country and want to develop a professional practice; the filmmaking process thus becomes a space for training, exploration of the self and collaborative construction of a cinematic representation. The director plays the role of a catalyst, trainer and creative driver, while young participants are involved both in front of and behind the camera, actively taking part in the creative process. Here different visions arise concerning self-representation and cinema, while it’s challenging to find a mediation between culturally diverse aesthetic sensibilities, also in view of the film's ownership and distribution. Yet, this collective dimension is inherent to cinematic practice (especially documentary), as films require an ongoing exchange between different creative and technical roles. Issues raised during the filmmaking process, started in October 2020, will be addressed, articulating the first reflections around collaboration, authorship and aesthetics in this ethnographic and cinematic experience.
Trond Waage (UiTArcitic University of Norway) Sidy Lamine Bagayoko (University of Bamako)
Paper short abstract:
Intensive courses in collaborative visual anthropology among people who is experiencing the current crisis in the Sahel (Mali) is presented as a strategy for film making and to the much needed dialogue to find local mechanisms for conflict management!
Paper long abstract:
The present crisis in Sahel may be seen as a window of opportunity as it may force states and populations to question their systems and be more open for innovation. Much of the current situations stems from the colonizer’s successful imposition of a political grammar that deliberately ignores the colonized populations’ interests, perspectives and collective indigenous knowledge.
This paper explores processes where we as filmmaking researchers teaches workshop members filmmaking, based on ideas and exchanges in the group. Film narratives are created together through the process of filming and editing. The process where they are made and the film are used to encourage community dialogue to generate shared understandings and, convoke local mechanisms for peace.
Anthropologist is always working in-between positions. Collaboration does not mean equality, but equality in a reflexive learning process is in an ideal striving for. Our film strategy contains a focus on interpretation of shared experiences, these are interpreted and placed in a timeline for the audience to gradually discover meaning. In the process of engaged collaboration, where images are common "creative space" where the interest of film-makers and film-subjects meet. Coming to these creative spaces, where "regards are crossed" and new understandings are developed, is where we see potential to construct visual narratives through shared authorship. In the authors negotiations on how to construct the narrative, is where new knowledge and new solutions might be found.
The paper will build on examples from workshops undertaken in Bamako, Mali and Ngaoundere, Cameroon.
Mihai Andrei Leaha (University of Barcelona) Paula Braz (University of São Paulo - University of Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
Three young Brazilian artists perform at a Drag Race competition in São Paulo. When the global pandemic forces most Brazilians into confinement, Divina Kaskaria, Satine, and Gabeeh Brazil are left to perform their drags online, while coping with the challenges of every day and home isolation.
Paper long abstract:
Three young Brazilian artists perform at a Drag Race competition at the famous independent electronic music party, Caps Lock from São Paulo. When the global pandemic provoked by Coronavirus forces most Brazilians into confinement, Divina Kaskaria, Satine, and Gabeeh Brazil are left to perform their drags online, while coping with the challenges of everyday life with social distancing and home isolation.
Using collaborative ethnography employed through self-filmed video diaries as well as public online shows, the film offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of the three artists while focusing on the processes of producing a Drag Queen inside a home for an online environment. The film project is based on postdoctoral research about participation and embodiment of experiences in the local DIY electronic music scene conducted at the University of São Paulo. The paper will discuss the challenges of doing a collaborative project in pandemic times.
Weronika Plinska (Institute of Art and Design, University of the National Education Commission in Cracow) Angelika Cebula (Pedagogical University of Cracow)
Paper short abstract:
The main issue of the film was to depict the process of transmission of traditional values between three generations of women. The problem of gender inequality laid at the core of the film making experiment.
Paper long abstract:
"Three women of different ages" is a short documentary made by Angelika Cebula in 2020 as a part of her MA diploma in Art&Design received from the Institute of Graphics and Design at the Pedagogical University of Cracow. Weronika Plinska, cultural anthropologist, was a co-supervisor of Cebula's MA thesis.
The film was made between 2018 and 2020 in a small village of Trzcianka in Southern Poland. Over the past 5 years political situation in Poland has shifted towards a conservative, right-wing, nationalist government, so the main issue of the director was to depict the process of transmission of traditional gender roles between three generations of women: Cebula's mother, her sister-in-law and their young cousin.
The main challenge for Cebula was to encourage village women to speak up since at the very beginning of the process, they struggled to find themselves in a position of an 'expert' or simply did not believe that their lives were interesting enough for a documentary. The story of each woman was therefore presented mainly through images depicting their daily routines and relationships with male characters and children. However, while working on the project, women seemed to feel more empowered. In the end, they made a protest sign together with the film director which was later used in the opening scene.
Karen Boswall (University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
In Mozambique creative tensions of collaboration with less experienced audiovisual research partners can challenge the complex post-colonial power relationships. In this context, I make a case for the surrender of authorship as part of a necessary and mutually beneficial process of decolonization.
Paper long abstract:
What is the most appropriate and effective interview technique in ethnographic filmmaking? How can structure inform the engagement and affective response of the viewer? I thought I knew the answers to these questions, yet during my audiovisual research into Mozambican women's song and dance, my young and inexperienced research partners offered new perspectives on this well-trodden methodological ground. I had been researching women, culture and identity in Mozambique for years, and yet when it came to the personal process of making the film(s) inspired by this research, instead of making the films myself, I decided to commission and support the research and production of first-time Mozambican filmmakers. I will describe my journey and the lessons I learned from what the cultural theorist Pooja Rangan describes as non-interventionist 'surrender' (Rangan, 2017). I will draw on some of the provocations in her book 'Immediations The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary' (2017) to explore my motives and the 'new vistas of relationality' I was introduced to. Using clips from two of the six films in the series, I will analyse the filmmakers' insightful understanding of the power dynamics with their participants and the relationship with their audience. I will show how the young Mozambicans' profound contextual understanding inscribed their films with what Rangan describes as 'a trace of themselves, and their mode of being in the word'.