Contribution short abstract:

This roundtable proposes a reflection on the power that images have in the construction of our reality and how “Yuruparí” was the premonition of Colombia’s present. By taking a closer look at its archive, ¿can we reconcile the images of beauty and horror of a country to reveal new probable futures?

Contribution long abstract:

The forbidden image of the ethnographic-documentary series “Yuruparí” (1982-1986), portrayed two characters, Pedro and his daughter Elda, sining the assassination of a former guerrilla leader in the 1950s after an amnesty with the government. This image became an imminent premonition of the current reality of the political leaders in Colombia after the signing of the Peace Accord in 2016. A cycle of perpetuity between cinema and reality.

Laura A. Ogden, in her book “Wonder and Loss at the World's End”, understands speculation as a way “to indicate the experimental reframing that makes possible the ontological reorientation with our practices with respect to the environmental world.” She proposes how life forms are always in a process of becoming, which means that the future is one of possibilities. “The goal of the thought experiment is not to speculate about possible alternative futures but to reveal the tensions that are a part of becoming within the confines of the world’s predetermined categories (what she calls “probabilities.”)”

By exploring the expansiveness of different audiovisual mediums to deepen an ethnographic observation, I wish to convey her idea, not only as a concern for the environmental world, but also for the world of images. In the process of montage –slowing, pausing, expanding, contrasting, and fast forwarding images to reveal their inner tensions and nuances–, I am interested in re-reading the past using archive materials to reveal and generate new probable futures.

Contribution short abstract:

The presentation argues the video of the practice can provide a way of looking and witnessing the practice in the studio, articulating that through the process of editing, embodied experience has a big stake in terms of remembering, reliving.

Contribution long abstract:

The presentation will discuss the process of framing and editing an unpublished video article, Landscapes of Memories. The presentation argues the video of the practice can provide a way of looking and witnessing the practice in the studio, articulating that through the process of editing, embodied experience, has a big stake in terms of remembering, reliving.

In the process of framing and editing the video, my collaborators and I became aware of the challenges of what is epistemological viable versus an aesthetic choice. What do we need to put in place in order to create this sense of embodied experiential witnessing of the practice within the studio?

To create a sense of embodiment through the mediated experience of a video article, my collaborators and I had to made decisions on:

1) Where to place the camera in the studio?

2) What footages to use? Can they be used?

3) What sort of framing? Wide-angle shot/ close up?

4) How are the frames edited in order to show the process and then the actual research outcomes?

Contribution short abstract:

Filmmaker Tim Mummery reflects on the 20 year odyssey to complete his documentary NAMARALI. The film charts Aboriginal artist Yorna Woolagoodja’s quest to ‘repaint’ an ancient ochre cave painting thereby energising culture via a vital ceremonial practice. The paper will reflect on questions of time.

Contribution long abstract:

My paper will reflect on the experience of completing my documentary film NAMARALI over twenty years.

Part lament for cultural destruction in the wake of colonization and part roadmap for cultural rejuvenation, NAMARALI details the quest of Australian Aboriginal artist Yorna Woolagoodja to repaint a remote, ancient cave painting of the Wandjina creator-spirit Namarali.

This paper will reflect on time.

Firstly, my experience of time as the defining ingredient in my journey as a non-Indigenous filmmaker to gain the permissions, trust and understanding of the community to tell this story.

Secondly I will reflect on time as a building block within the film’s structure to attempt the representation an animistic worldview within the linear construct of a documentary structure.

Time is controlled and manipulated as we move between storytelling modes. The historical narrative opening of the film is regularly disrupted by archival footage that speaks to the cyclical nature of refreshing the Wandjina. The second half is overtaken by the ceremonial journey, where the camera assumes the position of an initiate on the shoulder of a demonstrative elder. It is here the audience is released in to a languid space of co-existing with community on country to sense the wonder inherent in First Nation stories experienced in homelands.

I always intended NAMARALI to be a subjective, empathetic glimpse of an animistic worldview. With the film’s completion, I can finally call myself an ally to Yorna and his mission to place ceremony back at the heart of culture’s long storytelling tradition.

Contribution short abstract:

Could I build up a tangible and material sense of Catalonian artist Fina Miralles performances in and through my investigation? Filmed embodied and ethnographic research provided me with genuine tools to develop an interdisciplinary methodology that generated knowledge in a corporeal manner.

Contribution long abstract:

Catalonian artist Fina Miralles presents a mode of exploration that is tactile and kinesthetic under a political system (Franco dictatorship 1935-1975) that muted bodies and possibilities of expression. I reflected on the manner I could engage on analyzing those corporeal dynamics. In this proposal, I explain how perceptual and embodied methods provide genuine tools to develop an interdisciplinary methodology that generates knowledge in a corporeal manner. I will discuss how embodied ways of researching performance through ethnography and filming during fieldwork challenge the critical distance of “the good eye” in art history. The corporeal strategies were: the re-creation of some of their work where it took place (documented with photographs and videos), my own performative actions, archival work in Catalonia, the use of a camera during fieldwork, filmed interviews, the curation of filmed performances as well as an intersubjective encounter with the artist. All these strategies put together a space for sensorial empathy and a somatic point of view to access the artists’ performances and analyze the phenomenological perspectives of their motions and gestures. My work is grounded in situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988), which includes my background as a psychologist and my condition as a Spanish woman born in the last year of Francoism. I argue for a feminist embodied and ethnographic research, and propose ways of “doing”, explaining different strategies as possibilities to generate knowledge in a kinesthetic manner drawing mainly upon “embodied methodologies” (Ben Spatz, 2017) and “kinesthetic empathy” (Deidre Sklar, 1994; Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, 2012).

Contribution short abstract:

Experimental filmmaker and researcher Sam Firth will share techniques used in her recent film “The Wolf Suit’ using the process of filmmaking both as method and metaphor for analysing how we construct individual and shared memories and the impact of trauma of conflict and trauma these.

Contribution long abstract:

Sam Firth is primarily an experimental filmmaker she is also based at the University of the West of Scotland where she is exploring what it means to undertake creative practice as research. Her work has screened at film festivals around the world and won numerous awards. She was recently recognised with a BFI Chanel Filmmaker Award. In this roundtable she will share the techniques she used in her recent film “The Wolf Suit’ which uses the process of filmmaking as both method and metaphor for analysing how we construct individual and shared memories and the impact of trauma of conflict and trauma on these. The process of writing, filming (and re-filming) dramatic reconstructions (within a constructed world) and shaping these into narrative (within yet another world of the film) through editing is exposed within her film as auto-ethnographic research into the construction of identify, personal and shared family narratives. Those who watch the film are forced to consider the constructed element of their own memories and engage philosophically with the question Firth considered when making her film. One of the outcomes of this ongoing study into how we construct narratives and experience the world has been new insight into the impact of personal media making, which is now wide-spread, on our life stories.