Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Rebekah Cupitt
(Birkbeck, University of London)
Edgar Gómez (RMIT University)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Ligertwood Flinders 314
- Sessions:
- Thursday 14 December, -, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
In critique of the ethnographer's control over the image and its relation to institutional practices, new participatory visual methods in visual anthropology have emerged. These materialities and practices of image-making offer alternative representations of the individual's relation to the state.
Long Abstract:
Early anthropology was often performed in service of a foreign state and the images and films of visual anthropology as well as the craft and traditions behind the practices of making visual records, reflect the power of a foreign state and a colonial researcher. A re-thinking of the visual emerged in response to critique of this outside ethnographer's control over the image and its narrative, which spawned new methods. These participatory visual methods and their epistemological considerations are key to de-colonising ethnographic practice. The craft and the technologies of image-making are critical to the exploration of artistic and decolonial forms of expression in visual ethnographies. They create alternative subjectivities, as the distinction between filmmaker/photographer/anthropologist and the 'subject' blur. Recent explorations of the multimodal and sensory potential of ethnographic films address the arguably Western focus on the visual, opening up anthropological representations to other modalities and ways of being that stand in contrast to formal narratives of for example, the state. These developments allow a consideration for alternative representations, other forms of ownership, authorship, and an ethnographic practice which captures the complex relations between individuals and state imaginaries and practices as they materialise in the image. This panel is interested in projects that explore various alternatives to image-making practices, modalities, and visual forms of expression that challenge the authority of the ethnographer/image-maker, de-stabilise institutional modes of representation, and consider the relationalites between image-making, the individual and the state.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 13 December, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
The film Victory! Infertility Healed! speaks about alternatives to state powers and biomedical authority. Healing is now a globalized market, even in African States. One goal is to show different ways used by African healers to communicate about their job.
Paper long abstract:
The film Victory! Infertility Healed! (2015, 28mn) speaks about alternatives to state powers and biomedical authority. Healing, and more specially infertility healing, is now a globalized market, even in African States. I propose to discuss the origin of the film (a research in medical anthropology) and its final structure (cinematography, sound track composition, etc.). One goal is to show different ways used by African healers to communicate about their job.
Paper short abstract:
Sistema-inspired music education programmes offer a unique opportunity to understand how young people experience the relationship between music and social change. Collaborative ethnographic filmmaking enhances this by inviting young people to participate in knowledge production and representation.
Paper long abstract:
In March 2017 I started a new, 3-year visual ethnographic project exploring the social impacts of three charitable organisations that provide free Sistema-inspired orchestral music education programmes in low-decile schools in Wellington, New Zealand. El Sistema is a Venezuelan music and social development initiative which began in 1975 and is today one of the world's largest orchestral music education programmes. Sistema-inspired orchestral music education programmes operate in over 60 countries worldwide, providing opportunities to children with the aim of transforming their lives, their families' lives, and their wider communities. In New Zealand, these programmes often fill a gap left by the state in terms of access to music education in low-decile schools, which are in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation. Many of the young people attending music lessons provided by the three organisations I am working with are Māori and Pasifika, reflecting the demographics of the urban areas in which they operate. This project lends itself well to a visual approach due to its focus on the experiential, intersubjective nature of music-making. In this paper, I discuss my efforts to craft a collaboratively-designed and produced film documenting young people's experiences of these music education programmes. I discuss the decolonising orientation that guides my project, reflect on my experiences in making a film about music and social change with young Māori and Pasifika people, and make some suggestions about the emancipatory potential of collaborative ethnographic filmmaking.
Paper short abstract:
Film & media have been in processes of nationbuilding but also as a voice of dissent or critique against the power & authority of the State. Participatory filmmaking with deaf filmmakers creates opportunities to craft alternatives to established [hearing] norms, visualities & filmmaking traditions.
Paper long abstract:
Film and media have been used to great effect in processes of nation-building but equally so as a voice of dissent and critique against the power and authority of the State. In practices of film-making shared conventions for visual expression are derived from a process and history of image-making that has been dominated by negotiations and exchanges between different [hearing] traditions. Arguably, films and image-making are geared towards the hearing norm and has been little influenced by deaf film-makers. This paper asks what a deaf film-making, anchored in the visual aesthetics that are shared by deaf communities, might look like and how it offers an alternative visual rhetoric that challenges and makes inroads into disrupting hearing norms. It is not about distinguishing set characteristics of what deaf visuality is, or is not, nor about how it differs categorically from hearing visual aesthetics and repertoires, but is about asking the question: can film-making based on deaf ways of seeing and their visual repertoires disrupt and subvert the hearing visualities and film-making traditions established over the centuries? Do films by deaf film-makers present alternatives to mainstream discourses that support normative views of capabilities and question the establish power structures and authorities? Experimenting with participatory film-making as a part of ethnographic practice and consciously challenging expressive norms within film-making and its genres holds the potential to further critique state-sanctioned media and add to the already established body of disruptive, subversive cinema that questions and promotes difference rather than conforming to comfortable norms.
Paper short abstract:
The discipline of anthropology is adapting to a transforming social and technological climate. These adaptations expose problematic historical disciplinary values. This paper offers lessons from visual, embodied and design anthropology to consider the inherent loyalties of ethnographic project.
Paper long abstract:
Computers reflect our ideals of order and logic. Current computers are transforming from systems of specialised knowledge (code) to user-oriented interface (icon) and this transformation has many impacts on how anthropologists consume, create and communicate knowledge. Visual, embodied and design anthropology are growing in popularity, and their popularity exposes traditional disciplinary orientations and tensions. This paper explores the relationship between engaging with people and the process of production of anthropological knowledge. Representational conventions and disciplinary ideologies are considered in relation to disciplinary history and in the light of contemporary applications of anthropological method. Through the lens of loyalty we consider how history has shaped the process of ethnographic representation and how it might offer some insights to the challenges of adapting to a rapidly transforming technological and ideological landscape. This paper addresses the question of how anthropologists might deal with our historical shortcomings and increase our relevance and accessibility. It offers lessons from visual, embodied and design anthropology to consider the inherent loyalties of the ethnographic project.
Paper long abstract:
Two years after 13,000 pacifist protesters gathered in 2015 outside The National Diet in Tokyo, bursting in anger against the Peace and Security Bill pushed as part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's security policy, in 2017 the decision of the Japanese government to abstain from the multilateral negotiations leading to the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations, celebrated in July 7, made the community of hibakusha (victims of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945), angry and disappointed. For them, after actively participating in the negotiations at the U.N., this historical moment opens the possibility for a future nuclear-free world. My presentation will introduce the visual activist affective assemble of Isobe-san, the daughter of a man exposed to the nuclear explosion of Little Boy in Nagasaki back in 1945. After his dead in 2010, she became an active member of Shizuoka Prefecture Second Generation Group, exhibiting his father's afterimages painted by himself, about his experiences and memories of the bomb. I will focus on two main aspects. On one hand, on Bourriaud's definition of art as a an encounter: “All works of art produce a model of sociability, which transposes reality" (2002: 18). On the other, I will attempt to identify the enfolding of a political temporality and potential realisation of ”peace" as an emerging event in narrative performance; 'events' here understood in relational terms following Whitehead.
Paper short abstract:
This paper has two aims: to discuss the value of photographic contests as a rich source to think about a place, and to relate this value with a non-representational ethnographic approach to photographs as living archives
Paper long abstract:
This paper is based on a current ethnographic project in Footscray, a western suburb in Melbourne. The presentation has two aims: to discuss the value of photographic contests as a rich source to think about a place, relating this value with a non-representational ethnographic approach to photographs as living archives. We suggest that a collective group of photographs, framed within a specific emplacement, in this case Footscray, can be treated differently than "data" or "representations". We approach them as a collective imagined archive of a place in a moment of time. In this sense, the resulting images would not be the sum of a group of photographers documenting an "objective reality". Instead, we suggest approaching the contest as a whole, as the materialization of a multiple ways to "image-ning" the place by its inhabitants, comprising their lived experience of the place.
Traditionally there has been a clear distinction between personal and vernacular images —those produced in the family and the home—, and those produced professionally for mass and public circulation in media, advertising and art circuits. The digital problematized this distinction by turning the photographic practice and the resulting images into a more porous activity, blurring the line between professional and amateur, between personal and public (Lasen & Gómez Cruz, 2012) and between private exhibition and mass distribution. The potential methodological implications of this shift are still under-theorized. This presentation contributes to this discussion by offering a theoretical description of photo-contests as living archives of non-representational place-making accounts.