Paper short abstract:

This paper will address reflexive issues that have arisen in the ongoing process of making a documentary about 'home in movement'. Making an ethnographic documentary requires a sensuous and metaphoric approach to ethnography where expressive practises and materialities are articulated through inter-subjective encounters. “Home” will be articulated as a 'meshwork of paths' that occurs through the movement of people and things.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will address reflexive issues that have arisen in the ongoing process of making an ethnographic documentary about transnational migrants between West Africa and Western Europe. The plot of the documentary follows specific subjects as they travel across the hemisphere engaging in various practises that are linked to place - ie. music playing in France, Germany, and Benelux and grassroots activism in Burkina Faso. I will be arguing that the process of making an ethnographic documentary about transnational practises requires a sensuous and metaphoric approach to ethnography where expressive practises and materialities are articulated through inter-subjective encounters, which are embedded in the research footage itself. Making a documentary about this process highlights the sensorial dimensions of creating home and provokes the notion of thinking of home as a sensory experience that can be recreated audio-visually. My documentary seeks to articulate "home" as a mobile notion, where place is understood as a 'meshwork of paths' that occurs through the movement of people and things. I will articulate this mobile notion of home by deploying cinematic discourse and practise. In other words, I will talk about what are the results of thinking about the textures and sounds of scenes, actions, rhythms, and character and place these sensory experiences in a broader social context. The paper will address how these themes are coming together in the ongoing process of making this documentary. I will also show edited clips of my research footage.