Visual Ethnography & Creative Intervention

1. Visual Ethnography & Creative Intervention SM4134 An advanced-level research-creation laboratory Linda Lai January 20, 2009

2. on the key components of the course: • [source: anthropology] ethnography • [source: documentary cinema] visual ethnography • [source: contemporary art] research-based art-making, performativity (a cultural tactic) • [source: Cultural Studies, contemporary art] critical intervention

3. CULTURAL STUDIES as impulse Contribution from Cultural Studies’ POV: 以小見大 -Broad theses/discourses of culture and society / ideologies / common sense etc. ↕ Specific site with specific individuals and practices in everyday life dramaturgy [“culture is ordinary” (Raymond Williams); culture as everyday fabric] -Our (ethnography) is a process of clarification to maintain differences via giving a voice to individual experiences.

4. CULTURAL STUDIES as impulse Contribution from Cultural Studies’ POV: 以小見大 ultimate concern: power subjectivities Power: not an abstract, top-down force, but… structures of power in concrete everyday settings and in various locations such as class, race, gender, sexual orientation, different formal institutions, policies… Subjectivities: the possibility of the individual to “participate” in culture and assert one’s humanness, whether to resist, to appropriate, to subvert, to deconstruct…

5. Basic orientation grounded in Cultural Studies Michel De Certeau’s dedication page in The Practice of Everyday Life *De Certeau’s science of ‘singularity’: Local-ness… People (subjectivities) beyond monumental value… The voice-less, the unrepresented… …the limits of representation *Creativity, artistic vision (CIL, SM4134) The specific, the particular The observable, the empirical… *Everyday creativity: small battles, occupying a specific position *Performativity: emphasis on tactics, especially a response to alienation or the hostility of urbanity via physical presence (occupation) of concrete space, e.g. walking the city

6. More key theorists who contribute to an emphasis on the particular and the micro-levels of culture… Antonio Gramsci “Hegemony” – power is, most of the time, not in the form of coercion, but as common sense, as bottom-up voluntary practices Michel Foucault Techniques of the self (we translate the effect of power into justifiable practices via methods and routines for the “care of the self”) Fernand Braudel “Long duration” of everyday practices to view historical processes; alternative economic history… Erving Goffman Presentation of the self in everyday life dramaturgy: roles and persona, back-stage Vs front-stage, impression management

7. Naming the course… Ethnography Visual anthropology Visual ethnography Visual culture Ethno-methodologies Intervention Creative Intervention Theory & Praxis / Theory =(is) Practice

8. Photography in the traditions of visual sociology & anthropology (concern): *use of still photographs as a methodological tool in social research *use of photographs as a means of presenting social research

9. Visual anthropology: …concerns • the examination of visual communication in the everyday domain • the critical analysis of visual methods of anthropological documentation • the critical analysis of visual productions of the cultures under study. • Initial focus: In 1970s on film and television as documentary methods

10. *What is ethnography? a research methodology unique to anthropology BEING THERE…MAKING ‘DOCUMENTS’ (≠ objective records) What to observe, what to study: • a/ social processes (formalization of relations and abstract reasoning) • b/ rituals (everyday rituals unique to the group, proceduralism, situations that lead to the formalization of relations and abstract reasoning) • c/ exchange mechanisms (interactionism emphasized) • d/ self-narration (mythical dimension) NOTE: all the above aspects are observable by the researcher’s being there.

11. Atkinson: a method or set of methods that ‘ involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions – in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research. Definition…(cont’d)

12. Ethnographic research A narrative based on ethnographic research: “The Auction” Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World (Granta Publications, 2008), pp. 3-39.

13. Visual Ethnography paradigms 1 : Using cameras and other recording technology to gather data How the camera records, recording = collecting data? What kind of data? 2 : The studying of non-verbal data produced by cultures – visual representation of reality 3 : The studying of visual objects 4 : Presenting research findings with images and media other than words

14. Recommended: on contemporary art relevant to the course [examples of recent publications] Archive Fever: uses of document in contemporary art (Okwui Enwezor) Six Stories from the End of Representation (James Elkins)

15. Critique of the term “visual” W.J.T. Mitchell’s essay, “There are no visual media” (2005) in Journal of Visual Culture provides a good counter-discussion… In the end, no medium involves solely one level of sensory experience

16. A project on Yunnan women… http://www2.bc.edu/~lykes/voices.htm

17. What we would do in this semester… *the ethnographic use of film, photography, and new media *ethnographic research on visual artifacts and projects of visual representation *exploration of artistic strategies to transform research process and findings into a personalized work of art *studying visual artifacts in which the work of ethnography is embedded

18. Collecting for creative intervention… Hiroshi Sugimoto Blurry architecture series http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/sm4134/2009/Hiroshi_Sugimoto/hiroshi_sugimoto.ppt

19. Assignment: for consultation in next meeting *a possible specific subject for final assignment *ethnography via photography: Field photography/field collecting – Photograph things with a future tense Discover via collecting, observing, being there, photographing