Visual Ethnography:Critical & Creative Practices

SM6324

MAMC/MFACM

Linda Lai

January 10, 2012

...a road map...

“Visual ethnography”... “creative intervention”... where does it stand?

Critical theory

Anthropology Sociology Literary theories(studying/making portraits (basis of knowledge (textual studies)

of human activities and production:

material culture) Dialectical materialism)

Cultural Studies

Visual - ethnography creative – intervention A research method highlighting fieldwork Possibilities of making change

Use of photography & Critique can be in the

Video raises unique questions form of artistic creation

of knowledge production contemporary art practices

...key concepts...

Dialectical materialism (epistemological base)

Go to the 'keywords' page on the course web-site for more detailed explanation: http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/sm4134/Keywords.html

Key points in application: (1) what can be experienced can be studied; (2) there is room for individual input in the broad process of society, culture and history

Power Domination

SubjectivitiesA identity position and state of self for action

RESISTENCE / INTERVENTION / PERFORMATIVITY

Ideology (synonyms: ideas / values / norms / common sense / ethics)

Hegemony[Antonio Gramsci] (self-directed: common sense)

Ethics [Michel Foucault](self-directed with moral reasoning: ethics)

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

...key concepts...

Cultural Studies

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.

CULTURAL STUDIES as impulse

Contribution from Cultural Studies’ POV: 以小見大ultimate concern:

powersubjectivities

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…

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 particularThe 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

Quote from De Certeau

“…To a common hero, a ubiquitous character, walking in countless thousands on the street. In invoking here at the outlet of my narratives the absent figure

who provides both their beginning and their necessity, I inquire into the desire whose impossible object he represents…

“This anonymous hero is very ancient. He is the murmuring voice of societies. In all ages, he comes before texts. He does not expect representations…

“The floodlights have moved away from the actors who possess proper names and social blazons, turning first toward the chorus of scholarly characters,

then setting on the mass of the audience.”

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 FoucaultTechniques 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 GoffmanPresentation of the self in everyday life dramaturgy: roles and persona, back-stage Vs front-stage, impression management

“Sociology” in Cultural Studies

Micro level of human agencyInteractionismMacro-level of systems and social structures

EmpiricismDurkheim – positivism

Interpreting the observable…

Erving Goffman -- presentation of the self in everyday life

...key concepts...

Visual anthropology

(concern):

*use of still photographs as a methodological tool in social research

*use of photographs as a means of presenting social research

Photography in the traditions of

visual sociology & anthropology

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

Naming the course…

Ethnography

Visual anthropology

Visual ethnography

Visual culture

Ethno-methodologies

Intervention

Creative Intervention

Theory & Praxis / Theory =(is) Practice

*What is ethnography?

a research methodology unique to anthropology

BEING THERE…COLLECTING...MAKING ‘DOCUMENTS’ (≠ objective records) …REPEATED VISITS...

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.

Definition…(cont’d)

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.

Before fieldwork...

Setting initial 'frame'

Generating key questions based on 'frame'

Setting agenda + strategies for field observation

During fieldwork...

Strategies of recording and 'note-taking''

Ask yourself the uniqueness of your tools(its enabling aspects and its limitation)

Consider multiple use of 'note-taking' facilities(writing / photography / audio recording / video-making)

On the spot...

*Assessing fitness of method to your purpose...

*Ensuring what you collect is open enough for reviewing, further obseration, and interpretation after fieldwork...

After fieldwork...

Interpretation[framing / coding / re-framing.../ mapping / making meanings via

informed views of culture]

Representing the results[organization / narrative methods]

Ethnographic research

A narrative based on ethnographic research:

“The Auction”

Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World (Granta Publications, 2008), pp. 3-39.

...practice for this semester...

Visual ethnography

KEY REFERENCE

Doing visual ethnography : images, media and representation in research

/ Sarah Pink

See also course web for full bibliography:

http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/sm4134/references.html

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

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

Initial Examples

Video Research

Linda Lai: What's in a talking headOrganized findings:

*[an academic report]

“Narrated Selves and Event Structures: a phenomenological view on glocal connectivities” (6.2010)

*[a 61-minute video work]

Excitable Speech: all about Cinderella 《灰姑娘誌異》 (2008)http://www.lindalai-floatingsite.com/content/video/data/unpublished/Excitable-Speech_Cinderella/

index.html *[Installation version]

All About Cinderella (12.2006-01.2007)http://www.lindalai-floatingsite.com/content/installation/installation/cinderella/index.html

Ethnography and action research

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

A participatory ethnographic studies on wedding photo packages in Taipei

Bonnie Adrian (2003):

Framing the Bride: globalizing beauty and romance in Taiwan’s bridal industry. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los

Angeles, London.

Collecting for creative intervention…

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Blurry architecture series

http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/sm4134/2009/Hiroshi_Sugimoto/hiroshi_sugimoto.ppt

An example of auto-ethnography

An interpretive work of one's own video diaries:

Linda Lai:

I Told Them My Camera Was On 六度分離：準備好未？ (2005 v. 2)

http://www.lindalai-floatingsite.com/content/video/data/published/I_told_them_my_camera/index.html

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)

SUMMARY OF COURSE INTRODUCTION

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