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
of human activities and
material culture)
(basis of knowledge (textual studies)
production:
Dialectical materialism)
Cultural Studies
Visual - ethnography
A research method highlighting fieldwork
Use of photography &
Video raises unique questions
of knowledge production
creative – intervention
Possibilities of making change
Critique can be in the
form of artistic creation
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
Subjectivities
A 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:
ethnography
[source: documentary cinema] visual ethnography
[source: contemporary art] research-based artmaking, performativity (a cultural tactic)
[source: Cultural Studies, contemporary art] critical
intervention
• [source: anthropology]
•
•
•
...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:
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…
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
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 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
“Sociology” in Cultural Studies
Micro level of human agency
Interactionism
Macro-level of systems and social structures
Empiricism
Durkheim – positivism
Interpreting the observable…
Erving Goffman -- presentation of the self in everyday life
...key concepts...
Visual anthropology
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
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 head
Organized 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/ExcitableSpeech_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