Ethnography: Fieldwork and Representations
Ethnographies are representations of cultural communities, forms, and processes. Ethnographies are
traditionally speaking written texts, but they can also exist in other forms of visual media and
documentation – such as art, video, photography, music, and performance. One of OSEA’ goals are to
explore multiple media as tools to both trigger or elicit information and experiences as well as to
document the pedagogical and investigative experiments; in short, we sought to expand the modes of
documenting the ethnographic processes of fieldwork, but by acknowledging that our use of these
tools as triggers also made them a part of the subject of our study.
Thus, in the course of the ethnographic training program we are continually documenting our activities
in writing, video, and photography as well. We periodically mount exhibits and ethnographic
installations that stage our research and pedagogical activities and products to stimulate a broader
engagement with the community. These ethnographic performances installations, and exhibits, are in
themselves fieldwork encounters and ethnographies in an expanded sense of the term “ethnography”.