! LISTENING IN: APPROACHING DIFFERENCE, MULTIPLICITY AND COLLECTIVITY THROUGH A PRACTICE OF LISTENING IN DOCUMENTARY A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Kim Munro BFinArt (Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne), GDipFT (Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne), MAppLing (Monash University), MA (La Trobe University). School of Media and Communication College of Design and Social Context RMIT University April 2019 DECLARATION I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the project is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged; and, ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed. I acknowledge the support I have received for my research through the provision of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Kim Munro, April 2019 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people to thank who each contributed in various ways throughout this PhD. Some by way of a chance encounter, and others in a more ongoing way. Firstly I’d like to thank my primary supervisor Ben Byrne for continual encouragement and engaged feedback on both written and creative elements. Also associate supervisor Linda Daley for her close and considered readings during the latter stages. Thank you to Seth Keen for his early conversations around practice and also to Adrian Miles who passed away in 2018 yet who contributed much in scholarly advice and provocations. I am grateful to all the various groups and collectives that I have been part of. These include the RMIT HDR cohort and my Docuverse collaborators. To the people I have met at the many conferences I attended near and far whose feedback and questions over drinks and food helped to shape future thinking and directions. To Catherine Gough-Brady, Christine Rogers, Liz Baulch, Liz Burke and Nick Moore who gave me feedback on edits of work and provided theoretical discussions. To Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz who read early chapter drafts, watched hours of footage and shared many a discussion on documentary practice. To Kristen Tytler for reading drafts and providing valuable feedback and questions. Thank you also to Kate Breen for the stays at her mountain home with the balcony and birds, Martine Hawkes for her excellent attention to the details in the final draft and Klare Lanson for timely copy editing. To Peta Murray and Stayci Taylor for collaborations, camaraderie and comedy, also to Lisa Radford for the conversations and Esther Faye for the questions. Extended acknowledgements also go to those who edited or reviewed my journal articles and chapters and whose feedback pushed my writing into better places. And to my RMIT University and Swinburne University colleagues for practical, equipment and admin support. I also want to acknowledge all the contributors to my projects including the initial participatory experiments, interviewees, people who contributed material, Listhùs and the people of Ólafsfjörður in Iceland and Peter and the residents at Wantirna Caravan Park. Acknowledgements for individual projects can be viewed on the website. iii INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE EXAMINERS This dissertation includes images of the works I have made throughout this research and links to the projects I discuss in Chapter Two: Events of the Alone, Chapter Three: Why do the ducks not fly south? and Chapter Four: The Park. These works can be viewed or listened to at any time during, before or after reading the chapters. Additional documentation for work discussed in each chapter can be seen on the website: www.listeningin.me iv LIST OF PUBLICATIONS Parts of this PhD from chapters two, three and four have been published in the following articles: Munro, Kim and Paola Bilbrough. “An Ecology of Relationships Tensions and Negotiations in Documentary Filmmaking Practice As Research”. Media Practice and Education 19, no.3 (2018): 256–69. doi: 10.1080/25741136.2018.1511361 Munro, Kim. “From voice to listening: becoming implicated in multi-linear documentary”. In Critical Distance in Documentary Media, edited by Gerda Cammaer, Blake Fitzpatrick and Bruno Lessard, 279–300 London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. __________. “Hybrid Practices and Voice-making in Contemporary Female Documentary Film”. In Female Authorship & Documentary Image, edited by Anna Backman Rogers and Boel Ulfsdotter, 70–83. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. __________. “Listening as practice: a month in Ólafsfjörður”. Qualitative Research Journal, 19, no. 1 (2019): 9–17. doi: 10.1108/QRJ-D-17-00022 __________. “Rethinking First-Person Testimony Through a Vitalist Account of Documentary Participation”, Frames Cinema Journal 12: 1–15. doi: 2053-8812 v CONTENTS TITLE PAGE i DECLARATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE EXAMINERS iv LIST OF PUBLICATIONS v LIST OF IMAGES viii ABSTRACT 1 PREFACE 2 Prelude to listening 2 INTRODUCTION 3 Project description 4 Rationale of the enquiry 4 The here and the now 6 Documentary frames 7 Methodology 11 Chapter outline 16 Implications 17 Notes 19 CHAPTER ONE: DIALOGUES 22 Prologue 22 On Voice 23 Participatory imperatives 25 Conditions of aloneness 2 6 From aloneness to participation 27 Spaces for Participation 29 The documentary interview as negotiation 36 Negotiated voice through user generated content 38 Resistance to participation: the right to remain silent 42 Rethinking participation 44 Notes 46 CHAPTER TWO: FIELDS 49 The world as sound 49 On visuality 50 Overlapping and competing voices: three versions of Glenn Gould 52 Experiments: linear, visual, sound, space 56 Collective voices 57 Events of the Alone 57 Interactivity and listening 60 The space of… 61 vi Making the private public: Natalie Bookchin 62 The last few months I thought I wanted to be alone, but now that I’m alone, I realise I don’t want to be alone. 63 From speech acts to listening acts 69 Notes 71 CHAPTER THREE: PRESENCING 74 Arrival 74 Cartographies: mapping place through listening 75 Listening to Ólafsfjörður 77 The interview as site for listening 78 Sound leads 82 Amplifications 83 Endings 86 Walking, listening, being 86 Expanding listening 91 Notes 93 CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSLATING 96 Hidden voices 96 On knowing and listening 98 Visibility and representation 100 Translation of forms 103 Listening through documentary: The Quipu Project 106 “What did they say? Yeah it’s sad but what can we do?” 107 Notes on collaboration 110 Transforming and translating: Am I at home? 112 The Documentary Event 11 6 The transformational nature of listening 117 Notes 119 CONCLUSIONS 122 Some reflections on changes over the course of this research 123 A summary of the movements 125 Listening in: returns, endings, beginnings 128 Contribution to documentary practice 129 Further implications 130 Notes 132 BIBLIOGRAPHY 134 APPENDIX 143 vii LIST OF IMAGES 1. Ólafsfjörður, Iceland, January 2017 2. Lighthouses, Dungerness UK, May 2105 3. Solo road trip, UK, May 2015 4. Negotiated Request 1. Photos by Jenelle O’Callaghan 5. Negotiated Request 2. Annotated map of USA by Kristen Tytler 6. Negotiated Request 2. Photos by Kristen Tytler 7. Messages left in response to call for participation on Airtasker 8. Photograph submitted by Airtasker participant, Freya Hosking 9. Video still from short film by Airtasker participant, Irvina Paul 10. Video still from Events of the Alone, 2016 11. Screenshots from split-screen linear experiment, 2016. 12. Screenshots from linear overlay with text, image, audio experiment, 2016. 13. Screenshot from grid experiment, 2016 14. Screenshots from Events of the Alone, 2016 15. Installation images: The last few months I thought I wanted to be alone, but now that I alone, I realise I don’t want to be alone. 16. Anonymous mail sent in response to exhibition 17. Duck pond, Ólafsfjörður, Iceland, January 2017 18. Images from Ólafsfjörður, Iceland, January 2017 19. Recording the ducks, Ólafsfjörður, Iceland, January 2017 20. Recording under the ice, Ólafsfjörður, Iceland, January 2017 21. Why do the ducks not fly south? Ólafsfjörður, Iceland, January 2017 22. I’ll take my suns where I can find them, Ólafsfjörður, Iceland, January 2017 23. Wantirna Caravan park, November 2017 24. Screenshot from www.thepark.me 25. Screenshot from Wantirna Residents Action Group Facebook page 26. Screenshot from video experiment for The Park, 2018 27. Video still from The Park, 2018 28. Video stills from The Park, 2018 29. Installation shots from Am I at home?, 2018 30. Am I at home? event, 2018 31. Free poems, Sedona Arizona, October 2018 viii ABSTRACT Documentary filmmaking has long been concerned with ‘voice’, a term used to speak both to how a film communicates as well as the contributions of those who participate in the film. However, there continues to be a paucity of attention in documentary studies to the strategies that documentarians employ to represent multiple voices while also ensuring that individual voices are heard. This PhD addresses the practice of negotiating the tension of multiple and individual voices by foregrounding documentary’s strategies for listening over those of speaking. Such a foregrounding has consequences for the practice and form, as well as for the politics of documentary. The research inquiry is developed through a series of documentary experiments which examine experiences of aloneness, through spatial configurations of interactive and multi-screen works, to a site-specific walk and finally, a polyvocal installation. The methodology is informed by critical understandings of the neoliberal subject as a socially and politically isolated figure, and also phenomenological accounts of listening as an embodied and relational experience. Alongside these theoretical reflections, there is a self-reflexive charting of the evolution of my practice from the initial experiments in eliciting participatory voices to the reconceptualisation of documentary as a space for listening.