Anthrovision, 5.1 | 2017, « Varia 5.1 » [Online], Online Since 30 July 2017, Connection on 25 September 2020

Anthrovision Vaneasa Online Journal

5.1 | 2017 Varia 5.1

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/2490 DOI: 10.4000/anthrovision.2490 ISSN: 2198-6754

Publisher VANEASA - Visual Anthropology Network of European Association of Social Anthropologists

Electronic reference Anthrovision, 5.1 | 2017, « Varia 5.1 » [Online], Online since 30 July 2017, connection on 25 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/2490 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ anthrovision.2490

This text was automatically generated on 25 September 2020.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Anthrovision Issue 5.1 Beate Engelbrecht

Software as Co-Teacher How Korsakow Disrupted an Ethnographic Film Program Torsten Näser and Franziska Weidle

The Colliding Worlds of Anthropology and Film-Ethnography A Dynamic Continuum Cristóbal Escobar

Embodied Representation: Audiovisual Media and Sensory Ethnography Lorenzo Ferrarini

How We Know Each Other Exploring the Bonds of Friendship Using Friendship Ethnography and Visual Ethnography Andrew Stevenson and Rebecca Lawthom

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Editorial Anthrovision Issue 5.1

Beate Engelbrecht

1 Dear reader,

2 after three issues with special thematic foci, AnthroVision publishes now another “varia” issue. Nonetheless, this issue concentrates on questions of methodology concerning ethnographic film, film ethnography, and visual ethnography.

3 In their article 'Software as Co-Teacher: How Korsakow Disrupted an Ethnographic Film Program' Torsten Näser and Franziska Weidle present their experiences of using Korsakow in teaching visual anthropology. They reflect critically on the co-constitution of technology and practice within the student research project’s particular “materiality of learning”. Cristóbal Escobar's article, 'The Colliding Worlds of Anthropology and Film-Ethnography' discusses three consecutive periods when the anthropology and film ethnography collide: Bronislaw Malinowski and Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North; the influence of Marcel Mauss on Jean Rouch’s cinéma-vérité; and the anthropology of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's engagement with Harvard's Sensory Ethnographic Lab’s film Leviathan. Lorenzo Ferrarini's article 'Embodied Representation: Audiovisual Media and Sensory Ethnography' takes up the perspective of sensory ethnography and reviews the work of Jean Rouch and Steven Feld, underlining how they developed specific recording technologies that allowed them to give to their media work an embodied character. Ferrarini then considers the relationship between sensory media and interaction with reference to the work of Merleau-Ponty, stressing how from a phenomenological perspective an embodied camera is always an interactive camera. Andrew Stevenson and Rebecca Lawthom's article 'How We Know Each Other: Exploring the Bonds of Friendship Using Friendship Ethnography and Visual Ethnography' shows how they use film and interviews to explore the practices that cement friendship bonds. Situating the research among friends and treating participants according to the ethics of friendship draws them closer to an understanding of the nature of their relationships.

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AUTHOR

BEATE ENGELBRECHT Director of Anthrovision

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Software as Co-Teacher How Korsakow Disrupted an Ethnographic Film Program

Torsten Näser and Franziska Weidle

We would like to thank our colleague Frauke Paech, who co-taught the project with us as well as the students of CVA 2015-17 for their trust and continuous involvement even after the project’s official completion.

Introduction (Franziska Weidle)

1 It is the first session of the academic year. The students have gathered around the big table in our conference room. The aim of this session, we announce, is to become acquainted with the Korsakow software from a viewer’s perspective. Their task is to engage with Florian Thalhofer’s Planet Galata (Turkey 2010), 1 an interactive online documentary authored in Korsakow, and critically reflect on their viewing experience based on a given set of questions. After some initial confusion and voiced opposition, the screens begin to flicker and the room becomes silent. About 30 minutes later, we switch the lights back on and start collecting the students’ reactions and evaluations on the whiteboard. The left-hand side of the mind map quickly fills up with negative aspects color-coded in blue. Stress, boredom, distraction, repetition and small-format are among the problems they identify. Above all, the main irritation appears to stem from the lack of structure, navigation and literacy. “Where does this film end?” and “Is this a film at all?” are questions that keep coming up during the ensuing discussion. It is only after providing further context on recent academic scholarship in the field of interactive documentary as well as reminding them of our discipline’s long debate on the issue of representation that the students gradually shift their attitudes towards what they have seen.

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Translated graphic depicting the students’ mind map of their initial encounter with a work authored in Korsakow, 17 May 2016.

Graphic by Franziska Weidle.

2 Documentary video formats published on the internet are often subject to a direct comparison with their cinematic counterparts, implying a hierarchical relationship between the two. In fact, new forms of expression are configured by previous technologies and their accompanying production and viewing conventions just as much as they facilitate different possibilities. In the contemporary discourse on interactive documentary (i-docs), scholars and practitioners of the field primarily highlight the potential of interactivity as distinguishing affordance 2 of digital media “to reconfigure the relationship between media producer, subject and audience at the heart of documentary”, as recently suggested by Mandy Rose (2017:7). On the same note, Sandra Gaudenzi and Judith Aston previously remarked that “interactivity is seen as means through which the viewer is positioned within the artefact itself, demanding him, or her, to play an active role in the negotiation of the ‘reality’ being conveyed through the i-doc” (2012:126).

3 Whether it is an interactive user interface, hypertextuality or algorithmic processing, producing documentary content in and with computational logics puts filmmakers in an odd position. They might find it liberating to mix the languages of documentary and computational media and divert from the pressures of cinematic conventions such as narrative or expository coherence. At the same time, however, this also requires them to depart from their sometimes implicit documentary schooling, including successive production phases and the notion of a single-authored, fixed outcome. In her analysis of current i-doc productions, Gaudenzi, for instance, pointed to the methodological tensions of merging design and storytelling workflows, which “go[es] beyond the practical adoption of new processes touching upon core beliefs of individual responsibilities and power structures” within multidisciplinary teams (2017:118).

4 Accommodating diverse perspectives and negotiating reality collaboratively as part of its representation is not just at the heart of i-docs but also resonates with some of the key points frequently discussed in cultural, social and visual anthropology. While the linearity of film and the types of montage it permits are doubtlessly helpful tools to

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structure complex encounters with socio-cultural phenomena, they are foreign constructs imposed on epistemic practices, which are characterized by a complex interplay of proximity and distance, the simultaneous experience of participation and observation (cf. Hess and Schwertl 2013:15). During the master course Curriculum Visual Anthropology (CVA) of 2015-17 at the Department of Cultural Anthropology/ European Ethnology in Göttingen, together with our colleague Frauke Paech we conceived our research project as an experiment to test the suitability of more open media practices for bridging the gap between fieldwork experience and interpretation. Thus, we integrated Korsakow – a “media software” (Manovich 2013:38) for authoring generative multilinear 3 audio-/visual works – into our ethnographic research project Bilder machen (making images) (2017).4

Project homepage

CVA 2015-17, Dept. of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, University of Goettingen.

5 As exemplified by the classroom situation described at the beginning of this paper, mixing the language of documentary films with that of computational media is, hence, often challenging not only to makers but also to viewers of such works (cf. Gantier and Labour 2017:101). Multimedia online productions “transform how users engage with materials” (Coover 2011:617): they require heightened attention, a different skill set and a new form of engagement with which documentary audiences might struggle. We can also observe a curious tension stemming from documentary and, in this context, ethnographic films’ ambiguous position among the conventions and demands of mainstream media culture on the one hand, and the long-term in-depth anthropological research that lies behind their often low-budgeted production, on the other. In this context, Roderick Coover critically remarks that

6 “[...] non-fiction visual research projects often take a lot of time and attention to make, and they often take plenty of time and attention to view as well. Many cannot be viewed in a single sitting, while others may require a combination of viewing, reading and/or other intellectual activity. As media converge, it therefore may be necessary to establish conditions by which once differing media are framed for reception and engagement” (2012:212).

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7 While resistance, frustration and disappointment were at the forefront of our students’ initial reception experience, finding an appropriate framework for reception and engagement was only one of the challenges we faced as teachers and students of Korsakow over the course of our project. Based on unsystematic fieldwork, this paper critically reflects on the lessons learned from bringing together established and emerging media technologies in the context of an ethnographic film program. Central questions include: which conflicts emerged in the process and what does the careful examination of this specific sociotechnical constellation tell us about the standards, values and ideologies underpinning representation strategies in ethnography? In relation to current debates on interactive documentary, practice theory and (audio-)visual research methods, this contribution explores the ongoing requirement of responding to the development of new technologies and the resulting redefinition of appropriate media forms such as ethnographic film. In the space between contemporary theoretical perspectives on ethnographic filmmaking and the specific hopes held by students that motivated them to choose this career path, we can observe considerable discrepancies. By supplementing often deductive and positing discourses with a position that is sensitive to situated media production and its cultural embedding, we seek to emphasize further the significance of such inconsistencies.

8 Searching for a suitable written format, we opted for an approach that might interrupt the conventional flow and style of academic texts in favor of representing the fragmented and polyvocal genesis of this project and paper. Thus, we will switch between our individual voices as teachers of CVA and complement this experiential dimension with discursive reflections from a more distanced point of view on ethnographic filmmaking as academics in the field. With this approach, we hope to excavate gradually the implicit conventions and habitus inscribed in this institutionalized media training and offer a methodology for how to engage productively with socio-material disruptions as epistemological points of friction.

CVA and Its Institutional Memory (Torsten Näser)

9 “This is a particularly challenging moment to work with images”, begins visual anthropologist Paolo Favero in one of his recent publications, and demonstrates how the multimodal, material and relational character of digital images can “become constitutive of new relations, engagements and knowledge” in the context of image- based ethnographic work (2017:275-276). Similarly, the more than thirty-year-old master program at the Department of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology in Göttingen mirrors shifting notions of image-making practices and their discursive and material entanglements. Moreover, the topic of image-making was also at the heart of the Korsakow project to be discussed in this paper, which is why we will dedicate the following paragraphs to a reflection upon CVA’s institutional memory as context and catalyst for the conception of this project and the challenges we encountered with Korsakow.

10 Co-initiated by Edmund Ballhaus, one of the most prominent critics of the time,5 CVA was founded as a counter draft to the dominant discourse surrounding images within the German-speaking visual anthropology of the mid-1980s. In response to the positivist notion of science and, following that, the restricted use of film postulated by IWF, the local Institute for Scientific Film, Ballhaus advocated for a conceptualization of

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film as analytical research outcome rather than as method for empirical data collection (1987:126). In addition, he saw films as independent scholarly endeavors that emerge out of and, as Ballhaus reified several years later, after the completion of an intensive phase of fieldwork (1995:25). These notions shaped CVA’s direction for years to come. Many CVA productions have combined observational methods with a shooting schedule approach and included interviews and forms of montage that depart from the naturalistic gesture of direct or observational cinema. Most of them have followed the ethos of the self-responsible anthropologist (cf. Rouch 2003, Ballhaus 1995) who autonomously conceptualizes, shoots, edits and supports the public screening of his or her film in a cinema-like setting.

11 Nowadays, the study program consists of a three-semester project dedicated to the theory and practice of ethnographic filmmaking. Students attending the program are also invited to do audiovisual work as an integral part of their master thesis. Participation in CVA is free of charge and addresses students who are interested in gaining basic methodological experiences in audiovisual anthropology.6 Without a doubt, CVA has changed since Ballhaus’ retirement in 2009. The strict demarcation between fieldwork and shooting has been transformed into a case dependent integrative methodology. The primacy of narrative monographic films conceptualized for the big screen has also been mitigated for the benefits of working with video more diversely.7 A discourse space rather than a “school”, CVA still functions as a “field of possibilities” (Foucault 2005:256). Against a mixed background of implicit knowledge and the aim of responding to dynamic and diversified international discourses, it still stands for a particular filmic and representational tradition within visual anthropology and its history is a significant part of its institutional memory, today.

12 For some time now, it has become common practice to determine a specific topic for each CVA project. Following the iconic turn (cf. Bachmann-Medick 2006:329-330) and contemporary perspectives on visual media (cf. Favero 2017), CVA 2015-17 was dedicated to the investigation of image creation processes in their broadened and increasingly diversifying ontologies and epistemologies. The purpose of this open approach was to tease out the different cultural and historical stratifications (cf. Bruhn 2009:12) as well as the resulting ambiguities inherent in the concept. Our aim was to combine equally established understandings of imagery as they are in connection with analog photography for instance, and digital forms, which often lack physical attachment to the empirical world (Belting 2001:38; 39) and “ask us to approach them beyond representation and indexicality” (Favero 2017:276). The CVA project from 2015 to 2017, however, preset not only the topic of image-making but also a specific perspective. According to contemporary approaches in visual studies (cf. Prinz and Reckwitz 2012), image productions are located within “complex, contextual, connotative entanglements and couplings of media, material and processes of production and mediation” (Leimgruber et al. 2013:253) (translated by T.N.). In line with anthropologist Cristina Grasseni and her concept of “skilled visions” (2010; 2011), we assumed that visions and the ways they take shape are influenced by situated processes of learning and training, which are embedded in multisensory practices (Grasseni 2010:4).

13 Understood as situated practices following specific and local rules of validity, the students formed groups of three to gather video material on different methods of image-making. In line with this overarching topic and perspective, they found

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protagonists that fitted the project’s conception well: a blind painter, solar system researchers producing graphics of the sun, an enamel artist or a fully automated apparatus for biometric photos. Rather than producing stand-alone ethnographic films, however, we asked them to experiment with an alternative audiovisual format that would incorporate hundreds of short video clips within one platform to mark coherences and differences among the various field sites. It was precisely this point when Korsakow entered the scene.

The Materiality of CVA 2015-17 – Introducing Korsakow (Franziska Weidle)

14 Although there is a considerable amount of research that examines technology as “means to social, psychological, or pedagogic ends”, Estrid Sørensen identifies a blind spot in these often still human-centered studies of education towards the “diverse other ways in which materials take part in social interaction” (2009:6). From the perspective of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT),8 materiality plays a central role in social processes such as the production of knowledge (cf. Latour and Woolgar 1986; Knorr Cetina 1999). Transferring this way of thinking to the educational research field, Sørensen regards learning “as a result of a symmetric interplay of humans and materials” (2009:5) and advocates for a “minimal methodology, which does not a priori define the role of technology in practice” (2009:28). On the contrary, this approach asks us to consider how learning materials participate in an unfolding situation, and what is achieved through this particular socio-material constellation in the process. In the same vein, ANT teaches us to study technology and its heterogeneous components in their continual and often conflicting states of becoming (cf. Law 2004; Venturini 2010).

15 In the case of our student project,, the Korsakow System came to disrupt and was disrupted by its introduction into the educational environment of CVA. As “relatively flexible system” (Sørensen 2009: 86) however, Korsakow defies simple definition. In some circumstances, it is a computer program for authoring interactive documentaries, commonly known as K-films. However, the works produced with Korsakow are anything but fixed and stable. Every K-film is unique from another but also in itself changes from one play-through to the next. Embedded in a web-based environment, every click repeatedly rearranges the given set of video shots and sequences, so-called “SNUs” (Smallest Narrative Units). Moreover, K-films differ notably in the various ways and contexts in which they have been conceived. Gradually diverging from what its inventor Florian Thalhofer originally had in mind, different practitioners have adopted different strategies to approach Korsakow’s constantly redeveloping affordances and constraints. Thus, offering an account of a default usage or stereotypical viewing experience would be unfruitful here. As described elsewhere (Weidle 2016), there are multiple perspectives on this rather “fluid technology” (de Laet and Mol 2000:225) and we can only learn to understand what it is by studying what it does within a situated practice.

16 Following Korsakow and its participation in the context of CVA, a number of factors had to fall into place before the object could become associated with this learning environment. After turning Korsakow into the primary object of my doctorate in 2014, the conceptualization of CVA 2015-17 was deeply affected by my research interests and the fieldwork conducted at the non/fictionLab, a research center located in the Media

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and Communications Department at RMIT University in Melbourne. Six months of participant observation, interviews and camera-ethnography had led to the realization that “keywords are the heart of what makes relations amongst the clips in Korsakow” (Miles, Korsakow Workshop, 16 December 2015) and their design demands distinct workflows. In a recursive back and forth of gathering material (often captured with the built-in camera of smartphones) and importing it into the application, my research participants would start by assigning simple keywords to their clips. When exporting projects into web-ready HTML-packages, Korsakow’s generative algorithm performs search inquiries based on these keywords. Each click organizes the otherwise disparate SNUs into different combinations, a process Seth Keen described as “connecting granules of video together into a web of relations” (2014:26). Watching the clips as they formed complex, multiple and variable assemblages on screen, then, would reveal rhythms and patterns that prompted further filming and gradually refined my participants’ keyword designs. 9

17 Thus, what came to matter about Korsakow in the context of CVA was pre-configured by this context just as much as it was shaped by the study program’s structure and conceptualization outlined above. When planning the project, Torsten and I were particularly interested in questions around knowledge representation in cultural and social anthropology. Following John Law’s notion of heterogeneous engineering (1989), 10 this interest formed one of the central connecting points between Korsakow’s technological features and our social activities. In line with the primary demands for more self-reflexive, polyphonic and evocative modes of representation, Korsakow’s “simultaneous multiplicity” (Miles 2014:209) appeared to offer an alternative to linear continuity and narrative coherence as default organizing principles of audiovisual media. We hoped that the interplay between the author as rule-maker, the algorithmic processing of the program and the viewers as interactors11 would allow for a multilinear arrangement of footage that could retain traces of its complicated origins. Furthermore, we believed Korsakow to be a suitable tool for our praxeographical approach on image-making in that it could accommodate large quantities of empirical data and, similar to computer-based qualitative data analysis, would enable us to code our material and find correspondences, themes and motifs among the disparate media assets. Finally yet importantly, as an off-the-shelf and low-cost authoring tool it made interactive media production easily accessible to ethnographic filmmakers who might lack sufficient web-design and programming skills.

18 Proceeding from this three-fold constellation of discursive, empirical and pragmatic concerns, many adjustments were necessary to turn Korsakow into a useful tool for our project. Most importantly, it involved the willingness to divert from these initial assumptions about Korsakow and its role. Besides rather foreseeable disconcertments, however, we did not anticipate that Korsakow would turn into a co-teacher for making, teaching and viewing ethnographic film. In the following paragraphs, we will trace the mutual co-constitution of Korsakow and our CVA project as it emerged in and through symmetrical interrelations of human, non-human, social and technical elements.

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Conflicts (Torsten Näser) and Strategies (Franziska Weidle) Between Tradition and Innovation

19 From our students’ initial reactions described in the beginning of this paper, a long and intense process of negotiation and modification was required before we could agree on a research design that promised to be fruitful. Not only Korsakow but the pre- determined framework of research perspective and topic had created constraints and inconsistencies from the outset of the project. In a back and forth movement similar to the workflow inspired by Korsakow, we will review central points of disruption throughout the course of the project that resulted in a modified filmmaking and teaching practice. While Torsten Näser will outline conflicts that arose from introducing Korsakow to the particular socio-material constellation of CVA (displayed in normal type), Franziska Weidle will discuss the respective coping strategy deployed (displayed in italics).

Becoming Flexible

20 The structure of the 3-semester-CVA program traditionally follows an idealized filming process to familiarize beginners with the steps needed to produce a film. By teaching basic concepts of ethnographic filmmaking such as the conventions of film language or the continuity system12 at the beginning of the course, we draw on a linear understanding of film without necessarily rendering it explicit. In this way, study programs and specifically those that have a long history and are taught regularly, reach a status of apparent naturalization even if continuously re-adjusted. As repeated speech acts, they have become embedded in discursive constellations of power (cf. Bublitz 2003:60-61). Ingrained in the organization of the program, their normalizations are reproduced in lectures, teaching materials, technical equipment and publications and, hence, cannot be deconstructed easily.

21 Ballhaus’ paper on film and fieldwork (1995) has been especially influential for CVA’s institutional memory. In this contribution, he critically examines the specificities of the fieldwork situation in relation to making a film and advocates for the completion of the research process before beginning to shoot (1995:25). Over the years, this postulation has given way to a case-by-case approach, which also led to a gradual interweaving of the previously separated field phases (cf. Eckardt and Näser 2014:280, 286). Nevertheless, the framework for making a film in the context of CVA is still a consecutive one, which Korsakow urged us to rethink.

22 During one of his Korsakow workshops at the non/fictionLab in 2015, new media scholar Adrian Miles pointed out common mistakes people would make when using the software. As a generative system, he cautioned the participants not to confuse it with a tool for building searchable databases characterized by navigational, branching tree structures. If you map out what the machine is going to do, he argued, there is no point in using the machine. In our filmed interview as well as in his teaching he emphasized the importance of developing the structure of a particular work with and through the respective tools:

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This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// 23 journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/2507

Video link: https://vimeo.com/korsakowresearch/commonmistakes

24 As a generative system, the structure of a K-film co-emerges through the algorithmic processing of the tool. Accordingly, we encouraged our students to move from a linear process of filmmaking towards a recursive one. This implied dissolving the clear demarcation between different production stages (fieldwork, shooting and editing) even further and advocating for an early introduction of the camera in the field. Through repeatedly importing, indexing and exporting rushes, we hoped students would use Korsakow’s keyword (or rule-) based procedurality for analyzing footage, generating new research questions and, thus, prompting further camera-led research.

25 We could not superimpose the recursive workflow studied at the non/fictionLab on the linearly structured film curriculum in Göttingen without further modification. Many students felt overwhelmed by the prospect of taking their camera equipment into the field without having outlined a proper shooting schedule before. Some also displayed hesitation because they feared the relationship to their protagonists was not established well enough. Another source for our students’ uncertainty and resistance stemmed from the concern that we would neglect the teaching of filmmaking skills the lesson plan had prominently identified as crucial. Thus, the majority of students still followed a rather traditional film production process delaying our actual work with Korsakow to the postproduction stage.

26 As a general strategy to counter these discrepancies, we remained flexible throughout the entire process. In addition to the broad range of image-making practices they could select, we facilitated a greater range of possibilities for working with audiovisual media. While it was our goal to realize a collective large-scale Korsakow project, we kept its structure open and, in addition, offered students the chance to use the same material for making short film portraits that could accompany the online platform. On a temporary basis, this prospect appeared to cater for the students’ ambition to author a linear narrative film suitable for festival submission in order to gain symbolic capital and establish themselves in the field. In practice, however, the workload and intensity of the Korsakow project quickly pushed this option into the background for most of them.

A Question of Perspective

27 CVA has traditionally favored linguistic and semiotic approaches, which is why not only the cultural phenomena under study but also the films about them are typically seen as texts (cf. Ballhaus 1995:17, 25, 26). Here, Clifford Geertz’s concept of thick description as contextual interpretation of social events and processes (1973:14-15) has become a key reference point for focusing on cultural expressions (cf. Näser 2014:124-125) and their mediations as “writing” (Herzfeld 2001: 25). Films that follow this cultural theory are understood as results of “processes of constructing meaning” (Ballhaus 2013:234-235; translated by T.N.). “As an academic product”, Ballhaus remarked, films “should explore a topic according to aspects selected in advance […], in order to reveal the sense and function of actions and events as well as their underlying values and social meanings” (2013:261; translated by T.N.). In response to the IWF and

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its preferences on material culture, focusing on human beings became one of the central claims, which, since then, has been reiterated empathically (cf. Ballhaus 2013:238) as constitutive for the films produced in the framework of CVA.

28 Inspired by ANT, the praxeological perspective adopted for our Korsakow project on the contrary, makes no significant difference between human beings and other material actors in a network and thus treats the interconnection of discursive and material components symmetrically (Knecht 2013:97). By placing emphasis on modes of observation and description (Knecht 2013:98), the praxeological approach, furthermore, “is clearly opposed to situating sociality and culture within the ‘inner life’ of the collective soul and its interpretation as a pure ‘system of representation’” (Reckwitz 2003:288, translated by T.N.). Outlined in this way, the expectations held by students regarding the, at least implicitly, prefigured mode of practice with film ran contrary to the conception of the project. The anticipated change in perspective could only be accomplished rather slowly. This became evident, for instance, in written elaborations where some of our students utilized biographical or psychoanalytical argumentation to refer repeatedly back to analytical concepts that go directly against the praxeological approach.

29 In order to reduce reservations regarding the project approach we decided to render it explicit within teaching units and their didactical conception. Rather than dedicating the collective viewing and discussion of footage, for instance, to one group at a time as is the usual practice in CVA, we reconceived these meetings as laboratory sessions where all of our students were asked to show short clips that responded to a specific assignment. In highly focused sessions as the one depicted in the photograph below, students could demonstrate their growing expertise for their individual fields whilst pursuing a collective aim by comparatively discussing the fragmentary video material in its praxeological dimensions. Following methods such as the principle of trial and error, which are typical for laboratory-like atmospheres, we analyzed the video material in connection with pre-established categories and were, thus, able to strengthen, differentiate, transform, generate or dismiss them in the process. In addition, we discussed our filming approaches with regard to the question whether or not they were corresponding to these categories.

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Visual lab session

Photo by Rüdiger Brandis

30 As a methodology common in the area of software industry and collaborative experience design (cf. Gaudenzi 2017:120; Linington 2017:137), lab models encourage an iterative project approach from the start, which helped us to further facilitate the recursive workflow inspired by Korsakow. In the context of ethnographic fieldwork, visual anthropologist Elisabeth Mohn also emphasized that the potentials of such visual labs would lie in the ascription of new meaning to video material: “A precondition of such an approach is to subordinate the material to the respective analytical strategy rather than stylizing it as an untouchable document of situation” (2002:185, translated by F.W.]. It was exactly this shift in focus, which was grounded in our praxeological approach that advanced from an initial source of conflict to a productive space for the experimentation with different media and modes of knowledge-making within a laboratory- like atmosphere.

Organizing Randomness

31 CVA’s understanding of ethnographic film has, for a long time, referred to the individuality of the filmmaker and his or her crucial role within this interpretative approach. By classifying his cultural analysis as “an elaborate venture” (1973:6), Geertz also configured and supported the widely referenced notion of (audio visual) ethnographers as actors capable of coping with this task.13 The conception of our project was opposed to this accentuation of the filmmaker’s individuality. When pursuing a praxeological approach (Knecht 2013:99), researchers and the reflexivity of their involvement in the field play a minor role. Moreover, it is also Korsakow and its affordances, which suggests shifting the focus away from the filmmaker and his or her authorial control.

32 One of the discrepancies between ethnographic film and web-based media production our students struggled with the most is the tension between open and fixed structures. In Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film Carl Plantinga drew attention to the fact that “no film can avoid formal structure all together” (1997:145). In contrast to expository or narrative structures, however, “open structures” would be “more episodic, meandering, and idiosyncratic

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than their formal counterparts” (1997:145). Since it does not need to adhere to specific requirements of conventions, Plantinga argues, an “[o]pen structure may be motivated in various ways, by the filmmaker’s associations while filming, by an anthropological experiment or a journey, or by pure chance” (1997:146). As a system facilitating multilinear media arrangements, Korsakow offered an alternative approach to editing footage into a causal storyline with a beginning, middle and end. At the same time, however, its invitation to openness also presented us with a major challenge. How could we free ourselves from a coherent ordering of events and still fulfill our role as interpretative researchers?

33 While the reasons for the resistance displayed by our students remained ambiguous at first, the significance of the filmmaker was revealed when initiating a roundtable discussion where some students had to play the role of Korsakow advocates and others that of critics. Central to the arguments of the latter group was the question of authorial responsibility, which would be undermined by Korsakow’s open- or “randomness”. Since the clips imported into the system are primarily characterized by briefness and fragmentation they can hardly be thought of as individual works. Combined in a shared pool of footage, these SNUs have no credits - a feature that normally indicates authorship (cf. Bruns 2012). Moreover, the aleatory associations enabled by Korsakow’s generative algorithm collided with the habitual field of the autonomous anthropologist cultivated in the CVA environment. By “posing a threat to the construction of epistemological authority in the voice of the [filming] ethnographer” (Favero 2017:285), the students struggled to surrender control in favor of facilitating multiple interpretations.

34 An accessible approach often utilized by Thalhofer and Miles for visualizing basic structures and developing keyword designs in Korsakow is the concept of clouds.

Basic Structure of a work authored in Korsakow

Adrian Miles, Korsakow Workshop, 16 December 2015.

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35 A cloud is a cluster consisting of different videos and/or images that share the same IN- and OUT-keywords. In accordance with the logic of procedural rulemaking or “indexing”, i.e. “using the storage capacity of computers to classify video for access and retrieval” (Keen 2014:16), keywords direct the algorithmic search. Following the “Korsakow Manual”, IN-keywords “can be thought of as ‘I am…’ statements” and OUT-keywords as “’I am looking for…’ statements” (2015). 14 Consequently, when editing clips in Korsakow’s SNU Editor, we assigned IN-keywords to specify the respective video content and OUT-keywords to define possible relations to other clips. As the graphic above indicates, at least one clip is required to have a different OUT-keyword that matches the IN-keyword of clips forming another cloud and, thus, functioning as “connector clip” to bridge the different clusters.

36 Thinking in clouds made Korsakow more manageable because it offered a middle ground between absolute randomness on the one hand and linear sequentiality on the other. Based on a common repertoire of terminologies and concepts derived from the preceding literature review, we began organizing our clips in a classificatory way.15 Starting from the more general dimensions of image-making practices, we deductively devised a list of categories ranging from image technology and carrier to atmospheres, bodies and skilled visions. We now shared an analytical grid for observing, filming and comparing different image-making practices. By merging these categories with the notion of keywording, we developed an online keyword log that was accessible to everyone during fieldwork. We encouraged students to examine a minimum of three categories that they deemed most significant. Since the keyword log also featured a category that focused on “subjects”, special emphasis could be placed on humans as image creators if necessary. Based on our students’ observations, the keyword log gradually developed further and ultimately facilitated a greater interweaving of inductive and deductive approaches, which also responded to the need of attending to the particularities of each field site more flexibly.

37 Although students delayed their actual work with Korsakow, the software’s distinctive materiality still unfolded agency over the course of filming by inspiring us to think through keywords, i.e. local concepts, as reference points for comparing different image-making practices with one another. Thus, in taking a comparative perspective, the log reintroduced an interpretative moment, which we then translated into a cloud-based structure for the collectively authored Korsakow project.

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Building clouds by translating categories into keywords

Screenshot by Franziska Weidle.

38 While clouds themselves would follow a linear logic, a recurring home page was introduced to ensure an open and thematically driven entry point. Drawing on Bordwell and Thompson’s categorical and associational non-narrative form (2010), our process of classification allowed us to act in a structured way. At the same time, this very structure was still open enough for Korsakow’s algorithm to unfold its agency over the arrangement of clouds and sub-clouds. In visual lab sessions during which we collectively viewed SNUs and test-clouds for certain categories, new cross-comparisons, juxtapositions and unexpected relations emerged that continuously drew our attention to the many similarities and differences between the image- making practices.

39 Our creative activity is not only a combination of theory and practice but also a synthesis of cinematic conventions and computational affordances. Coping with the tensions stemming from these, to some extent dialectically opposed, modes of knowledge-making resulted in a permanent balancing act. While thinking in clouds offered us a way to create categorical or rule-based coherence, which we combined with other Korsakow-specific affordances such as sound and interface design, the clips that became SNUs in the system were shot with professional camera equipment and had to be prepared outside of Korsakow with established video editing software. Via these clips, cinematic conventions re-entered our project.

40 Since the behaviour of SNUs was supposed to mirror our praxeological perspective, we encouraged close-ups and static, mainly single-shot, short clips as the main editing strategy. Interlinked in thematic sub-clouds, these would facilitate direct comparisons between practices while provoking curiosity by raising more questions than providing answers. However, in line with our interpretative role as ethnographers, we also agreed on other SNU formats: utilizing narrative coherence, longer sequences and trailers would contextualize the shorter clips and offer interpretations. These different organizing devices cross-fertilized each other. At the same time, they also presented a didactic strategy to respond to the students’ needs of acquiring basic

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filmmaking skills and rendering individual authorships more transparent. Nevertheless, they also generated new challenges such as the necessary standardization of different SNU types and the focus on a set of keywords for which enough students needed to produce content to create a useful basis of comparison.

Becoming an Ethnographic Curator

41 Although CVA has been experimenting for some time with alternative screening venues for its productions (cf. Näser 2013), the cinema is still the traditional choice for presenting films to an interested public. At the same time, this convention nurtures expectations of students attending courses in ethnographic filmmaking. As a place of imagination, the cinema is also closely tied to other implicit understandings such as screenings at festivals, which together form part of the dissemination arena of ethnographic films. In this constellation, the habitus of the documentary field as it has been outlined by Jacob Gross (2013) is realized paradigmatically. With their „individual handwritings” and “intellectual discourses” (Gross 2013:405, translated by T.N.), documentaries serve as objectified cultural capital, which can be accumulated at festivals (Gross 2013:402-405). Here, filmmakers play a significant role as authors of their works. Especially in the context of Q&A sessions, which are obligatory at many festivals, they can enact the conventionalized self-concept as educator and critic of the dominant political system (Gross 2013:403).

42 CVA 2015-17 contradicted this field logic. Instead of linear documentary films with an individual handwriting, we asked our students to produce SNUs - short clips allowing no authorial reference. Instead of working on formats closely associated with film festivals, the students were confronted with Korsakow and its presentation on computer, tablet or smartphone screens. The frictions discussed in this paper must be seen in light of these different formats of knowledge as well as their varying social embedding. Due to our aim of taking a new perspective on ethnographic filmmaking, it is possible that students interpreted our approach as an affront to a format’s identity, which led them to Göttingen in the first place. Similar to their own initial reception experience described at the beginning of this paper, questions of dissemination and user engagement re-occurred frequently throughout the course of our project. To what extent could we frame our Korsakow work in a way that it could still be understood as an authorial and meaningful ethnographic film?

43 Strategies regarding a framework for reception and engagement involved the design of an appropriate website as well as the planned presentation of the project in the context of an interactive live event.. The latter responds to our students’ aspiration for appearing as filmmakers in a cinema-like screening of the project. Designing plays a significant role when making web-based documentaries (cf. O’Flynn 2012:156; Keen 2014:33). Due to their unfixed nature and embeddedness in computational and hybrid “media ecologies” (Horst et al. 2010), Keen advocates for “the development of a different set of skills and knowledge compared to linear editing for television broadcast” (2014:76). Exploring the possibilities of “spatial montage” (Manovich 2001) as a way of utilizing the distinct affordances of computer screens and their Graphic User Interfaces is only one of many aspects that requires further investigation.16 Besides experimenting with different interface designs such as the ones for facilitating cross- comparisons and others for narration (see illustrations below), other methods included

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prototyping and beta testing to improve gradually the structural, narrative and graphic design of our project.

Interface for short SNUs

CVA 2015-17, Dept. of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, University of Goettingen.

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Interface for narrative SNUs

CVA 2015-17, Dept. of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, University of Goettingen

44 In the process of collaborating with potential interactors and their experience of our project, we broadened our understanding of filmmakers and viewers of digital ethnographic media. Following Kate Nash, the potential of a “categorical webdoc” does not so much lie in “the temporal ordering of elements” but rather in “the comparisons and associations the user is invited to make between the documentary’s elements” (2012:205). Facilitating such invitations and making them appealing and accessible to the interactors required us to work beyond the means of film language. In line with Favero’s recent observation, we had to become ethnographic curators: “In today’s digital landscapes, where multimodality and the incorporation of the viewing and co-authoring strategies of the spectators generate a set of innovative relations [...], the role, intentions and authoriality of the ethnographer assume new meaning. No longer directors or authors, ethnographers must start viewing themselves as curators of ethnographic content” (2017:284).

45 Through engaging with Korsakow and its affordances, questions of user experience design empowered the students in a novel way but also confronted them with a different set of requirements and responsibilities. While exploring the possibilities of classification and navigation, it was never certain whether or not interactors would and should become aware of the cloud-based logics behind the interface and, thus, the author's’ choices.

Concluding Remarks (Torsten Näser and Franziska Weidle)

46 Implicit forms of usage and milieu-specific standards evolve around every media format. Ethnographic film is no exception (see Crawford 1993, Näser 2014). As we move

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into educational institutions, such norms become clearly visible. In the case of teaching ethnographic filmmaking in an academic context, the respective media (or knowledge) format is likely to be reduced to the “common sense” of that particular social milieu. While students are frequently confronted with standardized methods and episteme, outside of university at film festivals, conferences or in publications experienced representatives of the discipline advocate for project-based and flexible usages of the format. One reason for placing special emphasis on the identity of ethnographic film might be seen in the ongoing need for justifying its existence. In terms of modularized courses which, generally, follow a rigid time plan, are fixed in study regulations and formulated in curricula, it appears rather likely that specific hegemonic and, thus, sedimented understanding of filmmaking in anthropology are continuously reproduced.

47 These fixations occur in every institutionalized training course (see Berger and Luckmann 1997:56-57), no matter which school of thought, trend or paradigm they follow. Whether intentional or not, changing the socio-technological constellation within a particular institutionalization can function as a disruptive “breaching experiment” (Garfinkel 2008) that reveals such underlying notions and related standardizations. In the case of CVA, which is historically oriented towards linear narrative films, our software-based approach to multilinear online documentary led to the depicted exposure of skilled practice. The master program’s conceptualization but also its socio-material reproduction was brought to the surface.

48 Korsakow and its affordances as well as the research perspective it suggested created the necessary requirements to repeatedly put up for negotiation the way ethnographic film is regularly taught in Göttingen. Since the project outlined in this paper initially proceeded according to the standard routine, situations of conflict at first appeared as more or less usual disruptions of seminars. Gradually recognizing and reflecting these situations as epistemological points of friction, however, enabled us to develop project- oriented solutions and take a meta-perspective on ethnographic film as medium of dissemination with specific formatting practices. Moreover, Korsakow encouraged us to scrutinize aspects of filmmaking that are rarely addressed in depth in methodological discussions such as social expectations associated with the media format ranging from specific practices and styles, to the autonomous filmmaker as dominant role model or specific contexts of presentation including film festivals that promise an appropriate display of oeuvre and author.

49 Based on these experiences, we recommend subjecting routinized processes of institutionalized film programs to disruptions. We regard it an important aspect of teaching to interrogate habitual procedures. This includes exposing curricula to influences that go beyond the usual methodological and epistemological adjustments but rather stimulate fundamental uncertainties in the production of knowledge. In our opinion, it is imperative to address these questions for an ongoing dialogue, “a central element of a reciprocal process which challenges existing norms, institutionalized practices and forms of knowledge” (Berkin and Kaltmeier 2012:13, translated by F.W.). Since dialogues require different positions, it is necessary to recreate continuously such experiences of difference.

50 In the context of (audio-)visual methodologies in anthropological research, our experiment with Korsakow has demonstrated the value of digital and web specific affordances within the intricate processes of interpreting and translating cultural

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experience. From narrative to rule-based coherence, clearly every topic requires a specific presentation format, which, again, produces different kinds of knowledge. As an analytical tool in the context of a praxeographical approach, Korsakow’s generative algorithm has proved to be a fruitful way of organizing empirical data and creating different pathways through the material. By retaining this multilinear arrangement, the software also made it possible to involve an interested public in open-ended associative evocations and multiple interpretations of the same content. The primary challenge was to develop a methodology that integrated different modes of expression in a way that we could live up to our role as interpretative researchers without undermining the algorithm’s agency. While online environments are always hybrid ones, ethnographers will need to advance their skills into different directions in order to tap the full potential of coexisting media forms and modes of representation.

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NOTES

1. See http://www.planetgalata.com/ (accessed 27 September 2017). 2. Coined by Donald Norman, affordance refers to “the relationship between the properties of an object and the agent’s capacity to determine how the object could possibly be used” (Norman 2013:10). 3. In contrast to film and its linear time-based sequence of images, hypertextual systems enable tempo-spatial connections that are multi- or nonlinear. In the context of hypertext theory, the term nonlinearity has been scrutinized primarily because it negates the role of linearity in hypertext (cf. Landow 1992; Aarseth 1997). Since temporal continuity is still a significant aspect of the way a work is perceived, we will adopt Seth Keen’s definition of multilinearity to describe structures “made in a system that facilitates multiple relations between separate granules. The system and the audience can link these separate granules, in the form of shots and sequences, into different combinations” (Keen 2014:11). 4. See: http://bildermachen.uni-goettingen.de/ (accessed 27 September 2017). 5. Among others, Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf also took a critical position towards the Göttingen-based Institute for Scientific Film (Institut für den wissenschaftlichen Film, IWF). (1987).

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6. The CVA program is complemented by several practical and theoretical courses of the Department’s BA and MA curricula: see http://www.kaee.uni-goettingen.de/cva/ (accessed 12 Jan. 2017). 7. One example was the CVA project of 2011-13 during which the students screened their films not only in a cinema but also in the local art center and other public spaces as integrated part of an artistic exhibition; see http://www.movements-of-migration.org/cms/ (accessed 14 Jan. 2017); and Näser (2015). 8. As a central approach in empirical studies of science, technology and society (known as Science and Technology Studies), ANT rests on the principle of general symmetry, i.e. the notion that the world consists of ever shifting networks of relations between human and nonhuman, material and semiotic agencies (cf. Latour 1999:174-215; Callon and Law 1997). Rather than providing a coherent explanatory framework or perspective, this concept (or non-theory) functions as a theoretical and methodological repertoire that aims at mapping and describing these relations. As such, it has been influential in promoting a view on materiality that seeks to underline its agency, not only as an equally important participant in the constitution of scientific knowledge but in a variety of empirical fields including educational practices. For a critical retrospection on the genesis of ANT, cf. Mol 2010. 9. For further reading on the specific practice with Korsakow at the non/fictionLab cf. Miles 2017; Brasier 2017 and Weidle 2016. 10. According to Law, technology can be described as a result of continuously aligning and realigning social activities and interests with technological features until they are connected in a relatively stable way. 11. A number of terminologies refer to the recipients of i-docs. Since “user” can denote both, the software user as well as the user of the work, we call the viewers “interactors” (Gifreu-Castells 2011; Murray 2012) to differentiate the two but also to highlight the dual role of the audience as assembling and simultaneously viewing an interactive work. 12. Moreover, media scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, for instance, show how the continuity system - a concept encompassing many of the conventional forms of filmic expression - correlates closely with a linear unfolding of the relations between sites and movements in film (2007:113-114). 13. Summarizing all of the texts discussing the filmmaker‘s person and her or his influence to the filmic process would exceed this article’s capacity. Referring to the most obvious concepts such as the autonomously filming anthropologist as well as the debates on reflexivity (cf. Husmann 1983:102-103; Ballhaus 1995:14; Ruby 2000:151-152; Rouch 2003:87; MacDougall 2006:26-27) should be sufficient to illustrate the vast extent this field of argumentation has reached. 14. See: http://korsakow5.korsakow.org/learn/manual/ (accessed 15 March 2017). 15. This approach is linked closely to grounded theory and its method of theoretical coding. Due to the focus on pedagogy here, a more in depth comparison between Korsakow and software for qualitative data analysis such as atlas.ti or MAXQDA will be the topic of another paper. As an example for other ethnographic approaches to Korsakow’s keywording principle, cf. Walter (2014) and his co-authored film On the Road with Maruch (2008), which he turned into an interactive multimedia installation with the help of Korsakow. For an example in the documentary context, cf. Seth Keen (2014) who utilized classification and indexing processes for structuring material in his PhD project. 16. For a discussion of the potential of “scrolling environments” in documentary representations, see Coover 2011. For spatial montage in the context of ethnography, see Aston 2010.

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ABSTRACTS

When new technologies are introduced to an established film program, not only students but also teachers face a series of chances and challenges. In the masters course Curriculum Visual Anthropology (CVA) of 2015-17 at Göttingen’s Department of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, it was the Korsakow System with its particular affordances and constraints that stirred things up significantly. The premise of this paper is to reflect critically on the co- constitution of technology and practice within the student research project’s particular “materiality of learning” (Sørensen 2009). As a result of disrupting the “skilled visions” (Grasseni 2010) of ethnographic filmmaking, we argue, implicit conventions and inscribed ideologies of institutionalized trainings are brought to the surface.

Quand les nouvelles technologies sont introduites dans un programme institutionnalisé d'enseignement du film, ce sont tant les élèves que les professeurs qui doivent faire face aux nouvelles opportunités ainsi qu'aux nouveaux défis offerts par ces technologies. A l'université de Göttingen, entre 2015-2017 dans le cours de maîtrise dédié à l'anthropologie visuelle, au sein du département d'anthropologie culturelle et d'ethnologie européenne, ce fut les potentialités et les contraintes spécifiques du système Korsakow qui ont clairement fait bouger la situation. Le but de cet article vise à apporter une réflexion critique sur la co-constitution d'une technique et d'une pratique avec le projet de recherche des étudiants consacré à la "matérialité de l'apprentissage "(Sørensen 2009). Comme le résultat fut de perturber "les visions expertes" (Grasseni 2010) du film ethnographique, nous démontrons que les conventions implicites et les idéologies sous jacentes aux formations institutionnalisées se sont révélées.

Cuando se introducen nuevas tecnologías en un programa de cine ya establecido, no sólo los estudiantes sino también los profesores se enfrentan a una serie de oportunidades y retos. En el curso de master de Antropología Visual (CVA) de 2015-17 del Departamento de Antropología Cultural / Etnología Europea de Göttingen, fue el Sistema Korsakow –con sus particularidades y limitaciones– que puso estas cuestiones sobre la mesa de manera significativa. La premisa de este artículo es reflexionar críticamente sobre la co-constitución de la tecnología y la práctica dentro de la "materialidad del aprendizaje" particular del proyecto de investigación del estudiante (Sørensen 2009). Argumentamos que, con la interrupción de las "visiones entrenadas" (Grasseni 2010) del cine etnográfico las convenciones implícitas y las ideologías inscriptas de los procesos de aprendizaje institucionalizados salen a la superficie.

INDEX

Keywords: ethnographic film, digital media, teaching methodology, Korsakow Mots-clés: film ethnographic, média numérique, méthode d'enseignement, Korsakow Palabras claves: cine etnográfico, media digital, enseñar metodología, Korsakow

AUTHORS

TORSTEN NÄSER University of Goettingen, Dept. of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology

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Dr. Torsten Näser is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at the University of Goettingen in Germany, where he coordinates and teaches the CVA masters program. Furthermore, he is the spokesperson of the working group “Film and Audio Visual Anthropology” within the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (dgv) and member of GIEFF e.V., an association that organizes an ethnographic film festival every two years. His PhD project focused on the discursive differences between written and filmic ethnographic practices. His research interests and courses comprise various aspects of (ethnographic) film, photography, media anthropology and visual studies. [email protected]

FRANZISKA WEIDLE University of Goettingen, Dept. of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology Franziska Weidle is a PhD candidate at the Department of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at the University of Goettingen in Germany. Furthermore, she is a research fellow at the German Research Foundation (DFG) Training Group “Literature and Dissemination of Literature in the Digital Age”. Her research interests involve installation, filmmaking, photography and new media as forms of ethnographic knowledge production and dissemination. In her PhD project, she focuses on the role of software in contemporary documentary practices. From 2015 to 2016, she was a visiting research scholar at RMIT University’s non/fictionLab where she co-founded the Docuverse Group (http://nonfictionlab.net.au/t/docuverse/). [email protected]

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The Colliding Worlds of Anthropology and Film- Ethnography A Dynamic Continuum

Cristóbal Escobar

Introduction: The communal Practice of Anthropology and Film Ethnography

1 In 1977, while reviewing a film about East African people, P.T.W. Baxter stated that anthropology and film ethnography were incompatible, because “they fundamentally differ in methods and aims.” (In Taylor 1996: 64) On this occasion, as Lucien Taylor suggests in his article Iconophobia: How anthropology lost it at the movies, Baxter argued that each discipline seeks quite different aspects of truth and utilises different means of stitching scraps of culture together creatively. To Baxter, whereas anthropology is detached and open-minded, film is anything but: “Substituting a single glass lens for our two human eyes is imperious and monocular; its beauty is distorting; it tries to simplify and disarm, as well as to impose.” (1996: 64)

2 A decade later, as Taylor continues to argue, Maurice Bloch not only declared that he is “not very interested” in ethnographic films, but more bellicosely that “he can hardly bear to watch them at all.” (1996: 64) Bloch states that if ethnographic films must be made at all, they should be made with a thesis component. For him, textuality itself, and textuality alone is the only means to legitimate a serious visual anthropological endeavour. Visuality, on the other hand, becomes merely ancillary, illustrative rather than constitutive of anthropological knowledge.

3 In the same vein, the anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup has continued to defend the written primacy of the discipline to combat photographic and audiovisual representations of a given culture. In her article Anthropological visions: some notes on visual and textual authority, Hastrup places a whole series of oppositions between films

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and texts, seeking to qualify the difference between visual and textual power in anthropology. On the one hand, she argues that film is only capable of producing a “thin” description of happenings. Text, on the contrary, is able to fabricate a “thick” description of an event, which is already a happening invested with cultural significance. In her words: “While a thin description may capture forms, it cannot of itself convey implicit meaning. Forms are culturally meaningless when studied independently of local meaning relations and contemporary conventions of representation.” (1992: 10) The idea then is that while a happening is an objective occurrence viewed from afar, an event is embedded with first person subjectivity and narrated with perspective. Thus, only writing, as Hastrup suggests, can evoke the existential fabric of the place to someone who wasn’t there.

4 Baxter, Bloch and Hastrup take films as an unquestionably lower epistemological production if compared to written texts. Moving images do not seem to be of cultural relevance in the practice of anthropology here. For them, the image and its soundtrack remain as an inferior manifestation of the idea; audio-vision is still an accessory attached to the delights of representation while text guarantees the meaning.

5 Contrary to their belief, I do not see why film cannot be constitutive of anthropological knowledge. On the one hand, our vision, as cinema itself, constantly and literally frames the world; it comes naturally equipped with focus -and losing focus, depth of field, left and right edges, top and bottom limits. On the other hand, also our ears, as film’s acoustic surroundings, ensure the embodiment of visual perception, because we only see in one framed and flat direction, whereas hearing is always three-dimensional. Borrowing Marshall McLuhan’s expression, film becomes an enlargement of our own physical ability to see and hear the world.

6 Rather than highlighting discordances between the written and the audiovisual event, I propose to take the worlds of anthropology and film ethnography as an interdisciplinary field that shares a community of practice, what Wenger et al. define as “a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.” (In Pink 2006: 4) In this line, I state that the interplay has been historically dynamic and continuous. Parallel preoccupations have governed the practice, concerns and viewpoints of anthropology and film ethnography. They share a common body of knowledge that frames, in different periods of time and space, similar assumptions about a given Other. The dynamic continuum thus perceived highlights three consecutive periods across anthropology and film ethnography, starting from the early decades of the twentieth century and concluding with current ethnographic practices. The first moment deals with Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (USA, 1922) and the work of Bronislaw Malinowski who, among other anthropologists, was transforming the discipline from the nineteenth century’s natural science outlook to the twentieth century’s humanistic attitude. I argue that Flaherty’s film illustrates, in many respects, the general fieldwork schema proposed by Malinowski to record the life of native communities more accurately. It was in this period when Malinowski and Flaherty established what would become the conventional subject and the methodological schema for anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking.

7 The second moment is a transitional phase in the history of anthropology and film ethnography. I focus on the French school which, by the 1940s began to declare a radical sense of doubt about scientific pretentions of objectivity and the methodologies

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employed by previous anthropologists. Here I explore the connections between the writings of Marcel Mauss and his influence in Jean Rouch’s cinéma-vérité. For the former, it would be an illusion to state that anthropology could reveal the ultimate “truth” or “reality” of a given culture. Mauss constantly critiqued both the relative incomplexity of primitive thought in contrast to modern rationality and the pretensions of scientific objectivity as a transparent practice. This epistemology sustained Rouch’s cinematography with a couple of basic principles: that reality is accessible to knowledge only in partial form and that access to this reality involves poetry -the sensual- as much as science -the rational.

8 Lastly, the third moment examines the sensory turn experienced across anthropology and film ethnography at the gates of the new millennium. In this section I introduce the anthropology of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, a Brazilian social anthropologist who shows that what falls under the domain of “human” relations for Amazonian people is so broad -animals, plants, spirits are all endorsed with agency- that modern distinctions between nature and culture, or animals and humans are proclaimed to be useless. As a cinematic peer to this philosophy, I review the audiovisual works of the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) of Harvard University. They support innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography that explore new bodily practices to account for more sensorial and embodied perceptions of the environment. The focus is on SEL’s critically acclaimed film Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor, Lucien and Véréna Paravel 2012), which demonstrates how in film-ethnographic practice the question of “the Other” has been framed with inadequate sophistication. Leviathan is based on SEL’s characteristic bodily approach to filmmaking, which adopts a highly sensorial form of personal expression. I claim that it is through its post-humanistic approach to mediated reality that the film meets the marked dimension of Amazonian people on multiple referents by portraying bodies as primary conductors of perspective.

Nanook of the North

Screenshot A ﬁlm by Robert Flaherty, USA 1922

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Malinowski’s Argonauts and Flaherty’s Nanook

9 As the British documentary movement was developing during the early decades of the twentieth century, the possibility that its two pioneer figures would one day work together seemed increasingly likely. It also seemed inevitable that they would clash. John Grierson’s belief in industrial progress and socially purposive attempts to depict workers as machines contrasted Robert Flaherty’s feeling for individual achievement and observational style. In fact, at the time when Grierson and Flaherty were working together on Industrial Britain (Flaherty 1931) Grierson declared that: [Flaherty’s] flair for the old crafts and the old craftsmen was superb, and there will never be shooting of that kind to compare with; but he simply could not bend to the conception of those other species of craftsmanship which go with modern industry and modern organizations. (Grierson 1992: 91)

10 Flaherty’s approach to film was primarily that of an explorer. With a flair for the old and the exotic, he used the camera to record unfamiliar territories. In his most notable film, Nanook of the North he wanted to depict the life of Inuit people in order to show in Europe how life was “for a typical Eskimo and his family” (Flaherty 1969: 216). Like the ethnographers of his time, Flaherty regarded native people as primitive versions of what was to become modern civilizations, a paradigm locked in the two-sided “hot and cold” societies that Levi-Strauss (1974) refers to in Structural Anthropology.

11 Flaherty was a mining engineer and had lived among the Hudson Bay Eskimo for much of the decade before embarking on the film. He was convinced that living for a long time among his subjects would allow him to know them well enough in order to make a documentary faithful to their lives. However, Flaherty’s admiration towards Inuit community not only made himself surrender to the foreign lifestyle; Nanook of the North also portrays his harsh colonization of the Eskimo’s environment by domesticating all its strange domains. As suggested by William Rothman (1998) in The Filmmaker as Hunter: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, Flaherty did not seem to have any reservations about modifying reality, staging aspects of the seal hunt1, the Inuit’s family structure2, or telling us Nanook and his family are on the brink of starvation even though Flaherty is there with plenty of provisions. As such, the filmmaker sets out to convince the viewer that Nanook is a fine provider by demonstrating his prowess at hunting walrus, building igloos and harpooning seals.3

12 During the same period, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski was radically changing the identity of the discipline. Shifting from the methodological conventions of the nineteenth century, Malinowski - and his peers W.H.R. Rivers, Franz Boas and Alfred Kroeber - were transforming anthropology from its previous natural science outlook to a new humanistic enterprise. Malinowski’s aim, similar to Flaherty’s, was to understand and translate the “raw” societies to a common - western - language. Published in 1922, his Argonauts of the Western Pacific serves as an illustrative anthropological counter-part of Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. Malinowski’s impulse to reflect the natives’ way of life by decoding their cultural practices outside their area of origin is clearly seen in the distinction he makes between the view of actors -natives- and the interpretation of the analyst -anthropologist. In reference to the Kula ring in the Trobriand Islands, Malinowski declares: It must be remembered that what appears to us an extensive, complicated, and yet well-ordered institution is the outcome of so many doings and pursuits, carried on by savages, who have no laws or aims or charters definitely laid down. They have

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no knowledge of the total outline of any of their social structure (...) Not even the most intelligent native has any clear idea of the Kula as a big, organised social construction (...) The integration of all the details observed, the achievement of a sociological synthesis of all the various, relevant symptoms, is the task of the Ethnographer (...) The Ethnographer has to construct the picture of the big institution, very much as the physicist constructs his theory from the experimental data, which always have been within reach of everybody, but needed a consistent interpretation. (2001: 83-84)

13 The passage in the Argonauts of the Western Pacific as much as the scenes in Nanook of the North show the common practice employed by Malinowski and Flaherty to represent the “truth” of the natives as “the anthropologist and the filmmaker saw it”. However, and taking into account the more humanistic side of their project, even when Flaherty transformed Nanook and his family into fictionalized actors, he nonetheless actively collaborated with them to a degree that is still rare today. Nanook of the North is still considered a seminal contribution for the film ethnographic tradition. It is a pioneering work that helped to establish the form of observational documentary by being shot entirely on location, with no actors. Besides, Flaherty also showed more interest in the lives of native people than probably any other western documentary filmmaker before him. As Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor suggest in Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos, Flaherty screened some of the footage for his subjects, eliciting their feedback and suggestions for future scenes that they could film. (Barbash and Taylor 1997) Such interactive performance was an inspiration to Jean Rouch, who, as we will see shortly, coined the concept of “shared anthropology”.

14 In this vein, Flaherty’s concern to develop scenes in collaboration with his subjects was methodologically comparable to Malinowski’s anthropology based on the “documentation of concrete evidence and the imponderabilia of everyday life.” (In Marks 1995: 340) In his Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski stated a general scheme for anthropological fieldwork, one which should collect “characteristic narratives, typical utterances, items of folk-lore and magical formulae. [This goal was] to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.” (1922: 24-25) As such, Flaherty shared with Malinowski, to a remarkable degree, the convention that cultural practice makes sense in terms of the system in which it occurs. Both presented the native’s daily scenes in a way that their internal logic will become apparent for the external eye. In Malinowski’s words: “Field work consists only and exclusively in the interpretation of the chaotic social reality.” (1922: 238).

15 In retrospect, Nanook of the North as much as the Argonauts of the Western Pacific transforms the break between the west and the non-west into a rift between culture and nature –or harmony and chaos. In both cases there is a borderline between the “civilized land” and “the wilderness”, a frontier underlying divisions such as the metropolitan versus the rustic, the settler versus the native, the law of the book versus the law of the harpoon. In short, the analyst-explorer versus the hunter-native. Therefore, if Malinowski who constantly staged and affirmed a demarcation line between the west and the native’s land, invented modern ethnography, then we should not hesitate to affirm that Flaherty invented ethnographic film.

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The Anthropological Teachings of Marcel Mauss and Jean Rouch’s cinéma vérité

Jaguar

Screenshot SOURCE: https://www.filmlinc.org/films/jaguar/ right owner http://www.filmsdujeudi.com/fr/catalogue-film-jaguar-DJAGU01.html A film by Jean Rouch, France 1967

16 In the decades following the publication of Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski’s conventions of participant observation for ethnographic fieldwork became widespread in anthropology. Ethnographic analysis started to focus more on the meaning of particular actions rather than providing an overview of broad-scale societal patterns. Similarly, film footage had also begun to be considered a more important medium for scientific research. The attractiveness of ethnographic documentary within anthropology was now enhanced by the development of a film technology which towards the 1950’s allowed ethnographers to record footage where it had once been impossible. As such, the financial and technical efforts of Flaherty in making Nanook of the North were overcome by the advance of lightweight cameras and portable sync- sound equipment, thus allowing filmmakers to record social actions at a level of detail that any ethnographer could hardly match.

17 Around the same period, connections between anthropology and film ethnography were also coming closer together in France. Appointed as the General Secretary of the Comité International du Film Ethnographique et Sociologique in 1952, Jean Rouch aimed to establish “links between the human sciences, and the cinematographic art, both from the point of view of the development of scientific research and for the expansion of the art of the motion picture.” (In Eaton 1979: 4) Considered as one of the pioneers of visual anthropology, Jean Rouch used the camera as a recording instrument to document everyday life of different regions in Africa. For him, visual anthropology was a highly observational practice that aimed not to perform a wide description of everything, but to record “a close identification of one technique or ritual.” (Rouch 1995: 62).

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18 Rouch also coined for the first time the term cinéma vérité -or truthful cinema- to adopt a deeply observational style of filmmaking. His call was for a more participatory documentary style based on the assumption that ethnographic enquiry could never be objective. Arguably, his purpose was to radically renovate the documentary episteme and make a new type of reality emerge: Objectivity consists in inserting what one knows into what one films, inserting oneself with a tool which will provoke the emergence of a certain reality (...) When I have a camera and a microphone I'm not my usual self, I'm in a strange state, in a cine-transe. This is the objectivity one can expect, being perfectly conscious that the camera is there and that people know it. From that moment we live in an audiovisual galaxy; a new truth emerges, cinéma-vérité, which has nothing to do with normal reality. (Rouch 1978: 55)

19 Rouch was taught, among others, by Marcel Mauss, the founding figure of social anthropology. As Ruben Caixeta de Queiroz (2012) suggests in his article Between the sensible and the intelligible, Mauss had a great influence in almost every branch of French anthropology, going from those of a more intellectualist tendency -like George Bataille and Claude Levi-Strauss- to those more experimentalists and artistic in nature, such as Jean Rouch and Germaine Dieterlen. As a matter of fact, the two latter figures found in audiovisual recordings a new means of artistic expression of Maussian anthropology in order to problematize the hegemony of the West.

20 In their audiovisual ethnographies on the Dogon and the Bambara in Africa during the 1940’s and the 1950’s, Rouch and Dieterlen intended to demonstrate the complex nature of ceremonies and rituals performed by the Ogotemmêli people. According to them, the events of the Dogon, based on an oral archaic tradition, performed functions akin to the major written texts of western metaphysics, religion and literature, but in a way that “was unique to the Ogotemmêli world’s vision.” (2012: 207) As Marcel Griaule also suggests, the precautions and respect shown by the filmmakers for the native knowledge was faithful to the principle that “the local cosmological system was so complex that it was on a par with western philosophy.” (1965: 1)

21 Rouch’s conception of reality as multiple, subjective and diverse is clearly influenced by Mauss’ critique of the relative incomplexity of primitive –magical- thought in opposition to western –modern- rationality and its pretensions of scientific objectivity as a transparent practice. In his work Theory of Magic, Mauss located modern science precisely in the subjective foundations of magical thought. In magic, he argues, there are officers, representations and actions. The performers -who can be shamans, alchemists, doctors, and astrologers, must give great importance to knowledge and its concerns in understanding nature. This is because “it is only by systematic means to possess the world that the officer can become a true magician.” (2001: 176) On the other hand, magical actions are only accomplished if the whole community believes in the efficacy of the rite performed, so it is only via the consent of the public opinion that shamanic actions can acquire symbolic significance. In short, what really makes magical rites eminently effective is belief, and it is precisely by doing things -creating a reality - that magic can be recognizable as such.

22 For Mauss then, the logic of mythic thought becomes as fully rigorous as that of the moderns. In his words: “magic served science as much as magicians served scholars.” (2001: 176)4 This also implies that, as an essentially subjective practice, it is in both universes that the old alchemist’s mainspring knowledge is power becomes a major concern. Hence, in the light of this paradigmatic shift, subjectivity –knowledge as

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belief- comes to mean that there is constantly something of the real or the imaginary that remains unknown and inaccessible to those who try to apprehend it. Such Maussian approach to reality has been explicitly declared by Rouch. In one interview he declares: Now the human sciences are something very specific. As Marcel Mauss said, the observer inevitably has, by definition, a perturbing role. Clearly the fact of speaking to people perturbs yourself and the others. From the moment when you interview me, you are no longer the same and I am no longer the same. (Rouch 1981)

23 Many of Rouch’s films had scientific purposes. Through the camera, he intended to describe the material fabric of rites of foreign cultures more accurately. However, even in his most realistic films - notably the series Sigui from 1966 to 1973 - the access to the raw material has always involved poetry -the sensorial- as much as science -the rational. According to him, and following Mauss’ suggestion to introduce films into ethnographic research5, cinema allowed for an examination of the more prosaic aspects of social life, that is to say, its material side, the conjunction of the lived with experience.

24 Therefore, if we follow Rouch’s definition of “shared anthropology” given before (as the close identification of one technique or ritual), then the access to reality is somehow incomplete if scientific knowledge does not involve the senses as much as the rational. This is for him, and as we will see shortly for SEL’s bodily praxis too, the point of differentiation between written and (audio) visual anthropology: Good anthropology is not a wide description of everything, but a close identification of one technique or ritual. The rituals are supposed to be dramatic. They are creations of the people who want them to be interesting and exciting. (...) What you can't get in writing is the drama of the ritual. Writing can't have that effect. That is the whole point of visual anthropology. (Rouch 1978: 4)

25 As such, his cinéma vérité tried to offer a new possibility to show people and places in as unmodified a state as possible. However, it would be an illusion to state that his ethnographies can reveal the “ultimate truth” of reality. In Rouch’s project we are not asked to be the observers of an event, but rather the observers of an observation of an event. As an essentially subjective practice, “pure ethnography” is no longer possible, because films are everything the filmmaker shows by his/her methods and by his/her points of view. Hence, in cinéma vérité, ethnography becomes a very specific signifying practice that expresses reality with reality, or more precisely, a language that duplicates reality.

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics and Sensory Ethnography Lab’s Leviathan

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Leviathan

Screenshot SOURCE: http://www.cinemaguild.com/theatrical/leviathan_press.htm A Film by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, USA, 2012

26 Cannibal Metaphysics, a recent ethnographic work on Amerindian people by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, lands right at the beginning of the new millennium, a moment of epistemological earthquake for modern thought. The shift is what post structuralist theorists are calling “the ontological turn” in western history. Viveiros de Castro’s annotations on Amerindian cosmology have made significant contributions to a more recent theoretical programme underpinning the dichotomies of modernity to develop more sensorial understandings of possible worlds. As a cinematic peer to this philosophy, the film Leviathan, from the Sensory Ethnography Lab of Harvard University (SEL) explores new bodily practices to record material life from an optical reality that is not strictly centred on human form. As I will illustrate in what follows, it is in both cases where bodies become primary conductors of agency and perspective, hence, taking a new point of departure in regards to the twentieth century’s anthropological episteme.

27 Under his theory on perspectivism, Viveiros de Castro puts forward a pluralist ontology that helps to discover what a point of view is for the bearer of the point of view. For him, the world presented by the indigenous in the Amazonas implies that in order to embrace a multiplicity of agencies one is required to live -and believe- in a place inhabited by a wide range of subjective agents. Araweté’s universe includes-but is not limited to- animals, plants, gods, objects, the dead, and the humans; all living in intense proximity and interrelatedness with one another. These people, like animals, objects and plants alike, are all equipped with the same general ensemble of perceptive and cognitive dispositions. For as Deleuze would say, in Amazonas there are no points of view on things, since things are themselves points of view.

28 In a thought-world as different as the Amerindian, what really makes multiple perspectives equally valid is the common condition of species, that is to say, their shared status of personhood. According to the anthropologist, every relatable entity is conceived as having, whatever its bodily form, a soul of a human character, and that all

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beings thus perceive themselves as humans. Jaguars, for example, are thought to see themselves as humans, to see humans as human prey, and their own food as that of humans. In Viveiros de Castro’s view, all beings see and represent the world in the same way: “their worlds revolve around hunting, war, food, fishing, initiation rites, shamans, and spirits”. (2014: 71) But what changes among them is the world they see. For the anthropologist, it is the things other species see when they see them like we do what is different: “what we take for blood, jaguars see as beer; what humans perceive as a mud puddle becomes a grand ceremonial house when viewed by tapirs.” (2014: 71)

29 Consequently, successfully negotiating one’s relations with other species requires adopting their perspectives. Amerindian shamans for example, in order to understand how other entities behave and see the environment, must abduct their agencies and become their corporeality, what Guimarâes Rosa calls “the who of things.” (In Viveiros de Castro 2014: 61) Since to “know” is to “personify” for the indigenous, then shamans are the ones who capture the point of view of what should be known, or rather, the one whom should be known.

30 In his text Whose Cosmos, Which Cosmopolitics? Bruno Latour also recalls the native’s emphasis on the body as described. Latour revisits the old disputatio in Valladolid that Spaniards held in order to decide whether or not Amerindians had souls susceptible of being saved. The issue back then was to determine whether the natives had enough “soul” and “reason” to be taken as part of the human kingdom. What interests us today, however, is that despite the conquistadors’ controversy, also in the Amazonas there was a relevant claim to make. As stressed by Latour, their problem was not to decide whether Spaniards had souls, but rather if they had bodies, because for the Arawaté entities all have souls and their souls are all the same: “What makes them differ is that their bodies differ, and it is bodies what give souls their contradictory perspectives.” (2004: 452) Terms reversed, Amerindian views of the world are indeed multiple, heterogeneous and open to different interpretations, precisely because their scientific premises and procedures are determined not by metaphysical categories, but by corporeal experiments: bodies are there the structure of life’s perceptive and cognitive dispositions.

31 This philosophy based on interspecies perspectivism arrives as an ontology -or rather, various ontologies- that reverses not only the western relation with its non-western Other, but more radically, all the terms of its long metaphysical dualism. What kind of lesson could film ethnography take from Amerindian’s views of the world? If anthropology and film ethnography have walked side by side along the twentieth century, shouldn’t the audiovisual medium also be transformed into a similar mode of existence?

32 Post human cinema, alike Amerindian belief, presumes exactly a gaze which sees from an abnormal angle; that of a point of view from a nonhuman eye. It is a filmmaking style that tries to break with the systemic boundaries of cinema’s traditional distance by presenting an acentred system in which moving images become multiple referents; a structure where things vary in relation to one another. The audiovisual works produced by the SEL of Harvard University are in many respects an ethnographic mediation of such post-humanistic approach to visual culture.

33 As stated on the website, SEL harnesses perspectives “drawn from the human sciences, the arts, and the humanities [aiming] to support innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography, with original nonfiction media practices that explore the bodily

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praxis and affective fabric of human existence.”6 Lucien Castaing-Taylor established the lab in 2006 as a collaboration space between the departments of anthropology and visual studies at Harvard University. Since then, the aim has been to instigate a wide range of audiovisual productions, ranging from video installations to sync-sound films by anthropologists-artists.

34 According to SEL’s approach to reality, moving images are derived from the body. For its directors, bodily instincts have a primary function to dictate the action of what they film. Véréna Parave, co-author of Leviathan, declared during one interview that most of the time she does not have to see what she films, because “all what is shot comes from the sensual body.” (Parave and Castaing-Taylor, 2012) Such commitment to the corporeal also helps to restore part of the autonomy that viewers have lost in interpreting mediated reality. Leviathan for example, keeps authorial intervention to its minimum by adopting a highly observational and interactive style of filmmaking. It offers an aesthetic that favours long takes, close-ups, synchronous speech and a tempo faithful to the rhythms of real life –thus, discouraging cuts, re-enacting and interviewing. As explained by Castaing-Taylor, in this film the subjects “are less mutilated by the montage, and the spectators may garner meanings, or simply come away with sensations that are at odds with the makers.” (Parave and Castaing-Taylor 2012)

35 Shot entirely aboard a fishing industrial trawler and recorded with tiny waterproof digital cameras placed in various locations, Leviathan narrates the experience of the filmmakers on the dark and dangerous waters of the North Atlantic Ocean off the Massachusetts coast. It approaches the material dimension of a fishing vessel devoid of any speaking subjects or intentional framing by attaching GoPro cameras to different locations around the boat: to the tactile and mobile body of labouring fishermen -in their heads, wrists and chests- to the not-yet-dead creatures on board, to the slippery floor, or placed on wooden sticks trying to reach flying seagulls up in the sky.

36 In Leviathan the imposition of meaning is reduced to its minimum once the film’s points of entry become embodied in the multiple entities aboard the boat. It is by overcoming a more conventional and static notion of framing that the heterogeneity of camera angles gives another standard of measurement to what is being shot. Ohad Ledesman, apropos this notion of deframing7, makes an interesting observation when stating that the film is rather structured from the embodied perspective of the fly than that of the human eye: “Because of their spherical shape and protrusion from the fly’s head, the eyes give the fly an almost 360-degree view of the world. Thus a fly sees in a mosaic way and thousands of tiny images coalesce and together represent one visual image.” (In Wahlberg 2014)

37 Leviathan’s obsession with the material world not only makes everything visceral in the film; it also makes the viewing-reading process rather difficult to digest. Without spoken words to guide us through, the viewer must struggle - as the fishermen and filmmakers must have - to know what is actually being shown and how to fit these images within the daily routine of the fishing boat. Right from its beginning, Leviathan reveals that we are immersed in the middle of a nearly black ocean, so that deprived of concrete visual orientation, spectators are in many ways more susceptible to the film’s acoustic effects than the imagery. As a work that could not easily be done through written ethnography, the audio plays a crucial role in this film.

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38 Designed by Ernst Karel and re-engineered by Jacob Ribicoff, the sound comes many times before -and after- the image. It makes the ear become accustomed to the din of the industrial process of harvesting the ocean once the engine of the fishing trawler is combined with the grasping noise produced by the encased GoPro cameras when submerged. Besides, taking into account that the auditory is a phenomenon related to waves -hence, also to movement and to this film in particular- Leviathan’s diegetic sound continually adds more vibration and motion to the already floating bodies on board. In a way, it is the ear that renders the image visible in Leviathan, because it is precisely the audio-event that then becomes the visual one. Anywhere the eye searches around the boat, the ear listens in on what is being searched: it covers, touches, and enfolds the spectator’s body.

39 By way of conclusion, I propose to take the argument for embodied perception in Leviathan as an audiovisual counter-part to Viveiros de Castro’s theory on Amerindian cosmology. Bodies have become in both universes primary conductors of perspectives, attempting to bring points of view back to the phenomenologies of different species. In such way, the interspecies corporeal practice portrayed by the documentary creatively meets the marked dimension of Amerindians’ metaphysics on multiple referents. So, if the human has been traditionally seen as a “being-in-language” and the animal has been for long depicted as a “being-in-its-body”, then it is through SEL’s bodily praxis as much as contemporary anthropology where artistic and philosophical interrogations are exploring new strategies to leave behind the old dualism between the thinking cogito and the animal Other. Consequently, if the task was to make possible the experience of a place beyond its modern confines, then contemporary ethnographic practice depends exclusively on how much attention we pay to the concepts of difference, multiplicity, bodies and becomings. To borrow Latour’s expression, who is also acknowledged in the film’s credits, I hope to have shown how in SEL’s Leviathan as much as in the Amazonas ‘there are more ways to be other, and vastly more others, than the most tolerant soul alive can conceive.’ (2004: 453)

Conclusion

40 The collision between anthropology and film ethnography presented in this article can simply be read as an assemblage between the written and the audiovisual event. Filming wast taken here to be analogous to writing, that is, embedded with a first person subjectivity and narrated with perspective. In this way, by making possible the experience of a place coming into view is that film ethnography was endorsed with an ‘anthropological power’ open to both analytical meaning and multiple viewings. As such, the discursive relation between the disciplines was primarily addressed from their similar ethnographic set of problems and changing relations in regards to the notion of “the Other”. In Flaherty’s Nanook of the North and Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific, shared methodological conventions guided the work of filmmaker and anthropologist to construct the picture of a foreign culture. For them, fieldwork consisted exclusively in the interpretation of the local reality to the extent of creating a native world explicated by a western “I”. Hence, Malinowski’s and Flaherty’s accounts demonstrate not only how one can easily fictionalise something -starting from a cultural, historical, political or psychological reality, but also how the interpretation of the observer can also be rendered as true, thus, inducing truth effects within a fictional

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discourse. For this reason, rather than a ‘becoming-Nanook’ or a ‘becoming-Argonaut’ - whose positions are strictly minoritarian, what I have put forward is the common gaze adopted by Malinowski -the anthropologist- and Flaherty -the filmmaker. Their shared humanistic practice is precisely what places in ethnographic proximity the text and the film event. Both showed more interest in the lives of native people than probably any other ethnographer before them. But as I have argued, they simultaneously blocked the native’s reality by exerting anthropological knowledge to express and translate the foreign world.

41 A similar series of methodological assemblages make the differences between Jean Rouch’s cinéma vérité and Marcel Mauss’ anthropology quite indiscernible. They shared the conception of reality as a multiple and heterogeneous texture which led to their views of scientific statements as nothing but the subjective experience of the observer. “Pure ethnography” is no longer possible here. Rather, what they account for is a very specific signifying practice in which the expression of the material world is produced by the insertion of what one knows -methods and experience- into what one sees - points of view. Thereby, every act of knowledge becomes a universe with perturbing holes in it, because there is always something of “the real” that remains inaccessible to those who try to apprehend it. At last, Rouch’s and Mauss’ common zone of indiscernibility was also expressed in their examination of the more prosaic and material aspects of social life, that is, the involvement of the senses as much as reason in their ethnographic enterprise.

42 In the case of Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics and SEL’s film Leviathan, the notion of becoming was addressed more directly; becoming and multiplicity are here one and the same thing. Alliances are not exclusively performed by the previous methodological conventions that anthropologists and filmmakers had in common. Relations exist now within a much broader network of affects portrayed by the various entities dwelling in the environment. By adopting foreign agencies through corporeality, Amerindian people as much as SEL’s documentary have demonstrated the capacity of embodied perspective to find a zone of indistinction between the One and the Other.

43 My hope then is that The Colliding Worlds of Anthropology and Film Ethnography will indeed be understood as a dynamic continuum. The purpose was to explore how ethnographic knowledge is always operating on a shifting basis, thus, conceiving also the conventions and experiences of the present as a reality that may throw the apparent assumptions about the disciplines into question tomorrow.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books and articles

Barbash, Ilisa and Lucien Taylor. 1997. Cross-Cultural Filmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Caixeta de Queiroz, Ruben. 2012. Between the Sensible and the Intelligible: Anthropology and the Cinema of Marcel Mauss and Jean Rouch. Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 9(2): 184-211

Castaing-Taylor, Lucien and Parave, Véréna. 2012. NYFF Press Conference. Film Society of Lincoln Center. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clOCqCIt-vE (accessed 29 July, 2017)

De Certeau, Michele. 1988. The Writing of History. New York: Columbia University Press.

Dieterlen, Germaine. 1990. Marcel Mauss et une école d’ethnographie. Journal des africanistes 60(1): 109-117.

Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Cinema 1: The Movement Image. Continuum: London. [orig. 1983].

Eaton, Mike. 1979. Anthropology-Reality-Cinema: Films of Jean Rouch. London: BFI Publishing.

Flaherty, Robert. 1969. Nanook. In The Emergence of Film Art. Jacobs Lewis, ed.. New York: Hopkinson & Blake.

Griaule, Marcel. 1965. Conversations With Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hastrup, Kirsten. 1992. Anthropological Visions: Some Notes on Visual and Textual Authority. In Film as Ethnography. Peter Ian Crawford and David Turton, eds. Pp. 8-25. New York: Manchester University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2004. Whose Cosmos, Which Cosmopolitics? Comments of the Peace Terms of Ulrich Beck. In Symposium: Talking Peace with Gods, Part 1, Common Knowledge. Duke University Press: 450-462.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1974. Structural Anthropology. United States: Basic Books

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 2001. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge. [orig. 1922].

Marks, Dan. 1995. Ethnography and Ethnographic Film: From Flaherty to Asch and After. American Anthropologist 97 (2): 339-347.

Mauss, Marcel. 2001. A General Theory of Magic. New York: Routledge [orig. 1950].

McLuhan, Marshal. 2001. Understanding Media. London: Routledge. [orig. 1964].

Pink, Sarah. 2006. The Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging the Senses. London & New York: Routledge.

Rothman, William. 1998. The Filmmaker as Hunter: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Rouch, Jean. 1981. Entretien avec Jean Rouch. (Unpublished text. Ms.)

Rouch, Jean. 1995. The Camera and the Man In Principles of Visual Anthropology. Paul Hockings, ed. Pp. 79-98. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Rouch, Jean 1978. Cine-Transe: The vision of Jean Rouch. Film Quarterly 31(3): 1-10.

Taylor, Lucien. 1996. Iconophobia. How Anthropology Lost It at the Movies. Transition 69(1): 64-88.

Udayan, Gupta and Judy, Janda. 1978. The Politics of Visual Anthropology, An Interview with Jean Rouch by Dan Georgiakas. Cineaste 8(4).

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2014. Cannibal Metaphysics. Minneapolis: Univocal. [orig. 2009].

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Wahlberg, Malin. 2014. Leviathan: From Sensory Ethnography to Gallery Film. Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies. Autumn. http://www.necsus-ejms.org/leviathan-sensory-ethnography- gallery-film (accessed 14 July, 2015)

Films

Castaing-Taylor, Lucien and Véréna Paravel, dirs. 2012. Leviathan Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab et al. USA (production). 87 min.

Flaherty, Robert, dir. 1922. Nanook of the North. Revillon Frères, USA (production). 78 min. https:// archive.org/details/nanookOfTheNorth1922 (accessed 29 July, 2017)

Flaherty, Robert, dir. 1931. Industrial Britain. John Grierson and Robert Flaherty, Great Britain (production). 20,5 min. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/513737/index.html (accessed 29 July, 2017)

Rouch, Jean. 1966-1973. Sigui series. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Comité du film Éthnographique, France (production). 8 films.

Rouch, Jean. 1967. Jaguar. Pierre Braunberger, Les Films de la Pléiade, France (production). 88 min.

NOTES

1. Flaherty asked his subjects to revive a dangerous method of walrus-hunting that Inuit people had abandoned when rifles became common by 1920. For further discussion, see William Rothman 1998: 24. 2. Even when the Eskimos had a polygamist family unit, Flaherty depicted Nanook’s clan as monogamous to show his character in a more customary family structure according to the western tradition. For further discussion, see William Rothman, The Filmmaker as Hunter: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998: 24. (1998: 24) 3. In a long take, for example, the viewer watches and waits as Nanook sits above a hole he has cut in the ice, waiting for a seal to appear for a breath of air. At that moment, Nanook will hurl his spear into the hole and bring food home to his family. 4. Similar reasoning is derived from Mauss’ pupil Claude Levi-Strauss. In his book Myth and Meaning, he argued that the activity of the mind in imposing form on content is fundamentally the same for archaic and modern thought. Levi-Strauss saw no differences in quality between scientific reasoning and the mythic thinking of native communities. 5. Mauss was very enthusiastic about the use of the camera towards anthropological investigations. He regarded it as an innovative technological practice to describe cultural habitus more accurately. In Rouch’s words: ‘Mauss recommended to ethnographers the use of film to record certain modes of behaviour. He had not been able, because of his experience, to detect the specific nature of a filmic orientation; for him the camera was a visual memory which could record the totality of a phenomenon." (1979:2) 6. Sensory Ethnography Lab, accessed December 1, 2015, https://sel.fas.harvard.edu/ 7. The concept of deframing, or décadrage in French, has been originally employed by Pascal Bonizer to argue that the cinematographic image can be divided ad infinitum. For further discussion, see Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The movement image. London: Continuum, 2005: 16.

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ABSTRACTS

The article explores three consecutive periods in which the disciplines of anthropology and film ethnography collide. The first moment examines the common practice of Bronislaw Malinowski and Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. I argue that Flaherty’s film illustrates the general fieldwork schema proposed by Malinowski to document the world of the Other-native. The second period connects the writings of Marcel Mauss and his influence in Jean Rouch’s cinéma- vérité. I state that Mauss’ radical sense of doubt about scientific pretentions of objectivity sustained Rouch’s cinematography with the general principle that reality is accessible only in partial form. Finally, the third period compares the anthropology of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro with the Sensory Ethnographic Lab’s film Leviathan. I argue that it is in both cases where bodily practices are being supported to account for more sensorial perceptions of the environment.

Cet article explore trois périodes consécutives durant lesquelles l'anthropologie et le film ethnographique se sont confrontés. La première partie examine la pratique commune de Bronislaw Malinowski et de Robert Flaherty avec la production de Nanook of the North. Je prétends que le film de Flaherty illustre parfaitement la méthode conçue par Malinowsky et qu'il l'a utilisée sur le terrain pour dépeindre l'univers des populations autochtones. La seconde période aborde les textes de Marcel Mauss et leur influence sur le cinéma-vérité proposé par Jean Rouch. Je soutiens que la notion de doute, mise en étroite relation avec les méthodes scientifiques prétendument objectives défendues par Mauss, a joué un rôle déterminant dans la démarche cinématographique de Jean Rouch qui considéra que la réalité ne pouvait être perçue que de manière partielle. Finalement la troisième période compare l'anthropologie de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro avec les recherches menées au Sensory Ethnographic Lab avec le film Leviathan. Je démontre que dans les deux cas la pratique corporelle est nécessaire pour rendre compte d'une perception sensorielle de l'environnement.

Este articulo explora tres períodos consecutivos en los que las disciplinas de la antropología y el film etnográfico han colindado a través de sus intereses comunes en la documentación de territorios foráneos. El primer momento examina el trabajo de Bronislaw Malinowski y la película Nanook of the North de Robert Flaherty, la cual ilustraría el esquema metodológico propuesto por el antropólogo para estudiar la vida del Otro-nativo. En un segundo período conecto los escritos de Marcel Mauss y su influencia en el cinéma-vérité de Jean Rouch. Aquí declaro que las sospechas adelantadas por Mauss sobre la pretensión de objetividad en la ciencia sostendrían la cinematografía de Rouch con el principio básico de que la realidad sólo puede ser accedida de forma parcial. Finalmente, el tercer período compara la antropología de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro con el film Leviathan del Sensory Ethnography Lab. Concluyo que es en ambos casos donde una práctica corpórea es favorecida para promover percepciones más sensoriales del entorno.

INDEX

Mots-clés: anthropologie, film ethnographique, cinéma, corps, autre, devenir, SEL (Sensory Ethnographic Laboratory) Keywords: anthropology, film ethnography, cinema, bodies, other, becoming, SEL(Sensory Ethnographic Laboratory) Palabras claves: antropología, film etnográfico, cine, cuerpos, otro, devenir, SEL(Sensory Ethnographic Laboratory)

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AUTHOR

CRISTÓBAL ESCOBAR University of Melbourne, Screen Studies Department [email protected] Sociologist, Universidad Católica de Chile. Master of Moving Image, University of Melbourne. PhD Candidate Arts-Philosophy, University of Melbourne. At present Cristóbal works as an editorial member for the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (YoMIS, Germany) and collaborates with LaFuga film journal (Chile). His research focuses on the crossroads of film, philosophy and the social sciences.

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Embodied Representation: Audiovisual Media and Sensory Ethnography1

Lorenzo Ferrarini

Introduction

1 This article starts from a simple question: what makes an audiovisual ethnography a piece of sensory ethnography? With this latter term I refer to part of a debate that originated from the so-called "sensory turn" in anthropology, which developed a specific interest in the relevance of sensory perception for human experience since the end of the 1980s. Scholars like David Howes, Paul Stoller, Constance Classen, Nadia Seremetakis, Steven Feld and others have, with different approaches, asked how our experience is shaped by culturally specific patterns of sensory perception. In part as a reaction to the increasing emphasis on textuality derived from the "writing cultures" movement (Clifford and Marcus 1986), they underlined how cultures also had other experiential dimensions that were less easy to transcribe and translate into text (Jackson 1989; Stoller 1997).

2 Despite the apparent uniformity suggested by labels such as sensory turn, though, most of these scholars are only loosely tied together by an interest in perception. In fact they took at least two different directions, one of which is commonly labelled anthropology of the senses. Its starting point was a critique of the emphasis of Western culture on vision as a privileged modality for knowing. Fabian (1983) linked visualism to the power discourse of colonialism. Feld (1982) and Stoller (1984) underlined the relevance sound has for the cultures in which they worked. The group of the Centre for Sensory Studies at the Concordia University in Montreal concentrated on differences and transformations in the sensorium - the range, segmentation and organisation of the senses (see especially Howes 1991; Howes 2005; Classen 1993; Smith 2007). This group adopted a historical and comparative approach, also following the work of historians like Corbin (1986; 1998) or Porter (Bynum and Porter 1993; Porter 2005). Howes (1991)

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looked at how the senses are attributed value and their connections with social organisation, class and worldviews. Classen (1993) in particular has underlined some key historical moments that redefined the hierarchy between the senses.

3 Tim Ingold has critiqued these approaches to the anthropology of the senses, and underlines how studying the configurations of the sensorium reinforces the illusion of a separation between the senses. In particular, he argues against those who, like Howes and Classen, identify a given sensory modality with a culture - for example visualism as intrinsically Euro-American - and derive from it a dominant way of apprehending the world - in the case of vision, detachment and domination (Ingold 2000: 281–82). Instead, vision does not entail in itself a given attitude towards the world because it is not in the first place essentially separate from other senses - such as hearing, to which it is often opposed. But the most fundamental problem with the anthropology of the senses for Ingold is its cultural constructionist approach that explains the diversity of the ways we apprehend the world with the elaboration of a flux of raw data of experience. Vision then becomes conceived as a mirror for visualisation, the representationalist paradigm whereby by perceiving we create internal representations of an external reality (Ingold 2000: 282-293). This paradigm rests firmly on the Cartesian dualism between mind and body, even in apparent contradiction with the epistemological principles of the anthropologists of the "sensory turn."

4 Michael Herzfeld (2001: 252), in a chapter dedicated to the senses in anthropology, has argued that the discipline should not make of the sensorium another sub-field of studies - yet another anthropology-of. Rather the senses should become a method and a perspective to apply across the discipline. Some scholars have indeed tried to develop an anthropology through the senses, or a sensate anthropology or a sensory ethnography. In other words, they have reflected on the role of the embodied, sensuous experience of the ethnographer as a way to access local sensory cultures. It is important to remember that this happened in a period that saw, in anthropology and beyond, the rise of an interest for the body and embodiment, and of perspectives inspired by phenomenology (Csordas 1990; 1994; Jackson 1996; Kirmayer 1992; Scheper- Hughes and Lock 1987). Paul Stoller (1997) put forward a call for a "sensuous scholarship" and employed his experiences of apprenticeship with a Songhay sorcerer during which he experimented on his own skin the rivalries between sorcerers, and became the victim of a magical attack that left him temporarily paralysed (Stoller and Olkes 1987; Stoller 1989). More examples can be found in the fields of the anthropology of emotions (Desjarlais 1992; Hage 2009; Newmahr 2008; Rosaldo 1984), every-day life (Jackson 1983; Pink 2004; Seremetakis 1996), martial arts and boxing (Bar-On Cohen 2009; Cox 2011; Kohn 2001; Wacquant 1995; 2004), dance (Downey 2011; Taylor 1998; Wulff 1998 Roseman) and music (Rice 1994; Roseman 1993).

5 I should add that the opposition between an anthropology of the senses and sensory ethnography, although generally agreed upon by various scholars, is itself the subject of a debate that sees Howes, rejecting the characterisation of his work and even the label of anthropology of the senses, as opposed to Sarah Pink (Pink and Howes 2010). Nonetheless, I will use the distinction for practical purposes, emphasising my concern here with ethnographic media that stress the evocation of sensory experience in the audience and the inscription of the body of the filmmaker or sound recordist in the piece itself. Films about the body (MacDougall 2006, 13–20) or the senses represent in this context an analogy with an anthropology of the senses and are less relevant to this

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discussion. This article is, in other words, concerned with the potential for a sensory documentary practice to put into practice the same premises on embodiment, inspired by phenomenology that kicked off sensory ethnography. These include contesting models of perception and cognition derived from the Cartesian split between mind and body, and paying attention to modes of experience that are less linguistic, symbolic and semiotic than they are sensory, embodied or "beyond text" (Cox, Irving, and Wright 2016).

Audiovisual Media and Sensory Perception

6 One of the main contributions to the idea that images and sounds can provide anthropology with a form of knowledge that is alternative to that conveyed by text is represented by David MacDougall's book The Corporeal Image (2006). Bringing together his multiple decades of reflections on ethnographic film and his recent filmic work, he acknowledges that our way of seeing is partly metaphorical and linguistic. Nonetheless, vision is also literal or, for MacDougall, relates to being as well as to meaning. Knowledge of the senses is one of the best channels to understand other people’s experience, in a completely different way to words. The latter are mainly aimed at an explanation, while images embrace a complexity, along with a component of meaning that refuses explanation and dissection by rationalist thought (MacDougall 2006: 5). But way too often, in anthropology, the knowledge of the senses is considered an accessory to reach more abstract formulations, a way to “[...] preserve the value of knowledge as meaning, but [...] miss an opportunity to embrace the knowledge of being” (MacDougall 2006: 6). MacDougall asks phenomenologically to go back to things themselves, worried that a continuous imposition of meaning and the search for a code to decipher, hidden underneath experience, may prevent the subject from opening up to the object through an affection of the senses that precedes abstract thought.

7 Film and audio recordings, he writes, unfold through time mimicking the temporality of experience. Writing, on the contrary, is usually oriented toward an explanation, a completeness not necessarily reached by recording. Furthermore, recordings preserve important deictic characteristics, for they are testimonies of moments of the author’s seeing and listening - they carry the mark of the author's body in their own being (54). Similarly the filmic subjects, the persons who represent the very MacDougall 2006: source of anthropological knowledge, are not subjected by recordings to those generalizations that normally accompany writing. Film shows their being unique persons, and sometimes even the encounter with the anthropologist’s own individuality.

8 But, most importantly, the main difference between writing and film, for MacDougall, lies in the latter’s sensory qualities. The power of a close-up to evoke tactile characteristics, that of a wide angle to suggest three-dimensionality or that of a telephoto lens to flatten perspective, all confer materiality to images, a dimension writing can hardly render. So films “recover a dimension often lost in texts. This impinges on the viewer in various ways – as hyperawareness, shock, and pleasure” (MacDougall 2006: 58).

9 Sometimes MacDougall's opposition of film and writing seems to downplay the possibility for differences in approach that are transversal to both writing and film. Film, for example, can be highly intellectual in its construction and even para-linguistic

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in the principles of its editing. Classic examples are the Soviet tradition of intellectual montage (Bordwell 1993) and many essay films (Corrigan 2011). On the other hand Paul Stoller (1992: 203–4) has argued for taking a similar approach to anthropological writing to what MacDougall proposes for film. Howes (2003: 57) even argued that writing’s peculiarity of not soliciting directly a single sensory modality achieves a balance between the senses that film breaks, privileging sight over for example smell.

10 Associating images and sounds with sensory perception in too direct a way can lead to criticism by those who, like Ingold, stress perception as entanglement of an organism with its environment, rather than a process of creation of internal representations. Intervening in the debate between Howes and Pink mentioned above, Ingold (2011b: 315) criticised the anthropology of the senses for implicitly equating eyes, ears and skin with instruments of playback. The anthropology of the senses is then for Ingold a form of cultural studies concerned with sensory imaginations and has little to say about how people phenomenologically experience the world they inhabit. On these same grounds, Ingold is critical of the use of documentary films and sound recordings to address an interest in sensory perception, proposing instead practices of drawing and walking (2004; 2007; 2011a). In this he relies, as he did throughout his work, on the ideas of psychologist James J. Gibson and his conception of ecological perception.

11 Gibson was in fact very critical of the experiments carried by many of his colleagues of the post-war period, which involved constraints of the field of view or shutters to impose a monocular point of observation. He called this restricted vision snapshot or aperture, and pointed out how only in these artificial conditions human vision resembled the functioning of a photographic camera. Our vision is normally binocular, whereas when we look at reproduced images we deal with a flat surface showing a monocular point of view (Gibson 1979: Chapters 15-16). He was also very critical of the mainstream theory of retinal images, and of the existence of mental processes tasked with reconstructing the world’s characteristics of luminosity and hue, relying on intensity and wavelength of the visible light.

12 For Gibson, instead, vision is the interactive experience of a visual world by perceptual systems. Unlike sensory modalities, perceptual systems are multisensory experiences aggregated by functional references (Gibson 1966). The environment plays for Gibson a much more important role than it was for classical optics, so much so that at the beginning of his main work, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979), he underlines how animal and environment share a relationship of mutual dependence, and how the former would not exist without the latter. Gibson is not denying the existence of the physical world, but he makes a point of emphasizing how this is different from an environment, which is bound to the presence of an animal experiencing it (1979: 8). Through phenomenological2 moves, such as the elaboration of the concept of affordance, Gibson posits knowledge as an extension of perceiving (1979: 258). For him the perceiver is not to be considered a passive receiver, applying a creative-interpretive process to raw data, but rather an active perceiver, whose activity is recognizing information already contained in events, themselves enough to allow cognition.

13 Recordings cannot be substituted to perception because the latter contains endless information. At best, they can be the subject of perception. This way representation is never re-presentation, because it cannot be compared, for complexity and layering, to perception (Gibson 1979: 279). It is not just a matter of the quantity of information, but

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rather about the kind of intervention a perceptual system operates on its environment: if the animal-recording interaction is substituted to the animal-environment one, it changes from the qualitative point of view, becoming a second-hand description.

14 If we acknowledge these differences, is it possible at all to represent or even evoke perception with tools - a camera, a microphone - that work in such a different way from the way we perceive? It is now time to qualify the question I posed at the beginning, since I am here suggesting that an audiovisual ethnography is not a sensory ethnography simply by virtue of being made of images and/or sounds. A better formulation would be: "What approaches to audiovisual recordings can make them a sensory ethnography true to the principles of phenomenological and ecological perception?".

Recording With the Body

15 In this section I review some ways of suggesting and evoking the corporeality of the recording person, rather than analysing the reception of the work by the viewer. In coherence with the principles of sensory anthropology of using embodiment and the senses as a method, the works that I will present revolve around the experience in the first person of their makers. One of these authors, Steven Feld, is a protagonist of the sensory turn, and among his media production I will concentrate here on his post-2000 sound recordings. The other figure, Jean Rouch, can be considered a precursor of the anthropological interest for the senses (see Stoller 1992). The aspect of his work that I find relevant for this discussion is his conception of camerawork as performance and technique of the body, evident in his filmic practice and in some of his writings. Both Rouch and Feld in common seem to counter the assumption whereby to speak to human perception a recording must draw as little attention as possible on style, editing and camera/microphone work. Such a principle is one of the basics of observational cinema (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009; MacDougall 2016) and is taken for granted even in proposals to go beyond such realist traditions (for example Suhr and Willerslev 2012: 283–85). According to an ecological and phenomenological conception of perception, such a realist recording style is the farthest from human perception, and it makes little sense to treat recordings as deferred perception (Gibson 1979, 279). But instead of rejecting the usefulness of audiovisual media to portray perception in the light of Gibson's ideas, as Ingold does, I propose to look at the way specific technologies and recording techniques were developed by Rouch and Feld to evoke embodied and sensory experience. After all Gibson, who is otherwise very critical of still photography in any analogy with vision, is more positive in his analysis of film (Gibson 1979, Chapter 16). I suggest that a creative intervention is required to get closer to bridging the gap between recordings and perception, steering away from a filmic (or phonographic) plain style that mostly relies on the viewer treating the screen (or the loudspeakers) as a window on reality. It has already been suggested that some of the languages of experimental film, for example, might be truer to the fragmentation and variety of sensory experience (Heuson and Allen 2014: 120).

16 Here I stress interventions in the recording phase, rather than during editing. These interventions start in the way bodily perception is used to guide recording. Rouch, similarly to other documentary camera operators, would keep the eye that was not on the viewfinder open, so as to link the images projected on the groundglass, surrounded

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in black and flattened, with the perception of the other eye, more connected to the sensory world. Feld on the other hand developed in his recent research a recording technique that does away with monitors: his ears are used critically to get an idea of the acoustic image the microphones will render. These apparently marginal details constitute in my opinion the precondition for a phenomenological recording style, underlining the way these researcher are plunged in the sensory complexity of their fieldsites, instead of seeking isolation in a monitoring device.

17 This factor, together with the choice of the recording equipment, helps to suggest to the viewer the presence of a recording body in the scene. At the beginning of the 1960s Jean Rouch was part of the process of developing lightweight and quiet film cameras with sync-sound capabilities. Previous models implied a choice between hand-holding and heavy blimps to isolate their noisy motors. However, since the descent of the river Niger in 1946-47, when he lost the tripod he carried for his Bell & Howell, Rouch tried to make as much as possible without any fixed support for his cameras - which at the time meant renouncing to sync-sound. At the end of the fifties, in North America, the first experiments with shoulder-mounted cameras were started. Rouch was among the first to import these techniques in France and in anthropological cinema, and during the shooting of Chronique d’un été (1960) he worked with Eclair’s engineers Coutant and Beauviala on a silent, lightweight camera that could be handheld and use sync-sound. He also hired cameraman Michel Brault of the National Film Board of Canada, who was pioneering the technique of walking with the camera (Henley 2009: 157–62). This point is particularly important, as it allows a parallel to be drawn with Gibson’s idea of the perceiver in dynamic exploration of the environment. Rouch, quoting Dziga Vertov, ideally saw the camera and man as an integrated system moving close to the people it was filming (2003b: 38–39). For the same reason he often preferred fixed focal lengths, especially wide-angles. Zoom lenses for him were a kind of voyeuristic arrogance, to be perceived by those filmed as much as from subsequent viewers of the film. On the contrary, for him: The only way to film is to walk with the camera, taking it where it is most effective and improvising another type of ballet with it, trying to make it as alive as the people it is filming. I consider this dynamic improvisation to be a first synthesis of Vertov’s ciné-eye and Flaherty’s participating camera. I often compare it to the improvisation of the bullfighter in front of the bull. Here, as there, nothing is known in advance; the smoothness of a faena is just like the harmony of a traveling shot that articulates perfectly with the movements of those being filmed. In both cases as well, it is a matter of training, mastering reflexes as would a gymnast. (Rouch 2003b: 38-39)

18 From this excerpt clearly transpires how filming was for Rouch a technique of the body, made up of learning specific procedures. Using a fixed focal length means to have to operate choices with the cameraman’s own movements, at the same time making the viewers conscious of a spatially active presence. While Henley reads his attempts to make a film that corresponds to single sequence shot as a strategy to free himself from the burden of editing (2009: 269–74), he also recognises that the dimension of unrepeatable, inspired performance was a central motivation. Coherently, Rouch’s camerawork pedagogy was aimed at making students aware of their own body and of the use they can do of it while filming: he taught how to use parts of the body as anchors and how to be conscious of the body’s limits in the world.3

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19 Vertov is also the inventor of the concept of kinopravda, translated in French as ciné- verité, meaning that peculiar reality portrayed by the eye of the camera as a technological organ, the ciné-œil (1924). A distorted, processed, empowered truth: a filmic truth. To be for the film, to move, to look and to listen on the basis of the film – ciné-penser – represents a particular state of consciousness, a kind of trance. In front of those present at a possession ceremony the filmmaker’s self is transformed, for when the camera motor runs his behaviour radically changes. For the Songhay-Zarma, who are now quite accustomed to film, my “self” is altered in front of their eyes in the same way as is the “self” of the possession dancers: it is the “film-trance” (ciné-transe) of the one filming the “real trance” of the other. This experience is really true to me, and I know by the control of my camera eyepiece, by the reactions of the audience, whether the filmed sequence is a success or a failure and whether I have been able to free myself of the weight of filmic and ethnographic theories necessary to rediscover the barbarie de l’invention. (Rouch 2003a: 99–100)

20 He does not speak anymore, except for the signals directed to his assistant. His perception is technologically mediated, he looks through a machine and listens thanks to a kind of prosthesis. Given these abnormal conditions, he can become a participant to the ceremony, filming trance from a ciné-transe state. In a sense, his activity is similar to that of the sorcerer hunting spirits, with the technological help of a camera and a microphone. This hypothesis seems to be confirmed when, projecting the finished documentaries in the communities where they were filmed, possession episodes occurred during the screening. Rouch writes about the experience undergone by the self of the ethnographer, revealing how the concept of ciné-transe represents a very early example of corporeal reflexivity and of radically anti-Cartesian observant participation (2003a: 543).

21 Steven Feld has chosen a specific kind of microphones for most of his recordings of the 2000s, two omnidirectional capsules called by their inventor DSM - Dimensional Stereo/ Surround Microphones.4 They employ the modification of sound frequencies performed by the listener’s head - Head Related Transfer Function, HRTF – in order to record sound with a marked presence, depth and spatial effect. In order to work properly, these small microphones are to be worn to the side of one's head, as close as possible to the ears. Unlike binaural microphones, which use to a similar effect the shape of the external ear, the rendering of the sound’s three-dimensionality is not limited to headphone listening. This way these microphones use the wearer’s body to render, through psychoacoustic principles normally involved in listening, an acoustic image that is much more spatialised than those we are used to with conventional stereo techniques. Furthermore, the microphone capsules have an excellent capacity for absorbing a wide range of sound pressures, thus getting close to the human ears in terms of dynamic range. Like lapel radio microphones, they are worn on the body, but their intended use could not be more different: DSM microphones are all about the recordist as a subject in the surroundings, whereas lavalier radio microphones are usually intended to minimise the interference of the surroundings with the subject's voice.

22 The aim of these omnidirectional microphones is not that of picking up as many sounds as possible, or to record more realistically if compared to human perception. I believe it would be a mistake to consider Feld’s use of this equipment as finalized [or equivalent?] to the reproduction of "reality". As for wide angle lenses on a film camera, sometimes

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being able to embrace a wider field of view can result in a drawback, producing an image that is unappealingly chaotic. Rouch himself, who very often used wide angle lenses, warned his students against their misuses, which can lead to unwanted distortion and the disappearance of significant elements in the wide field of view.5 I would rather speak of an enhancement of hearing, a cyber-ear Feld uses to locate the listener, to have them move in space and appreciate aspects of sound that more traditional, less contextualizing recordings cannot represent. Listening to recordings such as The Time of Bells series (Feld CD 2004a; 2004b; 2005; 2007) becomes corporeal, thanks to the presence effect that once again represents an analogy with wide angle lenses.

23 The use of recording equipment in anthropology, and especially in ethnomusicology, has for a long time been that of producing documents to be analysed, a process that requires the isolation of sound sources from elements considered as disturbing. Obviously a choice such as Feld’s entails sacrificing the perceptibility of single elements to the rendering of the whole. The aesthetic is anyway coherent: a sound recording made with DSM microphones has among its peculiarities the three-dimensionality of the acoustic image. As Gibson pointed out with regards to visual perception, three- dimensionality is better perceived in dynamic situations, where the eyes-head-body visual system interacts with the environment. So Feld’s recording are dynamic, for the characteristics of the microphones push him to privilege situations where the recordist, or sonic elements around him, move. Conventional recordings, on the other hand, mirror a different model of cognition, one that privileges the accuracy of information by extracting the sound sources from their context and providing in this way a static, objectified and hardly locatable representation.

24 Feld’s body, as for Rouch’s wide angle, is used to perform deliberate effects: its movements in space change the balance of relative sound levels, while certain positions privilege some selected acoustic components, as for the reflections generated by certain surfaces. The body itself resounds, if placed in contact with vibrating surfaces, and Feld's face channels sound waves toward the microphones. I want to stress that this is not quite the same as mounting any device on somebody's person, since this alone does not guarantee much relationship with the perception of that body. A striking demonstration is represented by the film Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor and Paravel 2012), in which the filmmakers made large use of body cameras mounted on the crew of the fishing trawler where they filmed. In an interview they admit that the resulting images were disembodied because, although they were indexing an embodied experience, they lacked representational intentionality (cited in Hanssen 2015: 20). In Feld's recordings the researcher’s body is instead perceived indirectly, being used to shape the recording and alter the balance of each sound source, and sometimes even directly, for the sounds he produces can be recorded. Feld addresses this issue in an interview with Gino Robair of the magazine eMusician: [R:] On track 2 of The Time of Bells 1, I can clearly hear you walking and breathing, which is usually something avoided by field recordists. Did you have a problem overcoming that boundary or taboo? [F:] No. I wanted that soundwalk to literally map my bodily orientation to the sound: arriving at the church parking lot and hearing that very austere and unique church bell; recording it full on; walking past to hear how it resounds against the church building; then walking through the big, heavy wooden church door and hearing its decay; and then sitting down and hearing, almost instantly, how the organ (one of the oldest pump organs in Finland) has an almost identical attack-

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sustain-decay envelope. The recording technique – an audio version of the way one films in the cinéma vérité style, with the walking camera and focus on transition and juxtaposition – was a way to locate the bell vis-à-vis the organ. My own walking, breathing, sitting, and pulse are part of the experiential picture. Having that in there is a way to bring the listener right into the immediacy of my bodily experience of the sound. (Robair 2006)

25 Further, and similarly to Rouch’s ciné-transe, this kind of recording affords a relationship of co-presence with those recorded. Feld started to reflect on these connections since the postscript of the second edition of Sound and Sentiment (Feld 1990), where he describes the process of revision and discussion of the book with the people involved in the fieldwork research. Since this dialogue his research pointed toward acoustic modalities of representing and sharing experience, up to the adoption of the DSM system that can be seen as a version of Rouch’s participating camera.

26 The techniques I described, developed and learned through practice in the field, represent forms of embodiment of recording equipment. Such a situation involves the perception of a piece of equipment as an extension of one’s own body, as an organ of mechanical perception whose use becomes almost unconscious, requiring nonetheless well-learned skills. Instead of considering organs as instruments, here instruments truly become supplementary organs (1964, 178). Such a conception of recording is very close to phenomenological ideas of being-in-the-world and to the premises of sensory ethnography.

27 I also would underline how the use of this equipment is not an end in itself, nor is it aimed at giving a more “faithful” or realistic idea of the field. The attitude developed by Rouch and Feld toward their recording techniques leads me to believe they considered recording a creative act, just like perception is active and creative in the conceptions of Gibson and Merleau-Ponty. Thus, mastering technology has the aim of providing evocative representations that are not necessarily realist in a conventional sense.

Perception as Interaction

28 The approach to media production as sensuous participation and interaction that I retrace in Rouch's and Feld's works contrasts with the more contemplative tradition of observational cinema, which has instead been reappraised as a filmic analogy with the renewed interest in anthropology for the senses and phenomenology (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009: Chapter 5). Since these discussions often mention Merleau-Ponty's work on the phenomenology of perception, it is interesting to bring up a few points from his essay Eye and Mind (1964). Even though the text is centred on painting, Merleau-Ponty makes an argument that applies to visual representation in general and does not oppose painting and drawing to more indexical forms. For this reason I think it makes sense to extend his thinking not only to film but even to sound recording.

29 The theory of vision described in Descartes’ Dioptric, he writes, is mainly an intellectual process, a process of decoding the signs picked up by the body, instead of a reciprocal transformation in the act of seeing (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 170-171). For Descartes, continues Merleau-Ponty, drawings and paintings are imitations of a disembodied visual perception, they offer two-dimensional inputs, height and width, while depth is simply inferred from the two. But this third dimension, not present in the painting, is

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nothing but illusion, because for the Cartesian space has given, independent characteristics. For Merleau-Ponty on the other hand, as for Gibson, space is bound to the perceiver: Space is no longer what it was in the Dioptric, a network of relations between objects such as would be seen by a witness to my vision or by a geometer looking over it and reconstructing it from outside. It is, rather, a space reckoned starting from me as the zero point or degree zero of spatiality. I do not see it according to its exterior envelope; I live in it from the inside; I am immersed in it. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 178)

30 In common with Gibson’s ecological perception, something links subject and object, seeing and seen, in a much deeper way than a mental image, or the internal representation of an external space. Merleau-Ponty questions the idea that the world is an “out there” and that the subject has to reconstruct its given properties. Quoting Cézanne’s “La nature est à l’intérieur”, he once again ties together body and world: “Quality, light, color, depth, which are there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in our body and because the body welcomes them” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 164). Painters work with their whole body, joining vision and movement, for the body always experiences reciprocity. The artist knows how to grasp and express this feeling of implication in things, less with faithful representation than creating. Writing about the rendering of movement, for example, Merleau-Ponty mentions Rodin to argue how snapshots of running athletes do not give the idea of movement, but rather freeze it. It is possible, instead, to evoke movement showing a human figure in a position that is not from a single instant, therefore not strictly realistic (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 185). I believe similar hyperrealistic procedures, in other words poetic interventions and augmented perception, should be applied to recording in anthropology, if we want images and sounds not to be read as texts but become sources of a different kind of knowledge. Nor do I believe that Merleau-Ponty is here making his argument against recorded media, but rather he is invoking a poetic intervention aimed at making of them artefacts evocative of perception, “an analogue or likeness only according to the body” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 165).

31 Merleau-Ponty is arguing that a representation can be analogous to perception if it changes our way of seeing, working almost intersubjectively without trying to just be a copy of the world. It joins together seer and visible through the intercorporeality based on perception that makes the experience of the other accessible, thanks to a concept of the self as "caught up in things" (Merleau-Ponty: 163): perception is in fact a relational activity in Merleau-Ponty's thinking at least since La Structure du Comportement (1942). I find Rouch's and Feld's participant perspectives, as put in practice and described in this article, more suited to speak to such an understanding of perception than the unobtrusive camera style typical of observational cinema, which on the other hand is often described as related to phenomenology. Although Grimshaw and Ravetz (2009: 135) downplay its stylistic elements of in favour of epistemology and ethics, observational cinema’s rendition of the filmmaker’s engagement and co-presence is left to the filmic equivalent of a scholarly plain style (Henley 2004: 114-6), which encourages empiricist interpretations of the footage -- a debate that has characterised observational cinema since its inception. On the other hand, I believe that a recent filmic example is particularly well-suited to exemplify a participant embodied camera. Produced at Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, Julia Yezbick's film Into the Hinterlands (2015) is composed of performances by the Detroit performance ensemble The Hinterlands. The filmmaker trained with the group and participated in their

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improvisational performances, something that had been set by the ensemble as a precondition for allowing her to make a collaborative film. The camerawork of the resulting piece is strikingly corporeal, being often as close to the performers as it gets, dancing with them and reacting to their movements as they integrate the cameraperson in the performance. Through long takes that are not strictly speaking realistic in their acrobatic overturnings, Yezbick manages to communicate the ecstatic and liminal nature of the performances thanks to her participation in them.

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// 32 journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/2514

Link: https://vimeo.com/166001290 and https://lorenzoferrarini.com/portfolio/living-the-weather/ (accessed August 6, 2017)

33 My own experimental documentary Living the Weather (Ferrarini 2016) draws inspiration from the aspects of Rouch's and Feld's work discussed above in five minute- long sequence shots. Using DSM microphones and an ultra-wide lens on a three-axis gimbal I follow the protagonists of each sequence in everyday activities, evoking their engagement with the weather and their surroundings. The sequences, agreed and performed collaboratively, emphasise perspective and dimensionality to maximise their immersive intent. The whole film project approaches weather from Gibson's ecological perspective and applies it to audiovisual media through maximising the situatedness of the recording perspective. Again, this is accomplished through devices that are not strictly realistic: a field of view much wider than human binocular vision points at Gibson's visual world, the spherical extension surrounding the perceiver that does not transform itself with to the perceiver’s movements (1950: Chapter 3). The three-dimensional stereo image of the DSM microphones works in a similar way in the economy of these sequences. At the same time, I move very close to the people I film, sometimes interacting with them in a choreography that is more subtle than in Into the Hinterlands but no less participative.

Conclusions

34 These final examples sum up well the way in which I have provided an answer to the question of what makes an audiovisual ethnography a piece of sensory anthropology. First, to make a piece of sensory ethnography, an audiovisual ethnography should inscribe in itself the body of the maker, striving to evoke that corporeality in the audience. This principle responds to sensory ethnography's emphasis on the senses and embodiment as method and on the researcher's own experience as a tool. Rouch and Feld, two leading figures respectively in the fields of ethnographic cinema and sonic ethnography, have developed recording techniques and technologies that help this process of inscription and evocation. The methods they have developed can be put in dialogue with the stress that ecological theories of perception place on the differences between perception and recordings by making of the act of recording an active exploration, in which the body synaesthetically guides the rendition of the camera or sound recorder. This strategy also addresses phenomenology's emphasis on perception as act of reciprocal transformation, an element that is not only evident in the participant perspectives adopted by Rouch and Feld, but also in their development of dialogic and collaborative methods. So the second part of the answer to the initial

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question is that sensory ethnography should embrace interaction and participation to maintain a coherence between its anti-dualistic premises and its representational forms. The problem is similar to the correspondence between "disembodied observation" and "disembodied representation" remarked by Stoller for ethnographic writing (1997: xiii). An embodied camera (and/or microphone) has to be interactive because interaction is a fundamental component of embodied being-in-the-world. Not all interaction is mediated by linguistic channels, so sensory anthropology’s interest for dimensions beyond text does not necessarily imply a strictly observational style. In Rouch's and Feld's work it is possible to notice multiple silent interactions6 that contribute to the embodied qualities of their productions. Their creative devices and strategies still show inspiring and promising ways for exploring the potential of audiovisual media to contribute to anthropology forms of knowledge that text might overlook.

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Rouch, Jean. 2003b. The Camera and Man. In Ciné-Ethnography. Steven Feld translation. Pp. 29-46 Visible Evidence Series Vol. 13. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Sanders, J. T. 1993. Merleau-Ponty, Gibson, and the Materiality of Meaning. Man and World - an International Philosophical Review 26 (July): 287–302.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Margaret Lock. 1987. The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly : 6–41.

Seremetakis, C. Nadia. 1996. The Senses Still. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Smith, Mark Michael. 2007. Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History. University of California Press.

Stoller, Paul. 1984. Sound in Songhay Cultural Experience. American Ethnologist 11 (3): 559-570. doi:10.1525/ae.1984.11.3.02a00090.

Stoller, Paul. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Stoller, Paul. 1992. The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stoller, Paul. 1997. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Stoller, Paul and Cheryl Olkes. 1987. In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship Among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Suhr, Christian and Rane Willerslev. 2012. Can Film Show the Invisible?: The Work of Montage in Ethnographic Filmmaking. Current Anthropology 53 (3): 282–301. doi:10.1086/664920.

Taylor, Julie M. 1998. Paper Tangos. Duke University Press.

Wacquant, Loïc. 1995. The Pugilistic Point of View: How Boxers Think and Feel about Their Trade. Theory and Society 24 (4): 489–535.

Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford University Press.

Wulff, Helena. 1998. Ballet Across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers. New York: Berg.

Films

Castaing-Taylor, Lucien and Véréna Paravel, dirs. 2012. Leviathan Cinema Guild et al. USA (production). 87 min.

Ferrarini, Lorenzo. 2016. Living the Weather - Five Variations on Weather and Seasons in the Calder Valley. 4K Digital Video. https://lorenzoferrarini.com/portfolio/living-the-weather/ (accessed November 11, 2016)

Rouch, Jean. 1971 Tourou et Bitti: Les Tambours d’Avant. CNRS, France (production). 9 min.

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Rouch, Jean and Edgar Morin 1960 Chronique d’un été, Argos Films, France (production). 90 min.

Vertov, Dziga. 1924 The Cine-Eye. UdSSR (production). 52 min.

Yezbick, Julia. 2015. Into the Hinterlands. Harvard Film Sudy Center and the Sensory Ethnography Lab, USA (production). 39 min. http://www.intothehinterlands.com/ (accessed November 11, 2016)

Sound recordings

Feld, Steven. 2004a The Time of Bells, I: Soundscapes of Italy, Finland, Greece and France, CD - Santa Fe, NM: Voxlox Documentary Sound Art.

Feld, Steven. 2004b The Time of Bells, II: Soundscapes of Finland, Norway, Italy and Greece, CD - Santa Fe, NM: Voxlox Documentary Sound Art.

Feld, Steven. 2005 The Time of Bells, III: Musical Bells of Accra, Ghana, CD - Santa Fe, NM: Voxlox Documentary Sound Art.

Feld, Steven. 2007 The Time of Bells, IV: Soundscapes of Italy, Denmark, Finland, Japan and Iraq/USA, CD - Santa Fe, NM: Voxlox Documentary Sound Art.

NOTES

1. This text contains revised and translated portions of the article I published in Italian with the title Registrare con il corpo: dalla riflessione fenomenologica alle metodologie audio-visuali di Jean Rouch e Steven Feld (Ferrarini 2009). 2. Even though he never references any European phenomenologist, Gibson shares with Merleau- Ponty an intellectual kinship in gestaltist psychology, that shows through many quotations from Koffka. A thorough analysis of the main points in common between Gibson and Merleau-Ponty can be found in Sanders (1993). 3. Steven Feld, personal communication, 16 September 2007. I also had an exchange with Heike Behrend who told me of her memories of a masterclass in "camera gymnastics" she attended in Nanterre in the mid-1970s, where Rouch was teaching movements with the camera, in collaboration with a choreographer (personal communication, 14 October 2014). 4. For more information, visit the manufacturer’s website: http://www.sonicstudios.com 5. Steven Feld, personal communication 16 September 2007. 6. Rouch’s short film Tourou et Bitti (1971) is probably the most unique example. Filming with cinéma-vérité techniques, Rouch shoots a single nine minute roll of film, influencing the unleashing of a possession crisis with his presence.

ABSTRACTS

This article represents a reflection on the application of the perspective provided by sensory ethnography to audiovisual media productions. It starts from the debate on anthropology of the senses and sensory ethnography to underline the importance of the rendition of a recording body in a film or sound recording. The text then reviews examples from the work of Jean Rouch

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and Steven Feld, underlining how they developed specific recording technologies that allowed them to give to their media work an embodied character. Finally, the article approaches the relationship between sensory media and interaction through engagement with the work of Merleau-Ponty, stressing how from a phenomenological perspective an embodied camera is always an interactive camera.

Cet article présente une réflexion sur l'application de l'ethnographie sensorielle dans le cadre de la production audiovisuelle. A partir des débats qui ont été menés autour de l'anthropologie des sens et de l'ethnographie sensorielle l'auteur aborde l'importance de l'interprétation d'un corps enregistrant dans un film ou dans une bande son. Cet article tout en s'inspirant des oeuvres de Jean Rouch et de Steve Feld, souligne la manière dont ils ont développé des techniques spécifiques qui leur ont permis dans le cadre de leur production une dimension corporelle. Finalement, l'article développe les relations entre les médias sensoriels, l'interaction et l'engagement à partir des recherches de Merleau Ponty, qui souligne comment d'un point de vue phénoménologique une caméra incarnée est toujours une caméra interactive.

Este artículo representa una reflexión sobre la aplicación de la perspectiva proporcionada por la etnografía sensorial a las producciones de medios audiovisuales. Comienza con el debate sobre la antropología de los sentidos y la etnografía sensorial para subrayar la importancia de la acción del cuerpo como agente de grabación en una película o grabación de sonido. El texto luego revisa ejemplos del trabajo de Jean Rouch y Steven Feld, subrayando cómo desarrollaron tecnologías de grabación específicas que les permitieron dar a su trabajo con los medios un carácter corporal. Finalmente, el artículo aborda la relación entre los medios sensoriales y la interacción con el trabajo de Merleau-Ponty, destacando cómo, desde una perspectiva fenomenológica, una cámara incorporada es siempre una cámara interactiva.

INDEX

Mots-clés: ethnographie sensorielle, anthropologie visuelle, Jean Rouch, Steven Feld, sens, incarnation, technologies, perceptions, Jame J.Gibson Palabras claves: etnografía sensorial, antropología visual, Jean Rouch, Steven Feld, sentidos, corporalización, tecnología, percpeción, Janes G. Gibson Keywords: sensory ethnography, visual anthropology, Jean Rouch, Steven Feld, senses, embodiment, technology, perception, James J. Gibson

AUTHOR

LORENZO FERRARINI University of Manchester, Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology [email protected]

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How We Know Each Other Exploring the Bonds of Friendship Using Friendship Ethnography and Visual Ethnography

Andrew Stevenson and Rebecca Lawthom

Introduction: Friendship

1 This paper explores bonds that hold a particular friendship together, using a fieldwork technique that acknowledges the family-like resemblances that exists between friendship and research ties. Rather than studying individuals from afar (Fine 1994), in a style that is often called participant observation, it makes sense here to set friendship and fieldwork (with their many parallels), side by side, and to study one using practices that are common to the other. Hence, the decision has been made interrupt the tendency to study friendship from a distance, and to study friendship amongst friends, according to the dialogical ethics of friendship. The emphasis here is on researching friendship within a dialogic dynamic rather than an observational one (Bakhtin 1986).

2 With this in mind, the aim of this paper is to explore, using qualitative research methods that are outlined below, the nature of friendship bonds in four friendship pairs.

1.1 Anthropologies of Friendship

3 We will begin by locating friendship in the discipline of anthropology, where it has often stood in the shadow of kinship (Beer and Gardner 2015). While the importance of friendship bonds has been acknowledged, (Firth 1999), overt ethnographies of friendship have been “few and far between” (Coleman 2010:197). This owes something to the fact that theoretical writing in the discipline has tended to stress the importance of externally situated, coercive power relations, rather than interpersonal, leisure based relationships (Beer and Gardner 2015). Another reason for the backgrounding of friendship in anthropology may be that theories arising from analyses of economic relations or kinship practices may not have be the ideal tools for apprehending

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meaning that emerges from everyday practices of acquaintance or affiliation (Paine 1969).

4 In this paper we argue, using evidence from fieldwork conducted in the UK, for an exploratory, less theory driven orientation to friendship (Leyton 1974), in contrast with functionalist approaches to kinship that characterise early anthropology (Paine 1974). We also argue that an anthropology of friendship may be compatible with kinship studies, considering similarities in their practice, nature and characteristics (Desai and Killick 2010, Fausto 2012). One author who does locate friendship closely to kinship is Pitt-Rivers (1973), who assimilates friendship as a form of kin relation, arguing that both have at their core a submersion of self-interest for the sake of others. Pitt-Rivers highlights the heart’s role in both these realms, in effectively extending the self into others. The obligations of kinship and friendship practices are regarded in this work as being part of the norms of societies in which these extended selves are embedded. As we demonstrate with the friendship pairs from the current study, friendship bonds are not merely the business of two people, but reflect wider networking affiliations. Marshall (1977) also regards motivations or commitments of kin and friendship as part of wider norms of obligation that are central to Trukese society in Micronesia. Equally, the friendship pairs we explore here are engaging in relations that cannot be seen as detached from the webs of relations of which they form a part.

5 Another dichotomy emerging from friendship studies is the debatable separation between relations that are private, informal and voluntary, as friendships are typically constructed (Silver 1989), and those that are public, contractual and societally sanctioned, as kin or economic relations tend to be. One might question these distinctions. We would like to suggest that the domain of private, voluntary relations is “a distinctive creation of the impersonal order central to modern economies and polities” (1997:44), and is thus not a separate realm of human relations that is unconnected to societal institutions (Silver 1989). As we shall assert in the research presented here, friendship pairs are often thrown together in scenarios that are inseparable from choices about work, parenting and even ageing.

6 A third question arising from a wider disciplinary perspective is that of the cultural particularity about friendship, which demonstrably has a shifting meaning across cultural settings. Carrier (1999) discusses a so-called Western view of friendship, hewn from internalised “spontaneous and unconstrained sentiment” (1999: 21), suggesting that Western terms of reference for relating to the self may not be appropriate for Melanesians, who understand relations in the context of kinship and situated contexts. Carrier’s observations about Melanesian friendship should be viewed through the comparative lens of observations presented here, deriving from the UK. And yet we could question the implication that the autonomous, independent self is a Western phenomenon. It has been reported that Mapuche friendship relations reportedly exist between autonomous individuals with individual sentiment playing a strong part (Desai and Killick 2010). Likewise, Killick’s (2009) Peruvian work with the Asheninka highlights “the importance of self-sufficiency and of personal independence and autonomy” in the formation of crucial social relationships (2009: 705). We will see in the work presented here, even in the UK friendship relations are embedded in broader interpersonal networks.

7 In this paper, we intend to contribute to an anthropology of friendship by highlighting elements of friendship practice that reveal its parallels with more familial relations,

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and which show friendship bonds as being inseparable from other forms of interpersonal relations.

1.2 Varieties of Friendship

8 Having briefly reviewed friendship studies in the discipline of anthropology, let us now look a little more closely at the nature of friendship. Friends have been defined as Somebody to talk to, to depend on and rely on for help, support, and caring, and to have fun and enjoy doing things with” (Rawlins 1992:271).

9 Friends can sometimes be painted as second-class relations, of whom we might say “we’re just friends”. Werking (1997) deems friendship to be a more fragile, disposable social bond than that which exists between siblings or spouses. A friendship is often based as much on something frequently done with another person (Owton and Allen- Collinson 2014, Tillman 2015), or on a shared belief, rather being purely based on an emotionally binding strength of affect. Friends come and stay together primarily through common interests, a sense of alliance and emotional affiliation. (Tillman 2015:2).

10 Perhaps because of the lack of an innate or familial bond, friends have been referred to as families we choose (Roseneil and Budgen 2004), or elective kin (Pahl and Spencer 2004), and can differ in type and vary in levels of intensity (Pahl and Spencer, 2004, Heaphy and Davies 2012). Some might be referred to as simple friendships, being based on sharing a single activity (work, leisure, belief, political affiliation). Partners who form simple friendships may rarely meet outside of these contexts, leading to the use of defining terms such as ‘work-friend’. Elsewhere intimate relationships have been painted as emerging from friendship-defining, unifying struggles in the context of activism and feminism. Shepard (2014) stresses ways in which friendships can emerge from a desire for social change, with bonds of friendship being the glue that holds activist work together.

11 Besides being practice based, elsewhere friendships have been recognized as multi- stranded affairs, based on affiliative bonding as well as a specific practice or cause. Heaphy and Davies conducted ethnographic interviews (Spradley 1979) in an inner-city housing estate with friendship pairs, to investigate the vicissitudes of friendship bonds. Here, one respondent reflects on such a multi-stranded bond Friendship for me has several different levels. The best are ‘close friends’ – those people who, usually, I have known for a long time, and with whom I have a shared history. (Heaphy and Davies 2012:315)

12 In multi-level relationships such as these, interconnectedness can comprise experiences that include “support, reciprocity, commonality, a feeling of kinship and/ or being family-like” (Heaphy and Davies 2012:315). Friendship goes beyond dependence on a single, defining practice or belief.

13 Besides illustrating the multilevel nature of friendship, their data also revealed that the interconnectedness of friendship extends beyond these pairs, into community networks. Participants revealed that these bonds were part of a broader interconnecting webs of friendship relations, showing friendships to be frequently set within wider occupational, leisure, or neighbourhood groups. It has also been suggested that the influence of these shared histories varies across differing social groups. For example, traditional working-class friendships have been seen to thrive on

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shared experiences from school, work and/or family life. The sharing of such formative experiences solidify arguably yields sustained relationships that form around values of community and continuity (Whyte 1993, Young and Willmott 1961). These varieties of friendship highlight the rootedness of interpersonal bonds in shared experience, yielding relationships with kin-like features, such as obligation, care, longevity, and the interdependency of wider webs of relations.

14 Yet whilst some friendships may endure in ways that family bonds are expected to, it is common for friendships to coalesce around more individualistic pursuits, such as night-life and leisure time activities that provide a … platform for making a personal ‘impact’ and achieving a sense of significance and distinction in night-time leisure cultures. (Winlow and Hall 2009:106).

15 We have so far learned that friendship takes many forms, serving a variety of functions. They can run deep, along multiple channels and beyond immediate pairs. They can rely on specific, formative activities. They can also be particularly intense when at times of transition, like bereavement, birth, coming out (Cherry 1996).

16 Yet whilst rooted in incremental shared experience, it is equally important for friendship to remain relevant in the present (Shepard 2014). Friendships are more binding when incorporated into present, mundane routines and broader webs of obligation or activism, when “We share the same interests and sense of humour and we meet on a regular basis” (Heaphy and Davies 2012:320).

17 This opening section focuses on anthropologies, varieties and characteristics of friendship. We have seen them to be comparable to kinship, differing in levels, part of larger networks, steeped in obligation, memory, practice, and fluctuating in strength. In this paper, we will present visual-based research to argue that friendship bonds are not only based on liking, but on longevity, regular practice based contact, and on embeddedness in wider social relations.

18 Let us end this introduction by considering a characteristic of friendship which is especially concerning for ethnographic researchers; its parallel with the research encounter itself. Friendship shares forms of relational entanglement with ethnographic fieldwork. The challenges of operating intimately with participants have been highlighted as ones which engage us both at professional and human levels (Powdermaker 1967). The dual obligations of retaining the gaze of a social scientist whilst also conducting close interpersonal relations present a unique dilemma (Ager 1996). Friendship and ethnography both involve entring into another’s space, negotiating roles, incrementally deepening of ties, and learning new codes of interaction (Tillman 2015). Friendship, like fieldwork, raises the dilemma of “getting out” (Iverson 2008) when the time has come to end the entanglement. These dilemmas are played out within webs of significance that permeate friendship communities and the field (Geertz 1973).

19 In view of these parallels, this paper explores bonds that hold friendships together relationally, using fieldwork techniques that acknowledge the family resemblances that exist between friendship and research ties. Rather than by studying individuals from afar (Fine 1998), it makes sense here to set friendship alongside fieldwork; to study one using practices common to the other. In qualitative research, there is a constant decision-making process about how closely to work with, to know, the subject (Fine 1998). Here the decision has been made to study friendship among friends, according to

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the dialogical ethics of friendship. The emphasis here is on researching friendship within a dialogic dynamic rather than an observational one (Bakhtin 1986).

20 The aim of this paper is to explore, using two complementary qualitative research methods, the nature of friendship bonds and practices, in four friendship pairs.

2. Method

21 The current research project was conducted using (i) friendship ethnography (Tillman 2015), incorporating traditional ethnographic methods (interviewing, participant observation), and (ii) visual ethnography (Pink 2007).

2.1 Friendship Ethnography

22 Friendship ethnography is a variation on traditional methods of participation (Langdridge and Hagger-Johnson 2013). It involves adopting the values, practices and ethics of friendship in a research context. In the practice of friendship ethnography, traditional methods of fieldwork (interviewing, observation) are set alongside friendship building practices; conversation, everyday involvement, compassion, generosity, and ‘hanging out’ (Tillman 2015). For example, Cherry (1996) conducted an ethnographic account of a community of people living with AIDS. As well as collecting data through interviews and photography, the researcher engaged in friendship practices with participants. Together, researcher and researched played sport, watched TV, attended and arranged funerals, made hospital visits, all of which added emotional and relational layers to the relationship. Through this process, the relational dynamics of researcher, participant, and friend grew increasingly entangled. Tillman (2015), in her exploration of an LGBT community, also came to know her respondents interpersonally and culturally, achieving the opportunity to give compassion and devotion, to experience them emotionally and spiritually. The research involved simultaneously talking, sharing activities, exchanging material, writing and exchanging views. Thus, researcher-friendship roles wove together, each one deepening the other. Participants became (and remained) family. Relationships extended through multiple dimensions of life.

23 In researching friendships, we consider it important to connect to our participants (Owton and Allen-Collinson 2014). In further interrogating the nature of the relationship between researcher and participant, we argue that whilst all participants may not be considered as friends, we cannot afford to treat them as distant others either.

24 Through this process, the relational dynamics of researcher, participant, and friend grow increasingly entangled. The nature of the relationships override that of observer- observed, taking us towards a methodological variation on participant observation. A slow pace of research is ideal for such projects. They develop over months or years (Cherry 1996) and often rely on serendipity, rather than outright planning (Rivoal and Salazar 2013), very much as friendships themselves do. The friendship ethnography model is less utilitarian than the researcher-participant relationship that prevails in traditional ethnographic work. It reflects the practice of a more person-centred, holistic citizenship. Friendship ethnography is used to get to know others in meaningful, sustained ways (Fine 1994, Tillmann-Healy 2001, Owton and Allen-

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Collinson 2014). It can disrupt traditional unequal power relations between researchers and participants, reducing hierarchical separations. It is based around relationships that are dialogical, empathetic, caring and very often (as in the present project), existing.

25 This embedded research approach does not map neatly onto the traditional notions of ethical protocols that presuppose a linear notion of research, in terms of access and exit routes. Whilst ethical practices were adhered to for the present study, according to the ethical practices recommended by our university and our professional body, the nature of the friendship ethnography researcher-participant dynamic calls for something else. Friendship ethnography draws on an ethics of care (Gilligan 2008, Held, 2006). Eschewing the idea of a universal deontological set of principles, an ethics of care recognizes and privileges relational ethics. Relationships with participants are recognized as developing, ongoing, enduring and often pre-existing, needing attention to be paid to the context in which they are made, researched with and made sense of. Added intellectual interest brings something more to a relationship, on top of affection, emotional support, or shared practice. Participants who know that a researcher cares and has an emotional link, are more likely to know that their confidences will not be breached, and that their interests will be honored. Similarly, when research is an endeavor approached in the spirit of friendship, emergent outputs can additionally benefit participants in terms of self-understanding and a deepening of a sense of friendship between those involved. Thus, according to this ethics of care, the present study was conducted according to friendship values, according to which the participants themselves might learn about their own friendships, as well as we as researchers learning about them.

26 The four friendship pairs who feature in this project are not only friends with each other. This research is about friendships, and it occupies spaces within and across friendships. In qualitative research, there is a constant decision-making process about how closely to work with, to know, the subject (Fine 1998). Here the decision has been made interrupt the tendency to study friendship from a distance.

2.2 Visual Ethnography

27 As well as using friendship ethnography, the present study was conducted through the making of an ethnographic documentary film about friendship pairs. The justification for using this visual element reflects a keenness to demonstrate the nature of friendship ties in ways that that can be seen and heard in a spatial context, rather than merely reported textually, through interviewing.

28 Friendship pairs regularly practice their bonds on daily, weekly, bases, often through occupational or leisure time activities. The nature of such friendships may not be explicable in conversation or available for capture through just talking. It is argued here that simply asking for participants’ accounts using interviews will not enable us to gain full access to quotidian friendship practices. This contention informs our use of visual ethnography (Pink 2007). As well as hearing the accounts of the eight participants in this study through the use of interviews, the use of documentary film enables us to conceive of participants’ thoughts and actions as more than textual (Pink 2007). Adopting this method enables us to appreciate other forms of knowledge, including imagery, sound, physical settings, dwellings, implements and other

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possessions that surround our participants. Using film as well as interviews grants access to phenomena wherein so much (practices, silences, routines) is unspoken, acted out. The use of visual and auditory methods helps us to see and hear what people do and where they do it and have those experiences put into words for us. We are accustomed to regarding thought as something resembling language - the mind speaking to itself or, as dictionaries put it, a process of reasoning. But our conscious experience involves much more than this kind of thought. It is made up of ideas, emotions, sensory responses. (MacDougall 2006:2).

29 It is argued here that the use of film to accompany qualitative interviewing can add to the present literature on ethnographies of friendship (Pahl and Spencer 2004, Heaphy and Davies 2012, Owton and Allen-Collinson 2014, Tillman 2015) by offering a multisensory portrait of relational practices, thus complementing a growing body of work that is oriented towards reported verbal accounts. Through this research project we aim to explore the nature of four friendships as they are experienced, and the practices that bind them, by hearing participants’ accounts, and by seeing and hearing their friendships in action.

2.3 Participants

30 For the present research project the lead researcher worked with four friendship pairs (one including the lead researcher) over a period of twelve months intensively. The researcher’s relationship with the pairs pre-existed and outlasted this time. Time was spent interviewing, filming and joining in with the practices that occupied and cemented each friendship. Our time together extended to activities as diverse as sharing meals, drinking tea, Scottish country dancing, cycling, engaging in community activism against food poverty, and car sharing. The fieldwork yielded traditional field- notes, transcripts, still photographs, as well as a thirty-minute documentary film, How We Know Each Other (HWKE), presented in four 7-8 minute ‘chapters’. Each chapter is devoted to a friendship pair. A trailer for the film is available online.

This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// 31 journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/2525

Link: https://vimeo.com/130013072

32 The full length film has been publically screened in the UK and in Slovenia, in ethnographic film festival contexts. All four friendship pairs fully consented to taking part in the research and to appearing in the resulting documentary film. They have also consented to the use of their first names in this paper, and in the documentary film.

33 Anne and Louise

34 Anne and Louise (Chapter 1 of HWKE) met through attending a yoga class seventeen years ago. Soon after meeting they began to practice yoga together twice weekly in each others bedrooms, which they rearrange for the purpose. Anne and Louise were filmed during their yoga practice and interviewed over dinner, cooked by the lead researcher, at Louise’s house. The lead researcher has known Anne and Louise for over fifteen years and has practiced yoga with them during this period of acquaintance.

35 Amy and Laura

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36 Amy and Laura (Chapter 2 of HWKE) met through working together at a UK university, in an office. They began car sharing, taking it in turns to drive, a year before our research project began. Their experience of commuting together in a small, shared space is the focus of our research here. Amy and Laura were filmed and interviewed in their cars during one week of commuting to and from work. The lead researcher has known Amy and Laura for over two years, through an employment context.

37 Ishbel and Barbara

38 Ishbel and Barbara (Chapter 3 of HWKE) met seven years ago at a local recreational folk music group, and together they provide musical accompaniment for a weekly Scottish Country Dancing class (Ishbel on fiddle, Barbara on keyboard). They rehearse every Monday at Barbara’s flat. They were filmed and interviewed during rehearsal and at their dance class. The lead researcher met Ishbel and Barbara through a mutual friend and joined the Scottish country dance class during the fieldwork period. Research with Ishbel and Barbara was conducted during rehearsals and during their class.

39 Andrew and Zara

40 Andrew (the lead researcher) and Zara (Chapter 4 of HWKE) met two years ago through volunteering at an anti-food poverty charitable organization. They share the weekly, two-hour task of collecting surplus food from supermarkets and transporting it, by bicycle, to a community kitchen. A research assistant filmed and interviewed Zara and Andrew during and after voluntary work sessions.

3. The Nature of the Friendship Bonds

41 The subsequent sections report emergent themes which were derived from thematic analysis of interview transcripts (Braun and Clarke, 2006), that illustrate the nature of the friendship bonds and practices that were evidenced from working with the four friendship pairs. These themes are presented here using quotes from interview transcripts, film stills, reference to the film itself and its soundtrack, which readers can refer to online. The visual materials presented and referred to here are to be considered as part of the data itself, to supplement and enhance the interview transcripts and quotes. Similarly, reference to the soundtrack to the film is considered to provide additional evidence for the more than textual nature of the friendships featured here (Butler 2007, Howe 2005)

3.1 Friendships as Practice

42 Friendship ties are often predicated on activities or practices that bring people together, rather than on mere affection or personal empathy (Tillman 2015). We may like our friends, but liking alone may not be enough for friendship. The four friendships featured here are all dynamic affairs, formed as much by doing as by liking. Three of the four pairs met through the very practice that prevails in the research; yoga, music, volunteering: Louise: We met through the yoga didn’t we and we just started doing it, and then after a while it just became a habit.

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43 The exception, Amy and Laura, already worked together before sharing their commute, but became closer friends once they took this step. Sharing a car, away from the hurly- burly of the shared office, enabled them to deepen their friendship: Amy: The car sharing is an added opportunity to talk about our job and other things that aren’t related to work in a closed space we haven’t necessarily got at work.

44 The dynamic, practice-based nature of these four friendships facilitates forms of communication that go beyond ‘chatting’, as Anne puts it: Anne: We’ve spent so much time together but most of that time has been spent communicating with each other in a very different way to sitting chatting,

45 Levels of communication offered by these friendship practices are multisensory. Barbara heralds the power of music to communicate at a level that transcends words: Barbara: There’s something about music that gives you almost a telepathy attimes. It’s such a wonderful way of communicating.

46 Friendships and the practices through which they begin and thrive are not easily separable, as Zara explains: Zara: The best friendships that I’ve had are ones where you work on something together. The idea of just becoming good friends simply because you hang out or go to the pub doesn’t make much sense to me.

47 As well as being illustrated by participants’ quotes, the practice-based nature of these friendships is evidenced on film, through embodiment and through the senses. Figure 1 shows a still taken from a long sequence in which Louise and Anne lay together in silent relaxation, concluding their practice. Over half of the duration of Chapter 1 of the film features the pair engaged in wordless, yet communicative yogic practice. Similarly, for much of Chapter 4 we see Andrew and Zara wordlessly cycling together, moving in synchrony (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Anne and Louise

Anne and Louise practising side by side in silence Photo by Andrew Stevenson

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Figure 2: Andrew and Zara

Andrew and Zara cycling together Photo by Ines Ponte

48 The film’s soundtrack further demonstrates the importance of non-verbal friendship practices for strengthening bonds. Listen, for example, to Amy and Laura laughing along to their favourite radio show whilst driving to and from work (Chapter 2). Listen too to Barbara and Ishbel playing traditional Scottish music together, doing friendship through sound (Chapter 3).

49 These prolonged ‘friendship doing’ sequences are central to HWKE. They demonstrate the importance of practice, embodiment and synchrony for these four relationships, as well as the depth of communication without speaking that each of these bonds thrives on. Becoming acquainted through doing, getting to know one another by communicating in ways that transcend conversation, gave the project the title for the resulting ethnographic documentary film: How We Know Each Other. These friendship practices – yoga, music, commuting, cycling – are literally how these pairs of people know each other and enact friendship.

3.2 Friendships as Suffuse Bonds

50 The varying strengths and degrees of friendships are illustrated by the observation that some relationships offer more than (and are not limited to) a shared activity (Pahl and Spencer 2004). Beyond the practice-based relationship, multi-stranded friendships are suffuse affairs. Intimate pairs nest within wider networks of acquaintance (Heaphy and Davies 2012). These wider networks may also owe their existence to the practices upon which the friendships thrive. Barbara and Ishbel came together originally through a network of folk musicians, which was established before they opted to meet regularly as a duo:

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Barbara: Tricky to pin down the first time we met because we were playing with the same group where you get to know each other rather gradually.

51 Louise and Anne’s yoga based friendship arose within a wider community of yogis:

Anne: I seem to remember there was a workshop that we went to and we went off to that café for a break. We must have arranged it from there really.

52 Amy and Laura became acquainted through their wider occupational community. They work in a large shared office. Within that network they have created a smaller, shared, mobile space where their friendship practice thrives. The car offers levels of communication that are unavailable at work: Amy: It’s definitely easier to talk in the car. We have to keep the volume down a bit in the office and you’re very aware that there are several people around you.

53 Suffuse friendships operate within larger networks of practice, such as recreational and occupational communities. Another manifestation of the suffuse nature of friendships is their multidimensional nature. Whilst they may coalesce through shared practice, these friendship pairs also afford longevity, shared histories and affective support. Sharing ups and downs, being there during difficult times, offering companionship, these friendships can offer wellbeing in ways that go beyond the requirements and benefits of the practice that lies at their heart. Yet whilst the practice might maintain the bond, the friendship offers more than regular practice. Affectively, it brings companionship, stability and support amid the vicissitudes of life. For Laura, for example, the morning commute raises the spirits and helps her manage her early morning mood: Laura: Some mornings I’m a bit grumpy and I just want to stew in my own grumpiness but I like picking up Amy because she always cheers me up, with something.

54 During and after Anne’s three pregnancies, doing yoga with Louise offered an opportunity to get back to normal life: Anne: Well we didn’t completely stop, did we? I maintained it for a little while and then I’d stop and then I’d gradually come back so we’d have a gently return. Louise: Every time you had a child you swore blind you’d never get back to where you were with it, and lo and behold, two months later we were firing again.

55 When Zara was asked why the weekly pick-up was better with two people she explained the mood enhancing power of companionship: Zara: When you’re on a journey and experiencing lots of novel things it’s quite nice to have a bit of banter about it. Doing it on your own it just feels like you’re going from one supermarket to another and you don’t really enjoy all the moments in between.

56 We argue these friendships are doubly suffuse; they are nested in wider communities; they are affective and supportive. Bonds here seem to traverse the everyday practices of travelling, cycling and the biographical disruption of motherhood.

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3.3 Friendship Routines

57 Arguably, multilayered friendships that revolve around shared practices are more adhesive still when they are acted out as part of a regular routine (Heaphy and Davies 2012). Regular, weekly or even daily meetings demonstrate the importance of the mundane present in the maintenance of friendship. This complements the importance of the shared pasts that were discussed in the previous section.

58 For all four of our friendship pairs, routine is integral. Barbara and Ishbel’s meetings take place every Monday and Tuesday evening; the former a rehearsal for Tuesday the dance class. Louise and Anne share a routine for their meetings, and have done for over seventeen years: Anne: We’ve always maintained it on a Sunday and I think for me there must be something about being brought up Catholic and going to church on a Sunday.

59 Andrew and Zara meet every Wednesday for their early morning pick-up:

Zara: It was our anniversary not so long ago. We’ve been cycling together for a year and a bit and you’ve barely missed a Wednesday.

60 The daily, weekly, annual rhythms of these friendships add the weight of the present to their accumulated longevity. The mundane regularity of practising friendship together binds affective bonds and prompts the occasional thought about what might happen if these routines should for some reason cease. Here, Louise and Anne dare to contemplate their friendship without the routine of yoga: Anne: The yoga is the way we have connected and that’s a big part of both our lives. Louise: I can’t imagine our relationship without the yoga. I can’t imagine just knowing you and not doing the yoga with you.

61 Ending the routine would mean the end of a large part of the relationship. It would also constitute an unwelcome interruption to a weekly cycle, bringing about what Heaphy and Davies (2012) refer to as a detrimental effect on daily living.

3.4 Friendships in Improvised Places

62 During fieldwork it often emerged that friendship bonds were being enacted in improvised spaces that were designed for other purposes. The pairs were ‘making do’, transforming bedrooms, living rooms and cars into meaningful friendship places. Barbara’s living room is transformed into a rehearsal room each week. Laura and Amy’s cars are places of reflection and confiding. Here, Anne explains how she and Louise ritually turn their bedrooms into yoga spaces: Anne: You need a reasonable amount of space, but it does mean preparing the space, which is fine. I quite enjoy preparing the room because it’s all part of the ritual.

63 Friendship spaces are performed and transformed into being, becoming endowed with additional meaning through repetitive ritual (Cresswell, 2004). Through regular practice, the pairs generate shared friendship narratives that are inseparable from the improvised spaces where they are played out. Louise reflects here on the longevity of her bond with Anne as a function of the time they have shared on the mat space:

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Louise: I think we’ve been doing it seventeen-eighteen years. So that’s 700 weeks, two hours a week; 1400 hours. That’s a lot of time on the mat.

64 Narratives emerging from spaces that are shared, especially by female friends, have been referred to as containment stories (Hanson and Pratt, 1995). These stories emphasise the role of shared proximity in the production of relational experience through shared bodily practice (Green, 1998). Hanson and Pratt (1995) note the potential for female friendships for transforming spaces into sites of resistance and aspiration “Gendered identities, including aspirations and desires, are fully embedded in – and indeed inconceivable apart from – place” (Hanson and Pratt 1995:18).

65 Historically, women’s spatial mobility has been limited, choices of living and working spaces curtailed (Green 1998). The transformation of mundane or domestic space (bedrooms, living rooms, cars) into places of companionship, wellbeing, creativity and collaboration reveals an assertive place making that draws on routine practice. Central to this construction of emplaced meaning is the notion that shared spaces are safe places to talk (Green 1998). Interview transcripts can illustrate this point succinctly: Amy: The car feels like quite a safe space to talk and we often sort of deconstruct the day when we’re driving home.

66 As well as being illustrated by participants’ quotes, film aptly illustrates the emplaced nature of these friendships. Chapter 1 of HWKE begins and with Louise gradually transforming her bedroom into yoga practice space in readiness for Anne’s arrival. It ends with her restoring her bedroom. In Chapter 3 we see Barbara’s living room transformed into a music room (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Barbara Ishbel

Barbara’s living room is transformed into a rehearsal space Photo by Andrew Stevenson

67 The film’s soundtrack further demonstrates the importance of acoustic spaces for strengthening bonds. Sound adds an acoustic, contextual layer to the experiences of

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friendship. Listen, for example, to the intense pranayama (breathing) that fills the room and provides the constant soundtrack to Louise and Anne’s friendship (Chapter 1). Listen to the teacher calling the Scottish dance and the dancers’ steps (Chapter 3). Listen to the radio, the windscreen wipers (Chapter 2) and whirring of bicycle wheels (Chapter 4) that are the soundtracks for Amy, Laura, Andrew and Zara.

4. Conclusions and Discussion

68 We have explored friendship using methods incorporating the ethics of friendship (Tillmann-Healy 2001). In using film, we have intended to show friendship bonds through image, sound, embodiment and emplaced context - as well as talk. These strategies enabled the collection of rich, multisensory data that have highlighted four themes. It is argued here that the present research has shown friendships to be practice-based, suffuse, routinized, and emplaced in nature. We argue that these themes highlight similarities between friendship and other practice-based, suffuse, routinized interpersonal relations, such as kinship and more institutional relations.

69 Out study resonances with the work of other researchers, including kin-based research of earlier anthropology, yet also raises further issues for the study of friendship itself. Our first theme, emphasizing friendship as a practice based phenomenon, takes us beyond Rawlins (1992) definition of friendship as primarily a means of support and care. Rather, like Tillman (2015), the friendships explored here depended on routine activity. Other researchers have noted varying levels of friendship, from simple, single activity bonds, to multi-stranded relationship (Heaphy and Davies 2012, Shepard 2014). The suffuse nature of the bonds we explored (our second theme) illustrates friendship as being multi-stranded. However, we acknowledge that this may have been partly due to our recruiting of pairs of friends through our connections with wider organizations (musical, voluntary, occupational). Likewise, the routinized (weekly or daily) meetings that these groups involve may have led to our finding about the routine nature of friendship bonds (theme three), and in turn to neglect another characteristic of friendship that has been noted elsewhere; namely, its sporadic, life-event based nature (Cherry 1996), or indeed its relationship with specific causes or activist campaigns (Shepard 2014). Of all the four themes yielded by our exploration of friendship bonds, the fourth, concerning spaces of friendship, is perhaps the one which has been less well researched in previous friendship studies. We learned that our predominantly female friendship pairs transformed spaces (often physically) into places of affiliation where bonds were enacted. Friendship itself emerges here as a way of endowing spaces with meaning. In this sense, dynamic practices (yoga, dance, driving), transform spaces into sites if meaning and empowerment (Cresswell 2004). It would be interesting for future researchers to explore the emplaced nature of male friendship, and whether such similar transitions are common or required. Equally, it would be interesting to develop the work of Bunsell (2013), who used ethnographic methods to explore the disputed spaces of shared gender gymnasia in relation to female bodybuilder identities. We could ask how shared gender spaces relate to the formation of friendships.

70 Turning now to the method, we argue that filmed friendship ethnography brings three additional attributes to the project, all of which are suited to the study of friendship.

71 Firstly, working with participants who were known to the lead researcher has enabled access to shared, equal status friendship practices that enhanced exploration of the

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central element of the research; friendship. Thus, the fieldwork was conducted within and alongside the practices of hanging out, commuting, sharing food, enjoying music and doing voluntary work, all of which enabled the lead researcher to straddle boundaries that might otherwise have separated him from his participants’ everyday routines. Working with familiars certainly facilitated a level of rapport and acceptance that would have been more challenging to achieve, had such familiarity been absent.

72 Secondly, we argue that combining friendship and fieldwork brings benefits for research participants since it infuses fieldwork with the reciprocal ethic of friendship, rather than requiring participants to give up time and provide data without any intrinsic reward. Through their engagement in friendship ethnography, participants can come to be heard, known, understood, in ways that can be beneficial to all concerned. Engagement in long-term friendship-ethnography can yield new ways of thinking, feeling and relating that can lead to deepening understanding of one’s own relationships and practices. Here Anne reveals how she benefited from the research experience: Anne: It was really interesting to see myself practising yoga, so in terms of the finished result it was really lovely to see it and I really like the way you did it.

73 Amy here explains how she benefitted from taking part in research:

Amy: As participants in research, we often don't have an opportunity to meet the researchers running the research project, and sometimes never see the finished paper or findings. With this project, I knew exactly how my partnership would contribute to the overall project and how the findings would be disseminated. I think (the researcher’s) presence actually enabled me to relax and act naturally- it was fitting that a film about friendship was being researched by my friend.

74 Thirdly, the use of ethnographic film enables the dissemination of research outputs to a wider audience. By producing a documentary film about friendship bonds and practices, the authors have been able to reach a wider public1 with the work, than would have been possible had the work been exclusively disseminated in print. At a recent public screening the following audience feedback suggested that the film provided a way a knowing that can supplement more traditional academic outputs “It captured well the intimacy of friendship and the variety of friendships we have.” “Very much demonstrated the power of ethnographic film making in social science research.” “I'm delighted to see ethnographic filmmaking being useful to psychology.” (Anonymous audience feedback 2015)

75 To conclude, we consider potential limitations facing the ethnographic researcher who conducts fieldwork within the context of the ethics of friendship.

76 Firstly, whilst striving to maintain existing friendship relationships there remains a professional obligation to offer a full account to participants. Such pitfalls are characteristic of the more equal power balance that exists in friendship ethnography, compared with more traditional fieldwork methods. The equity of power and heightened reciprocity of friendship ethnography are exemplified by an obligation to return outputs to the participants for critique. Tillman (2015), in her research with LGBT communities, took her writings back to her community of study for comment. Likewise, during the making of HWKE, friendship pairs were offered the opportunity to attend formative screenings and offer feedback, yielding edits to the film. Treating

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participants with the ethic of friendship, an ethics of care involves listening to suggestions and concerns with a high degree of compassion.

77 Second, we note the challenge of maintaining two modes of communication (researcher and friend). Negotiating boundaries is part of all human relations, including research related-based ones (Frank 2005). Keeping too much distance can compromise rapport. Too much proximity can endanger the research by producing a merger with a participant. Historically, researchers and participants in social science have been knottily entangled (Powdermaker 1970). Indeed, the very claim of a researcher to investigate and write about an ‘other’ person is to deny, rather than engage with, hyphens of inter-subjectivity that bind us all together. We argue here that it is beneficial to acknowledge and work this hyphen by stepping across the line that divides us from our research participants. We concur with Fine (1998), who argues that operating overtly across boundaries between researchers and participants yields rich data.

78 Total commonality of experience between researcher and researched can never be achieved, even within friendships (Allen-Collinson 2012). However, when an appropriate balance is achieved the friendship ethnography method can potentially challenge hierarchical separations between researchers and participants (Tillman- Heally 2003), facilitate dialogic research relationships (Simon 2013), and produce rich data in an atmosphere of empathy and reciprocity. In this paper, the existing friendships between the researcher and friend-participants (still ongoing) arguably produced a valuable, widely accessible output, in the form of a publically available film. We argue here that our research project contributes to the existing body of friendship research (Cherry1996, Tillman-Healy 2001, Owton and Allen-Collinson 2014, Shepard 2014) in that by exploring friendship practices among friends, and engaging with these practices using interviews and film, we are able to build an emplaced, multisensory portrait of inter-subjectivities from a position that is located within those entanglements, amidst an ethic of care.

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Stevenson, Andrew. 2015. How We Know Each Other. 30 min.

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NOTES

1. How We Know Each Other was screened as part of the UK Economic Social Research Council Festival of Social Science in, in Manchester, England, November 2015, and at Days of Ethnographic Film, Ljubljana, Slovenia, March 2017

ABSTRACTS

This paper presents that argument that by combining the methods of friendship ethnography and visual ethnography, friendship itself reveals itself to be a practice-based, suffuse, routinized and emplaced phenomenon. We have used film and interviews to explore the practices that cement friendship bonds among four friendship pairs. In exploring practices and spaces that bind friendship pairs, research was undertaken with participants with whom the primary researcher and filmmaker is already acquainted to varying degrees of intimacy. Situating the research among friends, treating participants according to the ethics of friendship, draws us closer to an understanding of the nature of their bonds. The use of documentary film as a sensory practice that documents practice more vividly than verbal accounts alone can, used alongside friendship ethnography, draws the research closer to the non-verbal aspects of friendships that epitomize intimacy. Our close encounters with these pairs, enhanced by the medium of film, enable us to argue that friendship itself is a practice which is founded on something done (practice-based), embedded in wider social networks (suffuse), enhanced by regular contact (routinized) and contextualized in space (emplaced).

Cet article aborde l'idée qu'en combinant les méthodes ethnographiques fondées sur l'amitié et l'ethnographie visuelle, l'amitié se révèle être un phénomène avéré et systématique qui induit et influe directement sur cette pratique. Nous avons utilisé des films et des entretiens pour explorer les pratiques qui soudent les liens amicaux entre 4 pairs d'amis. En explorant les pratiques et les espaces qui concrétisent ces liens d'amitié, les recherches furent menées avec des participants avec qui le chercheur cinéaste a des liens d'amitié à des degrés d'intimité différente. En situant la recherche autour d'amis, tout en abordant les participants en fonction de valeur éthique de l'amitié, cela nous a permis d'être plus proche de la compréhension naturelle des liens qui les unissent. En juxtaposant le film documentaire, pratique sensorielle qui raconte d'une manière beaucoup plus vivante que ne pourrait le faire les seules descriptions verbales, conjointement avec l'ethnographie amicale cela a permis au chercheur d'accéder aux domaines non-verbaux qui illustrent l'amitié. Ces rencontres, enrichies par la présence d'un dispositif filmique, nous permettent d'avancer que l'amitié par elle même est un savoir-faire qui est fondé sur une pratique (méthode d'apprentissage) incorporée dans un contexte social plus large (imprégnation) soutenu par des contacts réguliers (systématisation) et contextualisé dans un espace donné (situation).

Este artículo presenta el argumento de que al combinar los métodos de la etnografía de la amistad y la etnografía visual, la amistad misma se revela como un fenómeno inmersivo, “empapado” y localizado, basado en la práctica,. Hemos utilizado películas y entrevistas para explorar las prácticas que consolidan los lazos de amistad entre cuatro parejas de amistades. Al explorar las prácticas y los espacios que unen las parejas de amigos, se realizó una investigación con participantes con quienes el investigador principal y el cineasta ya tenían diversos grados de

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intimidad. Situar la investigación entre amigos, tratar a los participantes de acuerdo con la ética de la amistad, nos acerca a la comprensión de la naturaleza de sus vínculos. El uso del documental como una práctica sensorial que documenta la práctica de manera más vívida que las narraciones verbales, usada junto con la etnografía de la amistad, acerca la investigación a los aspectos no verbales de las amistades que singularizan la intimidad. Nuestros encuentros cercanos con estas parejas, realzados por el medio cinematográfico, nos permiten argumentar que la amistad misma es una práctica que se basa en algo hecho (basado en la práctica), incrustado en redes sociales más amplias (inmersión), realzado por contacto regular ( empapado) y contextualizado en el espacio (localizado).

INDEX

Palabras claves: amistad, etnografía, visual, documental, localizado, práctica Mots-clés: amitié, ethnographie, visuel, documentaire, contexte, pratique Keywords: friendship, ethnography, visual, documentary, emplaced, practice

AUTHORS

ANDREW STEVENSON Manchester Metropolitan University Andrew’s research focuses on the use of diverse qualitative methods for the exploration of relationality. He has used sensory ethnography, friendship ethnography and documentary film in his research into the relationships between people and places. [email protected]

REBECCA LAWTHOM Manchester Metropolitan University Rebecca is a professor of community Psychology, an approach which has a strong value base. She teaches community psychology and qualitative methods. She is a feminist and also leads a Centre on Social Change and Community Well Being. Her work engages with participative and collaborative research with those marginalised by the social system. She writes into disability, feminism and migrant literature working qualitatively and in solidarity. [email protected]

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