disruptedjournal – The Disrupted Journal of Media Practice

Multimodal Research – Edward Said, The Amateur and The Exile

Janneke Adema — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 20:40:14 +0000

By Matthew Hawkins

I recall a conversation between an academic and an MA student. The two were discussing the ocularcentric approach to the analysis, and conceptualisation of cinema. The MA student was annoyed by the structure of his own utterances, and his continual, unconscious references to viewing, and to seeing the cinema. He was somewhat embarrassed by his inability to verbally engage with the rhetoric and discourse of audio, and to give full weight to the importance of sound in the conceptualisation of cinema. The academic responded by acknowledging the devious ability of language to colonise our ideas. Often, we do not speak language, rather language speaks us. The form in which we express our ideas not only informs said ideas, but rather shapes, constrains and constructs concepts on our behalf. What media practice can offer the academy is the creation of new forms of argumentation, new languages, and ways to construct and disseminate ideas. These new forms of course present their own problems, limitations, and devious discourse shaping techniques, but despite this they may present the opportunity for new forms of thinking. Gilles Deleuze notes, for example, that the invention of cinema opened up a possibility for the creation of new concepts, and new modes of thought (1986)[i]. Thinking, the creation of ideas, and the production of new knowledge is dependent upon technology, whether that be the technology of language, image making machines, networks, or others.

The discipline of media studies attracts academics from a wide range of fields. Lecturers, and researchers regularly move from their original areas of training and study, bringing with them BAs, MAs, and PhDs in literature, sociology, history, philosophy, etc. The study of media in this regard is an outsider sport. Intellectuals positioned in media departments are exiled from their original homes, and they bring with them a wide collection of methods, theories and concepts. Media studies is far from a unified field, and this is its strength. The language it speaks is diverse, and constantly in flux.

Media practitioners are equally exiled, stuck on a hinterland somewhere between industry, and what is regarded as serious scholarship. My practice doesn’t sit easily in either category. I’m a filmmaker, and this pursuit is not held in the same esteem as the writing of complex philosophical tomes, yet my work’s lack of obvious entertainment value positions it outside of the realm of ‘the movie’, or the entertainment industry. I am an outsider on all fronts, but this is not a de facto negative position. My writing, and my moving image work exist in dialogue with one another. They disrupt one another in a positive sense, not allowing for any of the two forms to remain too comfortable for too long. Edward Said comments in detail on the representation of the intellectual in this regard. For Said, the position of the outsider is the right role for the modern intellectual, as “[e]xile for the intellectual in this metaphysical sense is restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others” (1993a)[ii]. Said also calls for an amateurism in the image of the modern intellectual. The amateur works not out of obligation, but out of love, and this method, if we can call it that, allows one to make “connections across lines and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a speciality, in caring for ideas and values despite the restrictions of a profession” (1993b)[iii]. A multimodal research praxis allows for an unsettling of discipline, an unsettling of technology and, most importantly, an unsettling of the researcher. Like the amateur and the exile, the practitioner/researcher hybrid creature looks for connections, and attempts to crack open the machine to see what’s inside. The connections made are not neat, and they are not always successful, but the method is open to the possibility of the new, of the unique, of the innovative.

This draws comparison with the inter-disciplinary research team. Inter-disciplinary research should not exclusively consist of harmonious, loving exchanges. Rather, this approach should result in the violent and destructive collision of ideas and methods, which scar, bend, crack and bastardise the respective disciplines. The researchers and their disciplines should be permanently changed after this meeting. This is where notions of professionalism constrain the production of knowledge. The professional, upstanding, Society indorsed researcher is so loyal to discipline, and their respective methodologies that they dare not step out of line for fear of being ostracised.

The multimodal academic exile is perfectly placed to produce challenging, vitalistic, forceful work capable of opening new vistas, and creating unique concepts. Adam Brown’s UniverCity offers the potential to appropriate a discourse of hypercapitalistic property development, as a ground for the critical investigation of the changing spaces of the university campus in a physical, digital and virtual sense[iv]. The use of the web forum[v] opens up a potential for a polyphony of voices, and a non-linear exploration of ideas. Sara Jones reflects on her first meeting with Claire Anterea from the ‘drowning island’ of Kiribati[vi]. Jones encounters Anterea through the camera lens, which mediates their relationship, and frames the subject (literally) and the response of the researcher (physically). The camera in this sense does not simply record an encounter, it facilitates a response which itself can be ‘data’ to be recovered and investigated. The physical relationship between the photographer and the camera creates liminal, emotional moments, which have value but are difficult to grasp. As Marta Rabikowska notes, “conflict, frustration, agony, uncertainty, and surprise brings about unexpected research findings and new research questions”[vii]. Anthony Luvera similarly explores the power relations between the object of the camera, and the wielder of this object in his project Assembly[viii], whereas Katherine Wimpenny, Peter Gouzouasis, and Karen Benthall bring together poetry, music, and images, as well as a multitude of voices[ix]. Wimpenny et al mobilise their own poetry as a reflective device and a graphological disruption. Many of the relationships in the projects presented (words/screen, light/lens, flesh/machine) have the potential to create and to reveal knowledge. The form in which this knowledge is expressed, the language in which we speak, can also have the potential to surprise and reveal if open to a certain amount of disruption.

[i] Deleuze, G. (1986) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. 4th edn. Minneapolis: Continuum International Publishing Group – Athlone Press.

[ii] Said, E. (1993a) REITH LECTURES 1993: Representations of an Intellectual Edward Said Lecture 3: Intellectual Exiles. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1993_reith3.pdf (Accessed: 7 October 2016).

[iii] Said, E. (1993b) REITH LECTURES 1993: Representations of an Intellectual Edward Said Lecture 4: Professionals and Amateurs. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1993_reith4.pdf (Accessed: 7 October 2016).

[iv] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/univercity/

[v] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/forum/index.php

[vi] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/performing-vulnerability-in-kiribati/

[vii] Betwixt and between: Exploring the liminal through the social sciences, arts and humanities available at – https://www.academia.edu/9917241/Conference_paper_interdisciplinarity_and_visual_methods

[viii] http://www.luvera.com/assembly/

[ix] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/remembering-reflecting-returning/

An a/r/tographer’s perspective on practice

Janneke Adema — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 08:54:32 +0000

By Peter Gouzouasis

Whenever I hear or read the word ‘practice’ I think of the infamous Allen Iverson rant from 2001.

“If I can’t practice, I can’t practice man. If I’m hurt, I’m hurt. I mean … simple as that. It ain’t about that … I mean it’s … It’s not about that … At all. You know what I’m saying I mean… But it’s…it’s easy … to, to talk about… It’s easy to sum it up when you’re just talking about practice. We’re sitting in here, and I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we’re talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about practice. Not a game. Not, not … Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last. Not the game, but we’re talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that? … And we talking about practice. I know I supposed to be there. I know I’m supposed to lead by example… I know that … And I’m not … I’m not shoving it aside, you know, like it don’t mean anything. I know it’s important, I do. I honestly do… But we’re talking about practice man. What are we talking about? Practice? We’re talking about practice, man. [laughter from the media crowd] We’re talking about practice. We’re talking about practice. We ain’t talking about the game. [more laughter] We’re talking about practice, man. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you see me play don’t you? You’ve seen me give everything I’ve got, right? But we’re talking about practice right now.”

(Iverson, 2001)

All kidding aside, the term ‘practice’ means different things to different people, in different professions.

I started playing guitar at age 8. I didn’t ‘practice’ the guitar much from age 8-12. I was mostly interested in baseball and playing outdoors with friends. In fact, I recall a glorious summer morning when I was waiting for my old guitar teacher, Mr. Shumsky, to come to our house for my weekly lesson when we received a phone call that he’d suddenly passed away the day before. “Woo hoo, I can go play ball with my friends!” was my typical 10 year old reaction.

Mr. Shumsky was a patient man. His older brother was a world famous violinist, but he was merely a ‘jack of all trades’ when it came to musical instruments – he played guitar, mandolin, tenor banjo, violin, cello, and mandola. A confirmed bachelor, he lived at the YMCA in center city, and always wore a nice cleanly pressed wool suit, crisp white shirt, and tie. A week after he passed my mother saw the obituary in the newspaper – he’d left close to $200,000 to the American Cancer Society.

I recall that we’d always have fun lessons. He’d take the time to review exactly how I was to approach and go though his prescribed music readings, songs, and chord progressions. It was from him I learned that it was important to engage a child with playing music to develop a deep, sustainable love of music making. Without ever saying anything about my habits, he knew I’d rarely practice more than 20 minutes a day, and sometimes I’d be more interested in making feedback sounds with my electric guitar and old tube (valve) amplifier than in learning to play “Home on the range.” But somehow, I was always prepared to play my lesson and take my learning to the next level.

Even in my early teens, when I started to play guitar two to three hours a day, I never thought of play as practice. Learning to transcribe songs while playing drop the needle with LPs on my small turntable was sometimes arduous. But the rewards of learning a new song to play at a weekend coffeehouse or house party were plentiful.

Playing didn’t become practice – in the tedious, repetitive sense of playing scales and arpeggios over and over to reach technical perfection – until I started studying music at age 15. It was then I received my first book of classical guitar etudes by Fernando Sor, which built upon the techniques gleaned from scales and arpeggios, and went about the demanding task of learning to play like my new found idols, Andres Segovia and John Williams. And of course, by the time I auditioned for university and I began the ‘serious study’ of music, I was practicing 4-6 hours a day – the monotony of repeating the same passages of music, over and over, until my fingers and mind could perform at perfection and from memory.

In consideration, perhaps playing music – making music, musicking – should be equated with praxis, not practice.

Practice-Based Methodologies And The Researcher As Subject

Janneke Adema — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 10:14:49 +0000

By Katherine Wimpenny

In this short blog post I would like to discuss the theme of practice-based methodologies and in particular the researcher as subject.

I have enjoyed reading Emma Walters ‘Autoethnographer’s Tale’ and her use of a blog to walk beside her on her doctorate journey, a neutral friend, an ear that never tires. Herself – shared, open, honest, vulnerable, and a research practice that parallels the work presented in our paper ‘Remembering, reflecting, returning: A return to practice journey through poetry and images’ as part of the present Special Issue. In our piece we share our willingness to be open to experiencing the world in and through our methodological and pedagogical practices, to develop a greater awareness of self in the world, to receive, to understand, to create, to write – to be consciously acquainted. Importantly, we are interested in exploring how aspects of knowing and learning about the self can enhance our own and our students/researchers/practitioners learning experiences. As we write stories of practice we not only learn to be critical of our actions, we learn to better inform our practice and those who are engaged in similar life experiences. As Gouzouasis (2008:231)[1] asserts “the more questions we unearth from fertile s/p/laces (de Cosson, 2004)[2] of inquiry and the more we describe and understand the qualities of our work in new, imaginative ways, the less finite, reckless, fleeting and self-absorbed our work may become”.

A broad landscape of scholarly practice has emerged that reinstates the author as subject, and embraces creative and storied means of representation. Through a storied blog or paper or poem we can artfully describe the highly subjective social, emotional, spiritual, and heartful aspects of being a researcher, an academic, a practitioner. Working with artists/researchers/teachers such as Peter Gouzouasis has enlivened my research practice and enabled me to enrich, deepen and expand the ways in which I explore, question and open up conversations with research participants, whilst also leaving space for the viewer to add to the picture, which sits well when considering the complexity of human life and experience. Emma’s writing reminds me of the research practice which Ron Pelias (2004:1)[3] writes about, knowing there is more to making a critical case, more than establishing criteria and authority, more to presenting research findings when we connect from the heart, the body, the spirit.

Emma’s blog also re-connected me to my own research experiences not least in the challenges of conducting authentic PAR. During my doctoral journey I used a similar method of self-reflexive write ups, and whilst not in the form of a blog, they were shared openly with my supervisory team and participants. As a valid form of ‘data,’ these entries were used alongside the practitioners’ narratives, and anlaysed as part of ‘first person action research practice’ as discussed by Heron and Reason (2001)[4], as part of fostering an inquiring approach, acting with awareness, and carefully considering the effects of action. This emphasis on the researcher playing a committed part within the inquiry process, and not taking an outsider researcher role, can only help to portray the layers of complexity involved in research inquiry and to question established theories, to situations as they arise, to acknowledge that people think differently from one another, and importantly that one does not always know what is best.

Whilst also wary of such self-reflexive work not being about unnecessary navel-gazing (Finlay, 2003)[5] the opportunity to reach out and connect with others, to offer a space for dialogue, to evoke incitements to action, are all worthy scholarly purposes for research practices. Emma’s willingness to be open about her own journeying outwardly exemplifies the labour of learning, the joys and anguish felt, yet benefits to be realised from such personal risk taking made transparent.

As the piece ‘Creating future memories: a dialogue on process’, also highlights, the experience of reality is multisensory and embodied and our methods of inquiry need to move beyond the textual, to incorporate the auditory, the visual, the immersive. We need to expand the palettes from which we can represent our work, along with our understanding of how these can be shared with others. Similar then to the questions posed about conducting ‘messy ethnography of digital materialities across a series of cultures’, is the importance of questioning the substantive features of our inquiry and how as artists/researchers/teachers we manage the tensions of research practice which is dynamic, fluid and seeks not to be contained yet generates possibilities for fresh approaches for creating, translating, and exchanging knowledge. Creative practice based methodologies have potential to extend the researcher and participants outside of their comfort zone through both the process of inquiry into human experience, as well as in the questioning of how theoretical perspectives might be fruitfully integrated, and how through grappling with this integration we can continue to extend our use of the power of aesthetic portrayal to study human experience.

[1] Gouzouasis, P. (2008) Toccata on assessment, validity & interpretation. In S. Springgay, R. L. Irwin, C. Leggo & P. Gouzouasis (Eds.), Being with A/r/tography. Sense Publishers: Rotterdam, pp. 221 – 232.

[2] de Cosson, A. F. (2004) The hermeneutic dialogue: Finding patterns amid the aporia of the Artist/Reseacher/Teacher. In R. L. Irwin & A. de Cosson (Eds.), A/r/tography: rendering self through arts-based living inquiry. Vancouver, BC: Pacific Educational Press, pp 127 – 152

[3] Pelias, R. (2004) A methodology of the heart: evoking academic and daily life. Oxford; Altamira Press.

[4] Heron J., & Reason, P. (2001) ‘The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ people’. In P. Reason, & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London, SAGE.

[5] Finlay, L. (2003) Through the looking glass: intersubjectivity and hermeneutic refection. In L. Finaly & B. Gouch (Eds.), (2003) Reflexivity: a practical guide for researchers in health and social science. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.