WTF is Autoethnography

     This article was difficult to dive into at first. It used a lot of hard to understand vocabulary and kind of rambled on a bit. However, with focus, it started to become clearer. Ethnography is the focus and observation of others to understand a group's culture. Autoethnography is a self-reflection in which the artist focuses on themselves to connect their personal experiences to the culture and society around them. The author goes into detail about a few artists and expands upon ways that these individual artists have achieved autoethnographic film. Autoethnography can be accomplished in multiple ways but in the end they are all self-reflecting upon their own lives.

Autoethnography

Ethnography is described as a study of a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures. Autoethnography is what one would call for the description on the author's/film maker's own culture and thoughts.

The article (as much as it was a bit confusing to understand first go) gives an a depiction of several film artists whose work have fit within the autoethnographic catagory. Each one however, shows their film work in a different way from each other, just as an individual person varies from one another. They use the camera as a means of documentation of their inner thoughts, while also creating a narration that is used to help the viewers understand the individual idea.





Hm... not exactly sure what else I can say about this. :\

Autoethnography?

The term autoethnography is a loaded one.  I found wikipedia's definition to be helpful for my understanding:

"Autoethnography is a form of self-reflection and writing that explores the researcher's personal experience and connects this autobiographical story to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings.^[1][2] It differs from ethnography —a qualitative research method in which a researcher uses participant observation and interviews in order to gain a deeper understanding of a group's culture— in that autoethnography focuses on the writer's subjective experience rather than, or in interaction with, the beliefs and practices of others. As a form of self-reflective writing, autoethnography is widely used in performance studies and English."

It is interesting to consider how the medium of film adds further complexity to an autoethnographic work as compared to the medium of literature or spoken word storytelling.  I think this is what Russell is wrestling with, although much of this reading was difficult for me to understand. What stuck out most to me was the idea of film allowing for hybridity, which becomes possible through a layered juxtapostion of the voice, vision, and body of the autoethnographer.  Therefore the medium of film/video uniquely mediates the story being captured and performed by the artist, which becomes a less restrictive medium than that of literature or spoken word.  Here the artist is able to shape the experience of the viewer beyond strict narration.  The new problems that arise are how to capture and present a story visually and sonically.  If the story told is recalled or remembered, what sounds and images will aptly recreate or enhance the effect of the story? 

I think that in a typical written biographical work, or other nonfictional writing, the reader as audience often mistakes the story as fact.  In truth, theses stories are remembered versions, serving like maps, which can be faulty.  Any story written or told carries with it biases, exaggerations, false memories, and omitted information.  I find that the medium of film/video as a narrative device can have these same pitfalls, such as in documentary film; however, as an art form, I think that video has an inherent capacity to both capture and transform personal narrative beyond strictly written or spoken storytelling, allowing us to reconsider the thoughtful imagination and editing of the story by its author.

Film vs. self

First, I find extremely uncomfortable that someone is talking about some else’s biography, while mixing their own opinion. I do not what is part of the biography and what is opinion. Secondly, I found ironic that in p. 275, the writers starts by saying “throughout his various autographical writings, a sense of the self emerges…”. I actually hope that a sense of self emerges while writing autography.

Anyhow, This article is mostly about self-representation and self-biographies. I think it is very obvious that our pasts influences our present and our future. Our culture, our good memories, our bad memories, our religion, our morals, our everything, changes our outcome. That is why everybody is different. As humans, as artists, as filmmakers, as editors, and writers will have a biased touch by us, every contributor, even it is totally honest or fake. Nobody can guarantee that everybody will like it, comprehend it, share it, learn from it, remember it, but everything we do as artists can reach and even change anybody, even in the future. I agree that “is not to say that avant-garde film is ‘dead’, just that it is becoming increasingly difficult to finance”. That why many things, previously part of human daily lives, are parts of museums: difficult to be part of our contemporary lives and with no compatibility anymore. Also, that the “splitting oneself across numbers of different axis: child and adult, old world and new…”. What do we show to this clueless audience? Appealing to the old fashion? Appealing to the new?  To the natural? How do we make it exciting? Interesting? Do we show our motivations? Influences? Our emotional truth? Would that be enough, or it would be too much? Do we distort it? Exaggerate it? Fake it? Would it be a home movie? A detailed one? do we make it about oneself? About others? About something or somewhere? About suffer? About happiness? How long? Do we edit it? A little bit or a lot? Close-ups or improvised?... and many more doubts and liberties has the film, documentaries, biographies, and many other.

Autoethnography

In this text, the author, Catherine Russell discusses various video and film artists that are associated with the genre of personal cinema. While these artists altogether do not represent the wide diversity of the form , they do represent a variety of approaches and techniques in combining self representation with cultural commentary. There are several different ways and techniques to film yourself, and your thoughts, which is what this reading is about.
Jonas Mekas focuses his independent cinema around truth and freedom in the attempt to salvage an identity. He documented his life spent in exclusion from his culture in New York City, and documented his reunion with his family in Lithuania.  His project has been called an example of secondary revision, meaning a recount or revision of an experienced dream. While this filming is very much a dairy entry of Mekas, it is not a direct or obvious. In Mekas' strive for the past he constructs a memory by separating himself: child/adult, old/new, natural/cultural, pastoral/urban, ect. from his early life to his present. He is filming himself by filming others.
George Kuchar is a more straight forward artist in the realm of personal cinema. He films himself using live narration to explain and attempt to cope with his reality. A large majority of his work involves life in a hotel/motel, following the weather. His films make you feel uncomfortable, for his actions on camera or equally disturbing and personal. He is filming himself by filming his relationship between things, such as the weather, tv, strangers, trash, himself, water faucets, ect.
Sadie Benning, who, we as a class, watched some of her work, creates personal cinema with a Fisher Price camera. Her work includes narration, but relies also on multiple short shots of various scenes and angles she created to move the story forward. These small scenes are deeply personal as well, for they are constructed out of her personal belongings. She is filming herself by filming he personal surroundings in a story line that follows her life.

Autoethnography

    In Autoethnography: Journeys of the Self, author Catherine Russell explores the different, yet intricately related, video practices of four artists working with moving images in a similar fashion. The work of these artists is both self exploratory, and at the same time revelatory, in terms of the exploration of the artists social, cultural, and historical surroundings.

    Russell explores the work of three different artists whose work falls into the fluctuating category of Autoethnography, which she describes using a quote by Marie Louise Pratt:

"If ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans describe to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialog with these metropolitan representations."

The texts mentioned in the above quote are substituted for filmic representations in Russell's essay. These representations can take on a number of forms, some of which Russell describes, although it stands to reason that easier accessibility to digital forms of video recording, such as phone cameras, etc., already has, and continually will change the techniques and processes used by film makers today, and in the future. 

    She explores the work of Jonas Mekas, who documented his life as a Lithuanian exile in the artistic and Lithuanian circles of New York, as well as a reunification with his Lithuanian family after 25 years spent abroad. Mekas' films are not the sort of straight forward video diary we have come to expect from Youtube, but rather are a blending of images and narration that point to the greater themes of expatriate life in the U.S., and to family/communitarian dynamics in times of political division and geographical separation.  

    Russell then investigates how the films of California based video artist George Kuchar are a means for him to at once understand, and come to terms with his surrounding reality. Kuchar often uses  voyeuristic framing techniques and live narration, which he adds as he is filming, or as the action is unfolding. Because the narration is live, and because the direction it takes is to a large part dependent upon the actual filming and location of the filming, his videos have a much stronger diaristic character, which is reminiscent of a sort of stream of consciousness unfolding before the viewer.

    Russell concludes by examining the (early) work Sadie Benning, whose mode of video production can be most readily compared to that of George Kuchar. As with Kuchar, Benning uses a very personal style of filming, something which is underscored by her use of a Fisher Price Pixelvision camera. While Kuchar narrates his films as the action is unfolding, Benning is somewhat more calculating in that she blends live narration with interjected pop songs and visual text. In this fashion, Benning imbues her films with a sense of familiarity that most people who have filmed home videos can relate to, which she then uses to draw the viewer into personal narratives about coming of age as a lesbian in American society. 

    To a larger extent than the artists listed above, Benning's work blends notions of the diary, video, identity, and societal/historical contexts. Perhaps this is why Benning's work, at least to my mind, bears the closest resemblance to the idea present in the quote by Pratt which I included in the beginning of this text. In the same way that those who were formerly subjugated by European colonialists can utilize autoethnography not only to document, but also to critique, and as a tool for identity formation, Benning uses her filmic practice to at once tell from her life, and at the same time to impel the viewer to accord the portrayed life the same value or status he or she would others.

Thoughts on Autoethnography

Primarily, this work focuses on five (4) filmographies that really made autoethnography what it is. These artists are Jonas Mekas, George Kuchar, Sadie Benning, Kidlat Tahimik, and Chris Marker.

Each of these different artists make some sort of major contributions to ethnography, whack is basically the betwixt of individual histories and social histories.  Jonas Mekas showed that in the what was said to be his most rudimentary way: the video diaries of his life. These movies did not just show his own life but the things that are happening in his society and he also want to give an outlet for those who wanted to be outside of the commercial world. George Kuchar does a similar thing where he seems to be constantly taping everything around yet giving his own sort of 'opinions' along the way. Sadie Benning, on the other hand, takes a smaller approach to things by using a pixel vision camera; her idea was more along the line of catching the everyday,  small events. Lastly, Kidlat used his form of documentary shows a more primitive life within the Philippines.

All these different things contributed towards documentaries and ethnography in their own ways, silly or not. I wonder happened to people having fun with documentaries? They are always so serious instead of silly like Kuchar's and just breaking the mold in the way its made as well as the content.

The future is pretty much inevitable, but is it predictable?

                This cartoon was published by a New York newspaper in 1901, the Futurist Manifesto was published in an Italian newspaper in 1909.  If I was going draw a similarity between the two I would say societies internationally shared a form of group think; and like-wise sub groups  internationally shared different levels of  enthusiasm or lack thereof for what has become known as Futurism. Much like any movement; social, political, art, etc. involves a level of think which typically involves a level of feeling.

                Above, the colorfully dressed men living 86 years in the future exchange in a conversation that indicates one will be taking a round trip flight from New York to Paris and back in time for dinner.
Is this funny to you upon first glance? Maybe so, maybe not. However, 110 years ago this was a joke and extremely unrealistic.
In 1914 the Wright brothers created the first machine capable of flight.
In 1961 the Soviet Union launched the first human into space to orbit the Earth.
In 1968 the Apollo Program launched the first humans into space to orbit the Moon.
All of these things happened before 1987.

                  I wanted to compare the Futurist Manifesto to the Cartoon because I wanted to explore the published "predictions" made not only  by society but also by established individuals in a society. Marinetti was passionately writing about a prediction for the future in a declarative "crippling of the past" way.  Through using the Arts and supporting of Arts as a tool to open a gate for the "believers" believing that ideas do come true only if they are worked for. Poetically, he illustrates with his own words how such a movement towards the future would/should be accomplished.

            Was the Manifesto of Futurism any more accurate of a prediction than the political cartoon created almost a decade earlier? As a group of thinkers have we, even today, consistently underestimated the effects of what we put out into the world? Are we moving forward now, and if so what towards? 

          How do I relate this Manifesto to our class and to New Media arts? Maybe if I could somehow travel into the future and tell you what was going to happen to those working as artists, or what would happen to the many very talented artists of the last decades I would passionately and poetically attempt to do so. Although I think for now I should bite my tongue.

The future isn't predictable. Maybe the weather, but not the future.
History shouldn't be forgotten.
& We shouldn't become 100% "positive" of what the future holds.
Although being 100% positive about some things is pretty important, otherwise kids 110 years from now won't have anything to talk about in class.

Lost the blog ….. but than found it!!

Sorry this is so late I lost this blog until yesterday. To be honest procrasnated on this reading like I'm sure most of the others did haha.

Okay so this reading is pretty intense this person seems like art should only be only the future and I disagree. We need museums and art in the world to look at to inspire us to go and do greater and better things in the world. If we did not look at the past to help us than we will be starting from scratch like a cave man and I doubt ever reach this new media level.

Sounds like a rebellious teenager

Surely the reading was supposed to sound extremely inspiring, but -maybe it's just me or the fact that we're living in a time period much more "chill" per say about what people are now considering to be art- it seems like it becomes a bit, immature the more I read it. Like a rebellious teenager telling their parents to get off their back so that they can do what they think is "right" with just the little experience they have.

I understand the want of leaving the idea that every artist strives to have their pieces in museums, and that to expand on their own ideas and individual preferences, but going so far as to say that the buildings should be destroyed is pretty harsh. I believe that understanding the foundations of the different styles of "museum" art and their history helps us identify where these ideas in the first place come from. From there, the ideas of bending, but not quite breaking the rules can be performed while creating new styles of art.




 

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The Futurist Manifesto, which outlines the 11 points of futurism, presents itself as an annoyed response to many aspects of the art world at the time. Amongst these complaints they address their issues with museums, academies, and institutes such as that---places that focus on remembering the past and following the rules (yaaaawn). I can relate with this, as i feel places such as these can be discouraging and limiting for certain sorts of artistic expression (public art, performance, some other next level experimental shit??), but then futurism kind of loses me in its macho ramblings. The glorification of war, violence, anti-feminist ideas, and patriotism seems just a tad bit immature and uninteresting to me. Maybe at the time glorifying those things was "revolutionary," but in the present, that just seems backwards. However, i do enjoy some of the visual aspects of pieces from that movement, just not the underlying themes.

New Media Art, as a concept, is also somewhat reactionary, since New Media artists reject the use of old mediums and opts to utilize "new" mediums when trying to efficiently convey their ideas.
But, the advent of New Media wasn't as much of an angry response to what already exists, as it was just a logical progression of how art should develop. I wouldn't even really view it as a "movement"( i mean it is basically just concept art with a fancy new name), as it is more of a "genre" or something of that sort with multiple smaller micro-movements inside of it. New Media is too fluid to effectively be summed up by a one page manifesto, and that's why it is important. It will always be changing, developing, and progressive. It doesn't include any limiting underlying themes, as it is all based in experimentation and forward thinking.

hey, but.... this is important:
Trash bag poncho.

http://www.new_media.com/?/club/meetings

I'M GOING TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS SO THAT MAYBE YOU READ THIS
>

WE JUST HAD OUR FIRST NEW MEDIA CLUB MEETING 

>>
IT WAS SO CLOSE TO THE ART BUILDING THAT WE COULD HAVE SPAT ON IT

it was very impromptu
>>>

WE NEED A BETTER NAME!!! 

the sound of a club is lame, but the product of us getting to know each other outside of academia is that at the very least our critiques will not sound like eulogies

and that our class will not be segregated until April

-new name suppositions are very welcome

>>>>

WE NEED YOU TO BE THERE TOO!!!!!!!!!

more brains = more ideas
no fee, only initiation challenge
>>>>>

WHEN ARE YOU MOST FREE TO HANG???

some poor Googleian spent at least part of their day, one of their days writing the code to make the comments section applicable, so....

vvv    Answers to manifest below:    vvv

Nostalgia of Futurist Manifesto

The futurist manifesto was a work written over 100 years ago that seems to be out of spite for the ways of that time period. He could not stand museums and what he called the slavery that it was to live in the past. It seems so funny, though, because all of the things he mentioned like the museums being cemeteries for old works, slaving to the past, or even to allow new blood into the mix, are all things that are still highly evident today. 

Going on, museums are everywhere nowadays and it is true that a lot of them hold out for the past. I do not know if this is for the fact that most people understand it better or that the structure of the museum still believes that the old works are still art. I am not sure but what I do know is most of the museums that I have been to are constituted with traditional works from the United States and other countries. Where there is modern art, there is only a little bit of it to be found and , that too, has been there for a while. At this point, the only thing is to keep moving forward.

Also, most of what we learn in school are things that come from centuries of tradition that seem almost forbidden from breaking or even bending. for someone who wants to solely express themselves and their way of thinking would most certainly come into conflict with those old traditions. Most of the time you are expected to follow a certain method and you really cannot break away until you break away.

Lastly, nobody really likes to let in new talent in this industry. A good example is John Lasseter from Pixar. A lot of the current character design and such from disney's CGI department come from him. They do not experiment all that much with characters any more so much of the characters are similar to each other. There really is not a lot of room for new anything.

Report of the Manifesto

I have heard that the Futurism approach was a aggressive, but I never thought that it would be this almost violent. They talk about forgetting the past and creating a future, which it is actually very similar to New Media, but in this harsh way. This reminds me of Ant Farm’s Media Burn: big, simple, forward-looking, and in-your-face kind of work. However, Media Burn describes many problems in smooth way: the media monopoly between the lines. Futurism talk more about burning libraries (metaphorically, I hope).

This library subject reminds me that time changes. The author mentions how important is the library, which embarks all of our past and much more. No matter how old this writing is, it is not outdated by its content, however, things are changing. The importance of a library back there is it what is now the internet for us: at the very bottom, a fountain of information. “Burning” or taking away the internet would affect more people than a library back then. Also, the internet does not only keep track of the past, informs of the present, predicts the future, but give access to many more people than before. Knowing how to read and having enough money to buy the newspaper was what most people could do back then. People now can comments, interact, change, and make an impact more widely and affective than before, which at the end, it creates a media monopoly, and back to Ant Farm’s Media Burn.

Over all, this writing has a tone of energy and aggressive. It seems that the author does not care what other think, does not care whatever is the way, he will do whatever he wants in the way he wants, and does not care what other think after they are gone. However, there is a foreshadow idea: they are not the first group that does this (go against everything) in history, and will not be the last.

It seems as the Futurism cherish things that New Media does not: technology, war, and violent abstraction. Unlike the innovative tone of the essay, New Media also goes for innovative while using the past: ready-made, found objects, collage, anything. Both group can be as similar or different as we want them to be, but at the very end, everybody wants to be, just remembered, somehow.

Response to Futurism

Futurism, like most art movements within Modernism, was reactionary against what had come before it.  The Futurists here wished to do away with the ways of perceiving linked to the past.  The past is dead and the present is alive, so why keep celebrating something that isn't fresh? The only true way to arrive at something "new" is to look ahead and break away from the mainstream ways of doing. Within the continuum of Modernism, each new movement replaced what came before it as a reaction against the current art standard as well as a reaction to the sociocultural times in which the artists lived.  The new dream of the Futurists in their time of a newly industrialized society, was an expression of greater speed and intensity, achieved through aggression.  It is interesting to note that these artists lived in a time just before the beginnings of World War I.  I bet that the aggressiveness of their plight would not have been so heavily assumed if WWI was already underway or had just concluded.  Hence, the Futurists perceived their present sociocultural condition in 1909 as stale and wallowing, and their supporting notions of war seemed appropriate.

The art world has changed greatly since 1909, and the overarching period of Moderism died out in the late 1960's, replaced by Postmodernism.  A great lecture about the art world from the 60's to present can be found here: Dave Hickey, glasstire.com . Hickey argues that the art world used to revolve around underground movements that would continually arise from new youth artists, perpetually destroying whatever the established mainstream at the time was.  In our current situation, everything is fair game and mainstream, given equal opportunity.  There are no new movements and from now on their won't be; there is no more underground-- a compelling argument.  I tend to agree with a lot of Hickey's argruments.

New Media is not something "new".  The term is really misleading. Sure technology is always changing, but this affects all art areas as well as the non-art consumer mainstream.  Experimental film is not a new idea either (eg. Hans Richter, Rhythmus 21).  Therefore, in our current 21st century moment, we are allowed and encouraged to look back on the 20th century for inspiration as our tools for creating become more complex.

FYI...the original Richter film I posted does not have sound, somebody added that.

I will dance passionately into the Future, But I will look over my shoulder occasionally

There are several interesting fundamental qualities of Futurism that echo some of the inspiration behind New Media artists. The rejection of previous approaches of expression becoming inadequate in this era is extremely relevant in the discussion of New Media. The Futurist have an intense burning passion to aggressively challenge and pursue the future, chasing the ever-speedy horizon line. The Futurists were very poetic in the description of chasing what I assume to be impossible- the determination to make something beautiful through struggle, yet without looking back in time to witness the reception, or even at the present. The part of Futurism that I do not agree with is the destroying and the forgetting of the past. While poetically it is intriguing to exist in a world that only regards the future, I find it to be emotionally devastating to not have any historical figures or ideas for inspiration. I think that it is important to be aware of the past, and to treasure the past- yet to not dwell there because the the future soon turns to present and then instantly it is the past. It is right to look at your creations solely as your your future, and in that sense looking at other peoples work could be detrimental to the "pureness" of your work, but it is also often times very helpful. Specifically with New Media- we rely on other peoples work (various programs, processors, algorithms, ect.) which without these advancements from the past (...and present) we wouldn't have as much of a starting place to pursue our unique endeavors. But perhaps that is what the Futurists intended, although they would never mention it. Maybe they knew that we could never detach ourselves from the past and our surroundings. Maybe merely they are only creating a new perspective in an attempt to imagine a new reality to be an artist in- a fast passed dance into the dangerous unknown with only the future as guidance.

Futurist Manifesto: Let's Burn Their Shit to the Ground

Like Futurism, New Media holds the relief, excitement, and freedom associated with overlooking millennia of technical assumption in favor of re-imagined art forms. With its base in the Modernist Period, the Futurists realized how much the world was changing around them and found no other option but to change with it- if not more rapidly.

They notably emphasize action (the present) to propel creation (the future).

While I agree with their separation from the traditional academic approach in favor of a more avant grade and experimental art-making, It would be completely opposed to their ideals of upheaval if I did not address my points of contention with something written over a century ago.

I'm in favor of their anti-museum perspective. Though I am anti-museum because of its limiting and capitalist approach. I'm interested in public and participatory art, that's web based and exists outside the realms of very silent and sterile halls that are sometimes sickeningly treated like amusement parks. That being said, art is my religion, and the museum is my church. I will make pilgrimages to relics of my saints because there is something to be said for influence. Contemporary museums are the meeting grounds of my peers and places of inspiration. I believe it is important to acknowledge the past, and transcend it. In saying this, I am very conflicted because the separation of a piece from it's context within time and space can render it still born.

How can we avoid this? Perpetuate new births? New ideas? Create realms that can only exist within one space at one time? All spaces at all times? Collapse space and time?

I aim to think progressively throughout my life, and desire to not think as negatively as the Futurists who sought to be cast out by the future generation. Progressive thinking is not limited to the young, but is perpetuated by those of whom do not feel limited and remain aware.
Throughout life, we gain knowledge and insight that informs our ideas that we can share with others.
I prefer to imagine time (knowledge?) as an accumulation, as opposed to something that becomes more and more limited (in this context).

At what moment does perspective (foresight) become a hindrance to growth from experience?

Finally, I feel that it is impossible to remove beauty from anything. I believe beauty exists in everything and would prefer to remove the psychological standard of beauty derived from an outdated Athenian obsession.

In summation, in the words of an Italian/Anti-Woman/Fascist/Nationalist, I have found a few gems. But choose to burn the rest, as per his request.

-for a 20th century manifesto that I think is less jive and more vibe: Novembergruppe Manifesto
-for a 21st century Futurist appropriation: The Mundane Afro-Futurist Manifesto by Martine Syms