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.