TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL VISUAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
November 29 - December 1, 2005

ABSTRACTS

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Elizabeth Cartwright (Idaho State University)
The Wizard of FCP*: Deconstructing the Visual Image via Non-linear Digital Editing Systems
Like the Wizard of Oz, those in control of the powerful, non-linear digital editing systems like *Final Cut Pro, have the power to inspire, manipulate and control. This 45-minute presentation will use clips from an ethnographic film-in-progress by the author to demonstrate the creation not only of presences and absences in the filmic space, but also techniques used to generate increased or decreased emotion, intensity and the possibility of violence. Through various visual experiences, the audience/viewers will be challenged to question and discuss the reality of the “ethnographic film” in question. By becoming more sophisticated visual consumers, anthropologists-cum-filmmakers can challenge the hegemonic control of the technological wizardry that drives the production of many sorts of visual media.

Kristen Congdon (University of Central Florida) and Natalie Underberg (University of Central Florida)
Folkvine.org: Florida's Arts and Culture on the Web
Folkvine.org is a Web site project focusing on Florida folk artists including such diverse individuals as African-American painter and produce stand owner Ruby C. Williams and former Ringling clowns and current clown shoe makers Wayne and Marty Scott. In the first year of this project, members of the Folkvine team focused on developing two key innovations in Web site design: mirroring the aesthetic sensibilities of the artists in the layout and navigation structure and working collaboratively with artists and their communities in negotiation and revision of the site. This year the Folkvine team is continuing to develop these aspects by including new artists and adding a third innovation: exploring ways to communicate visually complex theoretical concepts such as place-making imagination, re-creative identity and social economy. By doing so we seek new ways to present scholarship online and further connections between theory and method in visual ethnography.

Rupert Cox (Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, Manchester University)
Guns, God and Golden Screens - Investigating past and present images of the Namban “Foreign Barbarian” phenomenon in Japan.
The concept Namban (foreign barbarian) emerges from the history of contact and exchanges between Japan and various foreign others, notably the visitors from Iberia in the sixteenth century, but continues to have value today. It is linked to past and present visual modes of representing otherness in Japan and I argue, needs to be approached as a fluid concept with multiple and changing meanings. The aim of my ongoing research is to develop new and significant scholarship concerning the various meanings of Namban in Japan by employing a combination of historical and anthropological methods.

In historical terms, Namban is a concept that describes the inscription of geographically distant foreigners within domestic cultural spaces. The forms of this inscription are numerous ? byobu, (golden screens and maps) urushii, (lacquer ware) matsurii, (festivals) tabemono, (food) gijutsu (technologies) ? but interrelated, because in each instance aspects of the unfamiliar are assimilated with the familiar. The historical idea of Namban therefore combines visual, material and performative elements that express a complex but particular set of relations with the world outside Japan.

I draw upon library and museum resources in Japan and Europe to extend our present understanding of these relations by making cross-cultural comparisons with the forms of representation of other encounters between unknown or previously only imagined peoples in the sixteenth century Renaissance world. The relevance of these comparisons will be as background to the second part of the study, which will use fieldwork methods to elicit the contemporary significance of the idea of Namban in Japan. This will mean visiting places which have a historic connection with the Namban phenomenon and investigating the museums, galleries, gift shops and food shops, local interest groups and festivals where this period of the past is represented today. By combining cultural and art history with anthropological fieldwork the sixteenth century idea of Namban can be extended and its transformations studied as a consequence of different relations with the outside world and as an illustration that in Japan as elsewhere ?the past is a foreign country?.

The overall intention is to make a contribution to our understanding of the particular connections between objects, images, practices and ideas in Japan and Europe.

Jerome Crowder (University of Houston)
Short time, Big Story - 24 Hours of Exploring Life in Puno
This paper chronicles and analyzes a visual research project conducted on November 27, 2003 in Puno, Perú. Twenty-two local residents and migrants spread-out across the city and made images of urban life for twenty-four hours. These amateur photographers included college students, professors, laborers, and indigenous migrants. Participants shot 35mm color film for up to six, two-hour periods, and subsequently wrote notes on their observations during each photographic outing. Individuals edited their rolls as they were processed, selecting their ?best? images, ultimately distilling them to two images per roll. Once selected, these photos were placed on a wall where the entire group edited the collection anonymously. Of the 2,844 exposed frames, 46 final images were selected for display. Photographers composed an 8-10 sentence paragraph for each image, explaining its importance and how it reflects life in Puno. Their text accompanied each photo when placed on public display two weeks later.

I will examine how this participant project functioned in terms of a research method as well as pedagogical tool. An analysis of participant preparation, education, and interpretation of the images demonstrates that residents and migrants view their urban lives quite differently?urban residents tend to interpret their images literally while migrants explain their images in abstract terms. Does controlling the temporal, geographical and participatory variables permit a unique view of urban Andean culture that would not be collected through any other method? I argue that the participants recognize their role in the story-telling process, fundamentally affecting the audience?s understanding of what was really ?captured? in the 24 hour period. And although synchronic, the emic glimpse of urban Andean life reflects the method as much as the culture.

I will present the selected images in the exhibit by means of a digital slideshow and read excerpts translated from the participants? accompanying paragraphs about each image. Because time is of the essence I cannot discuss all forty-six photos, but will place the images and their text on my website so interested colleagues may view the entire body of work. My goal is to share the experience with other researchers and instructors, discuss meaning and interpretation of the images and gather feedback from those who have done similar work. I am also interested in the possibilities of presenting this material as an exhibit elsewhere. The material from this project is excellent for participation in discussions regarding current visual research methodologies and their usefulness as teaching tools and exercises.

Rolf Husmann (IWF Knowledge and Media, Gottingen, Germany)
Fascist or Fantastic? Leni Riefenstahl and the Visual Representation of the Nuba
German filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl, best known for her documentary filmwork during the Nazi period in Germany (\"Triumph of the Will\", \"1936 Olympics\"), died in 2003 aged 101. In the post-war-era she became famous for producing a world-famous body of photographs of the Nuba people in the Sudan. Criticised by anthropologists and journalists, but also lauded by photographers and feminists worldwide, her work on the Nuba was never analysed to the same degree as that of her Nazi films. Following research on Riefenstahl\'s work in the 1960s and 70s, this presentation offers a survey on her work among the Nuba and, together with a number of visual examples, a critical assessment of the visual representation of the Nuba given by Riefenstahl.

Cynthia Korpan (University of Victoria, Canada)
Performing Cultural Identity: Dramatic Productions of Okanagan Legends
My presentation for this conference will focus on the visual components of my MA research, The Inkameep Day School Project, with one being the construction of a web site to house this research and my MA thesis. This investigation looks at hypermedia and its relationship to anthropological text, the visual medium and the concept of montage. The interactive necessity of the web medium and its simultaneous conversational attributes are at the crux of my engagement with this mode of visual communication. My approach to the construction of this space is to combine the concepts of rhizomatic structure with permeable membranes and embed the site with a sense of place and avatar qualities. The attributes of the concept of montage and how it mimics the process of human perception will be utilized to explore how the features characteristic of text, various visual mediums, hyperlinks, sound, and individual agency, can interact in the experiential realm.

My work within The Inkameep Day School Project involves looking at the dramatic productions that were created, circulated and consumed at the reserve school in the 1930s by investigating archival material and the present day performance by students (descendents of the 1930s students) on the N'kmip Reserve of the original plays. The present day performance was part of an art and drama camp that took place in the summer of 2004 as part of my fieldwork experience with my supervisor. One important feature from this fieldwork was the impact that the components of the Inkameep Day School web site had on the student?s experience of their cultural productions.

This web site can be accessed through the Virtual Museum of Canada site, http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Inkameep/.

Jonathan S. Marion (University of California, San Diego)
"Presenting the Visual: Considerations from the World of Competitive Ballroom Dancing"
Using both still photographs and video this presentation will be based on three years of research with the international circuit of competitive ballroom dancing, or ?dancesport.? This community lends itself to a variety of important theoretical and methodological considerations within visual anthropology since it is both deliberately visual?in expected aesthetics of grooming, technique, performance, and competition (just to name a few)?and wide-ranging?with international participation in over 80 countries.

Among the considerations to be presented and discussed are:
1. The centrality of visual media in documenting activity (instead of location) based ?sites? of anthropological inquiry.
2. The role and importance of visual media in exploring activity based gender roles?including how these roles are visually performed and presented?within the context of a globalized activity.
3. The challenges of producing visual records in a deliberately visual community that ?tell the story? in a manner acceptable to insiders yet still of informational value to outsiders.
4. The use of visual media to generate narratives highlighting points of differentiated cultural salience and recognition. What, for instance, do non-ballroom dancers notice, focus, and comment on when looking at ballroom images? How are these the same as and how are these different from what ballroom dancers notice, focus, and comment on when looking at the same images? What items do different groups of ballroom dancers notice, focus, and comment? What do these comparisons contribute to understanding the transmission and salience of learned cultural aesthetics and values?
5. The comparative advantages and disadvantages of still photographs versus video relative to each of the topics mentioned above.

Teresa Moyer (Society for American Archaeology)
Since archaeologists began illustrating their texts with photographs in the late nineteenth century, they have ascribed to a programmatic means of framing ancient works. Across archaeology, images of ancient sculpture tend to follow a system of front/back/side views. This method of capturing objects so that others may learn from far away about them has influenced professionals and students alike in their interpretations of the past. Oftentimes these images remove sculptures from their past relationships with cultures by bringing them to a human eye level or scale. If the traditional approach is not ?objective? after all, and its influence as such goes without discussion, then archaeologists have not assessed the effect of possibly outdated modes of looking at the past on their current questions.

Artist and photographer Louise Lawler brings a useful perspective to the use and abuse of ancient sculptures. Taken in comparison with archaeologists? uses for photographs, Lawler?s work obviates a hierarchical way of seeing that structures archaeologists? interpretation of the past.

Weaving together the inquiries of visual anthropologists, museum anthropologists, and archaeologists, I argue that the unexamined, ?traditional? presentation of the past serves to perpetuate outdated modes of interpreting ancient cultures. The questions discussed in this paper relate to understanding the structures anthropologists find themselves in and how these structures may be made obvious and broken apart.

Sara Elizabeth Perry (University of Victoria, Canada)
Prehistoric Re-visions: New Ways of Picturing Archaeological Representations of the First Colonisations of New Territories
The ideological abuse of archaeological images has not gone unspoken. But fifteen years of research into the dubious tradition of plastering archaeology texts with timeserving pictures has shown itself unable to inspire pictorial change within the archaeological community. I would suggest that this failure is born of an absence of methodological rigour and an overwhelming propensity to favour illustrative conventions over other forms of representation, to favour popular texts (e.g. museums and popular books) over scholarly publications, and to favour sensational topics (e.g. Neanderthals and ?cave men?) over more mundane archaeological subjects. This presentation aims to redress the limitations of previous archaeological visual studies by, firstly, endeavouring upon tight semiological, discourse and compositional analyses of archaeological pictures (specifically concerning the first human colonisations of new territories); secondly, deconstructing both popular and academic images (including tables, maps and graphs) in an effort to expose their truly collusive interchanges; and, thirdly, offering a novel way of seeing and depicting archaeological events that combines performance theory with computer (?virtual reality?) animation. In a discipline that has long reduced the complicated and messy processes of human movements?especially cross-continental movements?to static and depthless (visual) artefacts, a rethinking of the pictorial ?ethic? is well overdue. I propose that the folding of palaeoenvironmental data and predictive modelling information into the generation of digital simulations of human colonisation episodes presents an unusual opportunity for invoking, animating and sensuously inhabiting the past.

Judie Piner (Dana Atchley Center for Digital Storytelling, Yavapai College)
Ethnographic Method or Just Plain Fun -- Using Digital Storytelling in Anthropological Research
A proposal that Digital Storytelling is a medium that may be used as an ethnographic method. Digital stories are mini-videos, created in a workshop, spoken in the participant?s ?voice,? combined with images, video, and music if desired. The result is a powerful personal testament to the subject. The presentation will provide visual material describing how digital storytelling provides in-depth information about personal perception. Stories may be introspection into the person?s life, an expansion of life history. Stories may also provide information on individual?s positions on controversial issues that might not be gleaned from survey or interview. Together, a group of stories would compile a life history or a powerful presentation on an issue or dispute. The presentation will also describe how the Yavapai Apache Nation is using the process in language restoration, bring elders together with youth, aiding at-risk youth, and collecting and preserving traditional stories.

Daniel J. Walsh (Georgetown University)
The Palestine Poster: The Graphic Vocabulary of Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism?1900-Present
The visual vocabulary of the "Palestine" poster, a genre that includes both the very first Palestine posters - those created by various Zionist agencies in the early 1900's to promote investment, tourism and settlement in Palestine - as well as those that were created by Palestinian nationalists, their Arab and Muslim allies as well as a host of international artists and agencies after 1968, constitute a vast, untapped ethnographic resource for attempting to decode the foundational mythologies and narratives of Palestinian and Israeli culture.

I will present a selection of graphic posters from all four major wellsprings of the Palestine poster via a comparative methodology. This particular methodology?used successfully by anthropologists in the analysis of, for example, postcards is appropriate because it limits itself to the language(s) used by the actors themselves. These Palestine posters speak of the relationship of Zionists and Palestinians to Palestine, the land. In so doing they embody a distinct grammar, vocabulary, tonality and intentionality. Via these posters we hear the parties speaking in their own, unselfconscious, voices.

Some of these Palestine posters were created to be narrow-cast and others to be broad-cast; as such they represent a unique opportunity for comprehending the role of language in art.

I will present at least two posters simultaneously for both comparison and analysis. All poster text, in all languages, will be translated and I will focus particular attention on the role(s) of textual language in the posters (whether English, Arabic, Hebrew or other) as well as on the visual language(s) used ? symbols, colors, formats and styles. I will also address the content of each poster including how each agent chose to represent, or not represent, political adversaries and allies.

Most of the images to be discussed will be drawn from the archives of Liberation Graphics; the Central Zionist Archives in Israel; the Library of Congress; the American University of Beirut; the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam among others.

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