TWENTYSECOND ANNUAL VISUAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE

SAN JOSE
November 2006

ABSTRACTS

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Monica L. Espinosa Aranga (Puerto Rico - Arecibo)

Between Framing and Recalling: A Glimpse of Indigenous Memories

(Entre el encuadre y la remembranza: El lado oblicuo de la memorias indígenas)

Based on Susan Sontag´s Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), this short bilingual documentary (18 minutes, DVD format) approaches the complex relationship between memory and photography. Based on the history of Manuel Quintín Láme (1883-1967), who is the most important ancestral figure of Indian rights mobilization in Colombia, the documentary examines various photographic materials including photos of his captures at 1916 and 1917, footage of an ethnographic research in the South of Tolima indigenous communities (2001, 2002), and reflections on Láme´s indigenous movement and photography itself. The documentary explores the polyvalent meanings of collective memory and the way in which photography contributes to create icons of history, manipulate story telling, channel our way to approach suffering, and give a retrospective significance to lived experiences of indigenous insurgency and resistance in Colombia.

Kate Hennessy (University of British Columbia)

Repatriation, Digital Media, and Community Collaboration: The Doig River First Nation "Dane wajich" Website Project

In the summer of 2005, members of the Doig River First Nation (Dane-zaa) in northeastern British Columbia collaborated with visual and linguistic anthropologists to curate a Virtual Museum of Canada web exhibit of stories and songs. Community members used a 19th Century ?Dreamer?s drum? and the oral histories related to it to articulate their historic and present relationship to the land, the impact of oil and gas development, and their concerns about language shift from Beaver to English. Dane-zaa youth were trained in video production; they then traveled with elders and anthropologists to important places in Dane-zaa territory where they recorded stories in Beaver and English about drumming, singing, and the ways in which Dane-zaa people have dealt with rapid change under colonialism.

In this presentation, I will explore the notion that digital technologies can facilitate self-definition though community-defined processes of ethnographic and linguistic documentation. While the concept of repatriation is usually connected to the return of cultural artifacts and human remains to their originating communities, I will discuss the role of digital archives and multimedia as tools for the repatriation of language materials and cultural resources, such as photographs, film, and audio and video recordings. I will talk about the difficulties I encountered in this community media collaboration, and raise questions about the role of applied visual anthropologists in the repatriation of community control over representations of culture and language.

Jack R. Rollwagen (SUNY College at Brockport)

The Modular Information Cluster (MIC) Approach to Anthropological Filmmaking: The Example of the Menu-Driven DVD ?THE SONG OF THE GRASSLANDS.?

Anthropologists who are interested in depicting through ?film? selected aspects of the lives of people in the cultural systems that they have studied, and who wish to structure ?films? to present anthropological insights and knowledge are confronted with a number of problems: some of the problems are technical, some are financial, and some are conceptual. Some of the technical and financial problems have been made more manageable by the advent of non-linear editing using personal computers, and by relatively inexpensive means of distribution. However, anthropologists also have to make choices about how they decide to organized and present anthropological knowledge and understandings. This paper will discuss one approach to the organization and presentation of anthropological research as exemplified by the menu-driven DVD: SONG OF THE GRASSLANDS: ETHNICITY, IDENTITY, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, CULTURE CHANGE, AND MUSIC IN INNER MONGOLIA, CHINA. SONG OF THE GRASSLANDS is comprised of a number and independent ?modules? on the DVD, through which viewers can navigate by making choices on the DVD menus. The presentation at the SVA conference will discuss some conceptual aspects of the current state of anthropological filmmaking, emphasizing the sharing of knowledge and experience among the community of anthropological scholars.

The materials on this DVD are based on fieldwork in the Xing?an League, Inner Mongolia, China, during the summers of 2002 and 2005, on anthropological research through other means, and on video interviews collected specifically for this DVD.

Audrey Amidon (Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum)

Re-presenting the Far North: Donald MacMillan's Films of Inuit Peoples

Arctic explorer Donald B. MacMillan (1874-1970) shot motion picture films in Labrador, Baffin Island, and Greenland over a period of forty years (1913-1954). He used the footage in conjunction with his lectures, which served the dual purpose of introducing western audiences to Arctic environments and cultures, and raising money for future expeditions. MacMillan's motion picture collection documents a period of rapid cultural change in northern Greenland. The collection also reveals his views of Inughuit and their relationship to Western cultures. This presentation will focus on MacMillan's depiction of northern Greenland and the Inughuit, by examining footage shot throughout his career, including newly discovered film footage taken on his 1913-1917 Crockerland Expedition (some of the earliest Arctic footage in existence), and a reconstructed 1958 lecture film.

Jonathan S. Marion (U of California, San Diego)

Seeing Salsa: Viewing, Aesthetics, and Values

Based on seven years of personal involvement in salsa, this presentation uses both photography and video to help explore some of the visual aesthetics and values implicated in salsa dancing. Defined by the activity and not by the location itself, the cultural embodiment, training, and movement of salsa provides a common basis for communities around the world. Indeed, the overarching, basic fundamentals of salsa remains consistent enough worldwide for almost all salsa dancers to share similar bonds and practices despite the plurality of local styles. The shared basic foundation of salsa enables dancers from around the world to congregate and become cohesive, intense, transient, tight-knit groups despite conventional social and cultural barriers encountered elsewhere off the dance floor (i.e. language, social class, ethnicity, etc). As an activity salsa also provides a temporary, liminal, physical medium through which its members are able to non-verbally connect, communicate, and converse with each other.

Indeed, the popularity and ubiquity of salsa dancing cultivates shared identifications, through common goals, values, and sentiments between people who have never met before. Yet, while the shared experiences and practices of learning salsa and of salsa dancing can create powerful (albeit also often transient) social bonds, it also generates a shared range of aesthetics and values readily available for visual assessment and evaluation. As such, this presentation utilizes both photographs and video in exploring and interrogating the values elicited and invoked by the visual facets of salsa dancing; values including expectations relating to gender, sexuality, clothing, movement, technique, partnering, and performance.

Peter Biella, et al. (San Francisco State University)

A DV and a Place to Screen: Participatory Action Research in Visual Anthropology

San Francisco State?s year-long course in Visual Anthropology links students of cinema and the social sciences with community groups interested in the production of short video projects. Working within the model of participatory action research, the student filmmakers develop collaborative relationships with each other and their research participants. The collaborative films develop answers to three primary questions, identity of a target audience that will benefit from a film, specific messages which that audience needs to hear, and a strategy likely to communicate these messages persuasively. Students from four groups in the class of 2005-6 will present material from their films. They will focus both on community self-representation and on the benefits and difficulties of collaborative, Freirian pedagogy. The films feature underserved inner-city youth and conflict resolution, the correction of prejudices about midwifery and home birth, the use of photography by formerly homeless women in describing their growing understanding of their past, and ways that lessons in radical social science helps at-risk women stay out of jail. Each of four presentations will entail a three-minute introduction, three minutes for film screening, and five minutes for open discussion.

Amelia Guimarin (UC - Irvine)

Illustrating Identity: Body Piercing and Photography

Body piercing and photography are two instances of the human manipulation of visual media: one is a topic of anthropological study, and the other a tool. Using photography and ethnographic research of the contemporary, western practice of body piercing as an example, this presentation explores the ability of photographs to exhibit the embodiment of personal and communal identity. The research not only uses visual media as a means of anthropological study, it also focuses on the use of what may be the most 'natural' or at least universally human visual media, the body. The creation and demonstration of identity is an actively visual process. We relate to each other and to ourselves through our bodies, and thus our bodies become the objects of our expression, the visual media of our identity.

Much of the photography included in ethnographic texts is appended as a means of granting authority to the researcher or as an attempt to help the reader visualize the site and subject of research. Aside from the ethical concerns of this approach, as a methodology it is limiting in that it does not allow the audience to experience the photographs as a separate dimension of the study. Most ethnographies transition from words to images without facilitating the transition of the user from the position of reader to that of viewer. This limits the extent to which the photographs may serve as a deeper and alternate agency of communication and understanding. The strategic use of photography as an instrument and exhibit of research should be regarded as essential rather than supplemental to the anthropological study of visual media.

Natasa Garic (Northern Arizona University)

Applied Visual Anthropology and Digital Storytelling

Today, Hopi Indian traditional teachings are being affected by modern society and its pressure to cultural, educational, political, and economic change. Because of that, Hopi people are concerned about the future of their culture and younger generations' involvement in it. Applied visual anthropology can be used in the form of digital storytelling that becomes a part of people's living legacy. It can also be integrated into school's curriculum, stimulating younger generations to become more interested in traditional culture and language. This visual research presentation will focus on a completed project, a video of a Hopi traditional song and girl's grinding ceremony. The cultural continuity of this ritual is illustrated by using historic and present day still photographs, that are matched up with lyrics of the song in order for the Hopi children to be able to learn their language as well as some intricate aspects of the ceremony. The project was done in collaboration with native scholars (an anthropologist, a linguist, and a historian) and incorporates a reflexive approach from Hopi children, teachers at schools on the Hopi reservation, Hopi elders, and others.

Nancy Marie Mithlo (Smith College)

"Being Indian, Playing Indian: The Visual Legacies of Horace Poolaw and Yeffe Kimball"

My research documents how two prominent national figures, Horace Poolaw (1906-1984) and Yeffe Kimball (1914-1978) pursued visual imaging from the 1920s to the 1960s out of a salvage ethnography impulse. While Poolaw is remembered primarily as a documentary photographer with artistic sensibilities, Kimball is known as an artist who commissions photographs in a documentary effort. What conclusions may be drawn from Native Americans conventionally posing other Native Americans in a stereotypical fashion? I follow Basso (1979) in regarding these visual images as serving social purposes, even when modeled on ?Whiteman? behavior.

I directed two summer fieldwork projects with undergraduate students that have digitally scanned hundreds of images from both the Poolaw and Kimball collections. In 2002, the project ran out of the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, where the Kimball collection was housed. In 2004, the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha hosted our project in concert with the Poolaw family. I return to the IAIA in 2006. Research teams in both locations incorporated Native American interns from the host site and conducted interviews with individuals connected with the collections. In an effort to understand the impact of media technology in indigenous communities, we explored preservation values of image enhancement, duplication, ownership, interpretation, storage and handling, thus establishing culturally sensitive guidelines on site. The intersection of indigenous museum curation and standard curatorial practices is a key research concern for the project. Our ability to track how image technology both enhances and inhibits native sovereignty efforts positions these fieldwork efforts as central to a broader analysis of indigenous media productions.

I argue that ?playing Indian? or performance in visual media can indicate more than opportunistic aims or simple victimization to exploitative norms. The re-appropriation of images as products of active native imaginations restores integrity and agency to Native producers and their communities. Phil Deloria surmises, ?In making Indian images, native actors sought to participate in a struggle waged on the cultural front, particularly through the developing forms of mass media (2004, 104).