Visual Culture Conference:
A Future for the Anthropology of Visual Communication
Thursday, November 21, 2002 , 2-9 p.m.
Barrister's Gallery, 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., New Orleans, Louisiana
02:00-02:15 Opening Address
02:15-02:40 Kevin Taylor Anderson (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
"Toward the Patient's Perspective:
Comparing Visual Research Methods in Medical Anthropology"
02:40-03:05 Nadine Lyman (Bloomsburg University)
"In the Footsteps of the Greeks:
American Interpretations of a Classic Tragedy"
03:05-03:30 Arnar Arnason (University of Aberdeen),
Tinna Gretarsdottir (Temple University),
Sigurjon Baldur Hafsteinsson (Temple University)
"Portraits of the Dead in Icelandic Obituaries"
03:30-03:55 Margit Hawelleck (Ohio University)
"...they have a real tendency to send the men to do all these things..."*
"audio/video in representations of Appalachian women"
3:55-4:10 - Break
04:10-04:35 Michael Adair-Kriz (Northern Arizona)
"Made in Bangladesh"
04:35-05:00 Lindsey Powell (Temple University)
"Conflicts of Interest:
Public Protest Spectacles in Japan"
05:00-05:25 Marty Otaņez (University of California, Irvine)
"Thangata:
Social Bondage and Big Tobacco in Malawi"
05:25-05:50 Rene Broussard (Independent Filmmaker - New Orleans)
"All for the Love of Fat"
05:50-06:30 Break
06:30-08:05 Julie Gustafson (Independent Filmmaker - New Orleans)
"The Desire Media Project" (special work-in-progress screening**)
08:05-09:00 Discussion Panel
Julie Gustafson and Participants in THE DISIRE MEDIA PROJECT
09:00 Closing Remarks
*Linda Sexton in: 'Coalmining Women'dir. Elizabeth Barret, Appalshop Production, 1982.
**Special work-in-progress screening. No press reviews.
Panel Abstracts:
"Toward the Patient's Perspective: Comparing Visual Research Methods in Medical Anthropology"
Kevin Taylor Anderson (U. of Massachusetts-Amherst)
This paper is based on first-hand experience with two visual research projects concerned with health care and medicine. The presentation uses video samples from both (one based in a clinical medical institution in Boston, the other based on anthropological fieldwork in Ireland), discussing the attributes and challenges of each method in their efforts to expand understandings of patients' experiences with illness and therapy. The institutionally-based research project is fundamentally patient-centered, where adolescent patients use video cameras to document the day-to-day circumstances of living with chronic illness. The second project involves more formalized collaboration between researcher and subject, particularly during the stage of analysis and in the co-construction of performative/impressionistic vignettes. It is not suggested that these similar (though divergent) visual research methods supercede other ethnographic and qualitative forms of research. Rather, such methods can facilitate a unique form and mode of communication and expression from the patients' subjective position and perspective: Providing researchers with data that would otherwise remain "invisible" or inaccessible through text-based research methods; allowing subjects a greater degree of agency, determinacy, and personal expression; while allowing for a significant degree of reflexive and contextual data.
"In the Footsteps of the Greeks: American Interpretations of a Classic Tragedy"
Nadine Lyman (Bloomsburg University)
In this work I center on the American Presentation of Euripides' Trojan Women at an international festival, and the international impression of American interpretations. The focus of my work is on the way that foreign theater professionals feel about the American performance of a Greek tragedy. This is a collaboration of several performances at several theaters along a traditional Greek festival route down Cyprus. It will also include reactions to the translation of this play, the acting of the Bloomsburg Players, and the post-modern style of the costumes and make-up utilized. All performances will be done in traditional Greek amphitheaters.
"Portraits of the Dead in Icelandic Obituaries"
Arnar Arnason (University of Aberdeen), Tinna Gretarsdottir (Temple University), Sigurjon Baldur Hafsteinsson (Temple University)
Visual mediums like photographs, film, video, road memorials and `death sculptors' have increasingly during the 20th century been incorporated into rituals concerning death in Iceland. Attitudes towards death have, at the same time, been changing for the last decade or so from rather impersonal or formal accounts of death towards more personal and emotionally charged accounts. This change has been naturalized but we believe that naturalization of experience, emotions and their expression have to be problematized. In this paper we argue that visual mediums are devices of `meaning production' that produce experience of death and berievement, and as such they possess their own histories. We also look at subjectification through which the self and its experiences can be brought into being. We conclude by speculating on the implications portraits of death have for the politics of experience and expression.
"...they have a real tendency to send the men to do all these things..."*
audio/video in representations of Appalachian women"
Margit Hawelleck (Ohio University)
The Appalachian region in eastern North America seems to be widely publicized as being burdened with the ramifications of coal mining, environmental degradation, flooding, and unemployment. Its people are predominantly portrayed as being struck by isolation and grinding poverty and are most often depicted in generalizing and stereotyping images symbolizing primitiveness, marginalization, and 'otherness'. This construction of an Appalachian culture of 'otherness' has doubly marginalized Appalachian women. In addition, one-dimensional and simplistic portrayals in early television shows, which seemed to bear little relationship to the complex realities of women's lives, further strengthened stereotypes and marginalization. More recent film and video productions set out to provide a more complete visual record of live in the Appalachian region. This paper examines representations of Appalachian women in contemporary television productions, independent film and video productions, and productions of community organizations. It focuses on discourses of women, which allow the creation of community, and investigates how meaning is created in the realm of women's verbal expressions (audio) and their visual representation (video). *Linda Sexton in: 'Coalmining Women', dir. Elizabeth Barret, Appalshop Production, 1982.
Michael Adair-Kriz (Northern Arizona)
This ethnovideography (hybridized visual ethnography) is an exploration of cultural and historical interconnections between Bangladesh and the United States. Western notions of time and discipline are reduplicating themselves through Bangladeshi bodies in globally manipulated, locally managed garment factories. Ethnohistorical connections radiate forward through time from the creation of the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh in 1971, to today with the availability of low-cost labor for primarily US-based, global corporate interests. Historically, involvement in the garment industry has been a stepping-stone to modernity for individual and nation alike - regardless of the tremendous human toll. This suffering is quickly forgotten in a wave of "progress" while the cycles of abuse, misery, and death are relocated out of sight - to other countries in the "developing" world. However, Bangladesh may not be enjoying the "progress" that so many countries have experienced before. This 40-minute digital video explores this question through the ethnovideographic gaze.
"Conflicts of Interest: Public Protest Spectacles in Japan"
Lindsey Powell (Temple University)
This presentation is primarily concerned with what public protest spectacles look and sound like in Japan and why. I believe that these events can tell us a great deal about culture and society, because they reflect cultural and societal norms just as they call them into question. The Japanese political economy is currently broken, and I believe studying protest movements can tell us why. At the root of the problem is the discovery that, even though they are moderately involved in politics, Japanese citizens have a poor understanding of government policy.
"Thangata: Social Bondage and Big Tobacco in Malawi"
Marty Otaņez (University of California, Irvine)
What is the political and professional role of the anthropologist in the movements to end excess corporate power? The presentation of the film "Thangata: Social Bondage and Big Tobacco in Malawi" links the living and working conditions in Malawi's tobacco industry, the harmful behavior of US transnational tobacco companies, and the strategies to create counter-practices to corporate-led globalization. Voices of men and women producing leaf for US companies and world markets are juxtaposed with perspectives of labor activists and a tobacco industry representative in Malawi to illustrate how competing social orders connected to this controversial crop are constructed. The ultimate aim of projecting images of tobacco debt slavery, social protest, and corporate profits is to prompt visual artists and cultural researchers to take action to build anthropological practices that eliminate the destructive consequences of the dominant neo-liberal logic.
Renč Broussard (Independent Filmmaker - New Orleans)
Video-artist Rene Broussard (The Fatboy Chronicles) will discuss as well as show brief excerpts from his upcoming documentary exploring the world of "teen gainer" sites. With childhood obesity becoming a national epidemic, "fat kids" are finding themselves less and less of a minority. The aesthetics and stereotypes of the "fat kid" are changing as more kids find acceptance and become comfortable with their bodies. Facilitating this growing acceptance is the global community of the internet. The documentary will utilize the tools and aesthetics of the internet to explore the attitudes and desires of an ever-growing world wide network of "fat boys" who are actively documenting their weight gain as a means of meeting other "fat boys," girls and gay men who are attracted to their girth.
THE DESIRE MEDIA PROJECT (a work-in-progress*)
Julie Gustafson (Independent Filmmaker - New Orleans)
Desire is a documentary about teenage girls and their developing sexuality and identity, told primarily from their own perspectives. The work pivots around a collaborative filmmaking journey in which Julie Gustafson, an independent documentarian, invites teenagers from three diverse New Orleans communities to create autobiographical pieces about their desires and choices. Weaving together an intensive five years of the girls' lives, their video works, and the story of this filmmaking process, Desire portrays an honest and complex intergenerational exchange about some of the most controversial subjects facing families and society today -- early sexuality, teenage pregnancy and motherhood, and abortion. Ultimately the film makes visible the complex social and economic forces that shape the girls' aspirations, choices and lives. *This is a special work-in-progress screening. No press reviews.