Visual Culture Conference: A Future for the Anthropology of Visual Communication

Saturday, November 18, 10 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.

The Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, San Francisco, CA

Schedule:

10:00--10:30 Introductions:

Nora Jones (Temple University)

10:30--11:00 An van Dienderen [University Ghent]

"Public Spaces in Brussels, A Practice"

The project is aimed at exploring Visual Anthropology, with a focus on the interactive, the comparative, the self-reflective, and the artistic. The subjects are chosen within Belgium, hereby underlying the concept of the Other/the Same. During a long period -- from October 1999 until October 2000 -- we are conducting a project on the use of different social groups of Public Spaces in Brussels. Because of the stress we put on the interactive, the response of the communities filmed is included within the films. The result consists of four films on four different places in Brussels. We would like to present one of the films at the conference and discuss the methodology afterwards.

11:00--11:30 Mark Westmoreland [University of Texas - Austin]

"Performing Mediation: David Riker meets Jean Rouch"

The recent release of La Ciudad, a film by David Riker who casts "non-actors," marks a distinct return to the projective improvisation of Jean Rouch's ethnopoetic films. Employing these performability techniques, I plan to explore the Kafecho's (people from southwestern Ethiopia) usage of media to preserve their culture. Working with the regional Ministry of Information and Culture, who have actively used video as a tool for recording Kafecho heritage, and the Bonga High School principal, I will engage the students to produce a small film on cultural preservation. Highlighting media's purveyance as a space for recreating culture, this documentary proposes to represent and call into question the dynamic relationships developed within the usage of media and to reveal the camera as a filtered catalyst for negotiated presence.

11:30--12:00 Sasha Waters [University of Iowa]

"Rouch Off the Couch: On the Mis-Steps of a Psychoanalytic Approach to Nonfiction Film"

Rouch Off the Couch considers the tangled union of psychoanalysis and nonfiction film with a specific focus on the ethnographic film, Les Maitres Fous (also know as The Mad Masters) by Jean Rouch. I have chosen to concentrate on this particular film for two reasons: first, in his voice-over commentary, Rouch uncharacteristically imposes a Freudian interpretation of the Hauka ritual depicted in the film which severely limits the potential for alternative, non-Western readings of the events. Second, although Rouch later expressed dissatisfaction with the narrowness of his interpretation, anthropologists and film theorists have failed to critique the Euro-centric rationalizations Rouch offers in the film. Instead, scholars have further embedded the discourse surrounding Les Maitres Fous within the domain of psychoanalysis by concentrating on the film's supposedly "surreal" aspects. The grafting of a Western theoretical apparatus on to a film as textually rich and complex as Les Maitres Fous exemplifies the problematic nature of a psychoanalytic approach to "actuality" footage. Drawing from the work of a number of feminist film theorists and anthropologists, this paper argues that theWestern conception of the self on which psychoanalytic film theory is based, is a local, rather than a universal, model, and is the product of a specific cultural and historical moment in the West.

12:00--1:00Lunch Break

1:00--1:30 Dawa Gail Lorien [California Institute of Integral Studies]

"A Performance of a Vietnam War Experience: Hours and Hours of Sheer Boredom Interrupted by Moments of Stark Terror"

In this work, ethnography is situated in performance, in relationship with imagery, sound and movement. A narrative braids the stories of two family members, one helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War and his cousin, an anti war activist. During the reading of the narrative an installation is being constructed that shapes the experiential through visual and sound imagery. The installation moves within the space of the text as ritual--as an immersion and invocation, honoring the dead and wounded those who hover near in anguish and in memory. The "program" used for the event is included below [link to program]--a map to the installation and a theoretical frame for the narrative.

1:30--2:00 Kendall Roark [Temple University]

"Representing the Fantastic: Body Genres, Vampires and Communities of Practice"

While theorists have called for an "ethnological" approach to audience reception of horror films, little serious work in this vein has occurred. This presentation outlines an anthropological framework for analyzing the image of the "lesbian" vampiric body in film, seeking both a historical context and data gained from an anthropologically informed pilot reception study. Two communities of practice are considered: theorists/critics of the genre, and small self-selected peer viewing groups. While Gothic conventions historically have grounded the genre in notions of emotional and physical "excess," the reception data warns against viewing this excess solely through the lens of the construction of sexed identities.

2:30--3:00 Werner Sperschneider [University of Aarhus]

"100 years of Greenland on Film"

The stereotype image of a peaceful people living in harmony with nature is one of those grand narratives that tells about our nostalgia of a mythical past, a life in icy landscapes, thereby recalling legendary "Ultima Thule". The myth of the Eskimo recalls a life where man is regarded as free and independent, where a hunter still is a breadwinner, and a man can be a hero. Today's Inuit people are probably one of the most misrepresented ethnic other in the world. The film media did contribute significantly to this wrong image. It's heyday marked the birth of the myth at the same time. This compilation videofilm depicts the myth of the Eskimo and respectively Greenlands the Greenlander's representation on film.

3:00--3:30 Kathryn Ramey [Temple University]

"ENDLESS PRESENT: BIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN FILMMAKER, A FILM BY CORNEALIUS THISTLE"

This film is a cinematic portrait of Robin Redbreast, an experimental filmmaker who tried to mix her art with anthropology. It is told through the analytical voice of cultural theorist and documentarian, Cornealius Thistle. Redbreast attempted to uncover information about her subjects experience of their own presence by doing interviews concerning their feelings around safety and death. While her project was a complete failure, we can see great artistic promise and perhaps an image of what might have been an interesting social scientist. We have therefore included her own voice, that of her mentor, Ray Birdwhistell, and several minutes of "archival" footage of her more experimental cinematic adventures as well as her own aborted attempts at anthropology.