In 9 days I’m presenting my thesis project to fellow students and Prof’s for practice and constructive feedback so, my mind has been on “the pitch”. I’ll need to clearly state what this project is about and how it fits within the realm of documentary media. While thinking about how my multimedia project is relevant to doc-media I started to get a bit annoyed. Let me step back a bit and explain:
A Tag Cloud by Markus Angermeier - see cc licence
I always find myself wondering how subjects and/or public participation can contribute to a media project–be it in film-making, photo-journalism, Web… and, how could I not? Citizen participation has been ingrained in my understanding of documentary media for a long time and most predominantly throughout my work at the NFB and especially on CitizenShift since 2004. We lived and breathed the question of Web2.0–how to aide citizens to speak their mind and share their media online.
The documentary media project I am working on for this program involves four elements that invite comments/participation: this production blog, podcasts (coming soon), an “art”-installation of the stories and media from the blog and podcasts which will take place in a high school classroom and, ideally, a streaming video of visitors to the installation who would like to share their own experiences about high school. Am I concerned about getting this all done for June? Yes…. but I digress… WAIT, NO, I’m not that worried because I’m not creating a finite project here! I’m working on a subject that I’m passionate about and wish to maintain beyond this degree (my concern about sustainability is another issue.) I’m not creating media exclusively for an MFA, instead, this degree is giving me the space and guidance to launch media projects that I want to maintain and evolve with. Why? Because I don’t have all the answers to why our education system is so flawed and how we’re going to make the necessary changes to turn our student-soldiers into happy, relaxed learners who ache to be in a stimulating learning environment everyday (dammit.)
If I’m going to approach the answer to this, find out the truth of what goes on behind each institutional door and represent the reality of how our learners and educators feel about the system they are in, I will need my documentary media to be a door to stories for long time. A film alone will not suffice. Documentary media, in this day and age, needs to extend itself beyon it’s one-sided (1.0) representation of an issue and open itself up for discussion and perspectives from larger communities especially if the creator really wants to put forth a truth-claim. The DM program at RU is excellent at helping its learners to deconstruct the term “documentary”, “truth” and “reality”, and expose methods of documentary representation throughout the last century within photography, film-making and some new-media (Hito Steyerl was a favorite guest lecturer,) but it’s not enough–hence, my stated “annoyance”. We should be asking ourselves how to engage multiple community voices in our work and how uncovering “truth” can be approximated with the tools and knowledge rapidly evolving online.
There is no absolute truth in media creation, this we know. Truth is as unique as the individual who speaks/shares it. The multiplicity of voices that surround us, however, can contribute to our search for reality and they are our best bet to uncovering what’s real. Every documentarian needs to ask themselves what the value and need of conveying reality is within their work. If it’s key, then exposing their work and inviting participation through multiple media forms online should not be an option, it should be a responsibility.
while i agree that we, as documentary creators, need to concern ourselves with ‘truth’, i disagree that we have a responsibility to use a variety of media. it is to our advantage to convey reality to as wide an audience as possible, as artists we must not feel an obligation to use media we individually feel are inappropriate to our work.
personally, i use a variety of media, and encourage my fellow artists to do the same, but i wouldn’t want anyone to tell me which media to channel my work through. perhaps i’m just wary of the word ‘responsibility’, which is a concept i’m reluctant to impose on a fellow artist. you’ve posed an interesting question though and it’s certainly an idea that’s worth debating.
Thanks Rick!
I hear your concern. Ironically, your comment supports the point of my post. You are deepening the debate of where truth lies.
Documentarians have typically consulted with community members, experts, non-experts, archives etc… to help convey reality within their documentary work. Today (and for the last 6-7 years) 2.0 has helped to (democratically) broaden public engagement opportunities–hence, public opinion (and reality claims) are far more accessible. The more opinions we gather, the closer we get to the truth. Now, we all know that there are plenty of constructed realities out there but so too is the “art” of documentary practice; we convey our POV all the time. Not engaging with the greater (2.0) public, however, is blocking an artery to a flood of individuals who could shed a deeper understanding on the topic you’re dealing with.
For me, there is a responsibility to share my POV with as many people as I can especially if I’m trying to convey my vision of reality to the public. If I didn’t allow for comments on this blog (and facebook) you would not have been able to share your POV on this issue with others to contemplate. How you chose to incorporate social media is really up to you. We are simply at a huge advantage as documentarians to have so much public opinion at our disposal.
is an artist’s responsibility something that is assigned or assumed?
we, as artists, have the privilege of being able to express ourselves creatively, but i question what our responsibilities are.
but i do agree that documentary artists have a responsibility to the truth (whatever that may be), but as you point out, perhaps our challenge is to let others debate the truthfulness of our message is.
are we (as artists) constructing a documentary statement or moderating a documentary dialogue?
(geez, now i have to add another chapter to my own thesis! ~ damn you Cayoup for raising such complex questions)
lol
I’m not for being assigned anything that conflicts with my principles (and I think you’re with me on that one.) I’d say we’re doing both: constructing a documentary statement (our POV) and, ideally, we should be moderating a documentary dialogue.
Now let’s find some supporting examples and, voila, chapter done…
…unless the debate continues virtually. You might want to wait a while