Difference between revisions of "Video as community activism in ethnomusicology"
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| + | Role of video in ethnomusicology/ethnography has changed drastically over the past two decades. | ||
| + | Video is a powerful and flexible medium of great potential to transform. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Technological-economic factors have enabled broader role for video in ethnomusicology (whereas it was marginal now it's central) while greatly expanding its activist potential. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Activism: transform knowledge (awareness) / attitudes / practices[behaviors] / social-semantic networks [society-culture] | ||
| + | in order to reduce global inequality [caused by untrammeled freedom], and guarantee minima ("human rights", including minimal freedoms). | ||
| + | Human rights (from French LEF to UN Declaration provide general frame: need to address the GAP). Global Human Development: moving beyond techno-economic to address real injustices and inequalities, sub-minimal standards. | ||
| + | |||
| + | How? Adaptation (feedback loops: pos and neg) in production or cycle of collaborative production, drawing on music's emotional power to develop social-cultural power, to empower the marginalized. Ideas and media are very powerful! | ||
| + | * In the culture as a whole | ||
| + | * In the SN of PAR collaboration | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | =Video: techno/economic advances = | ||
| + | * Cost of software/equipment has decreased | ||
| + | * Quality has increased | ||
| + | * Size has decreased | ||
| + | * Digital video enables infinite copies, infinite editing | ||
| + | * Non-linear editing enables a more improvisational process, adaptation to audience | ||
| + | * Normalization via proliferation in the field | ||
| + | * Rapid dissemination from online platforms | ||
| + | * Possibility of editing using vast tagged databases of archival recordings, popular or specialized (youtube to Evia) - especially strong in music | ||
| + | |||
| + | = Key = | ||
| + | * PAR collaboration - egalitarian, for (a) ethics, (b) pragmatics. Inclusively crosses all possible lines: academia/non, center/margins, 1st/3rd worlds, wealth/poverty, insider/outsider... The PAR process should itself embody the very values the video project is projecting: to overcome inequalities, guarantee minima. | ||
| + | * The PAR network and cycle is key agent of transformative power, but also becomes object of that power, as it is empowered. | ||
| + | * Collaborative video that empowers and transforms through connections | ||
| + | * Double agenda: Local transformation and Global transformation | ||
| + | * Musical video for affective power developed through feedback (a single video, or in a PAR cycle) | ||
| + | * Always available, even if low-fi: goal of activism is not hi-fi, which has been used to exclude | ||
| + | * Necessity to resist academic norms, which tend to reduce critical edge | ||
| + | * Molten video: never need take on a final form. Continual improvisation. | ||
| + | * Critical video: unflinching - does not avert gaze: Image is so powerful. | ||
| + | * Moves beyond academia and its deference to conventions as product-orientation, in favor of a continually disruptive, subversive action-orientation | ||
| + | * Process is as important as product in the PAR cycle | ||
| + | * Rapid process: shooting/assembling/editing/disseminating | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
Ethnomusicological video becomes activist with the expansion of goals (socially and ideationally transformative, beyond "knowledge accumulation"), roles (inclusive, beyond trained ethnomusicologists), and habits of academic production (collaborative and egalitarian, beyond the solitary and hierarchical habits of most humanists). | Ethnomusicological video becomes activist with the expansion of goals (socially and ideationally transformative, beyond "knowledge accumulation"), roles (inclusive, beyond trained ethnomusicologists), and habits of academic production (collaborative and egalitarian, beyond the solitary and hierarchical habits of most humanists). | ||
Revision as of 23:54, 13 February 2014
Role of video in ethnomusicology/ethnography has changed drastically over the past two decades. Video is a powerful and flexible medium of great potential to transform.
Technological-economic factors have enabled broader role for video in ethnomusicology (whereas it was marginal now it's central) while greatly expanding its activist potential.
Activism: transform knowledge (awareness) / attitudes / practices[behaviors] / social-semantic networks [society-culture] in order to reduce global inequality [caused by untrammeled freedom], and guarantee minima ("human rights", including minimal freedoms). Human rights (from French LEF to UN Declaration provide general frame: need to address the GAP). Global Human Development: moving beyond techno-economic to address real injustices and inequalities, sub-minimal standards.
How? Adaptation (feedback loops: pos and neg) in production or cycle of collaborative production, drawing on music's emotional power to develop social-cultural power, to empower the marginalized. Ideas and media are very powerful!
- In the culture as a whole
- In the SN of PAR collaboration
Video: techno/economic advances
- Cost of software/equipment has decreased
- Quality has increased
- Size has decreased
- Digital video enables infinite copies, infinite editing
- Non-linear editing enables a more improvisational process, adaptation to audience
- Normalization via proliferation in the field
- Rapid dissemination from online platforms
- Possibility of editing using vast tagged databases of archival recordings, popular or specialized (youtube to Evia) - especially strong in music
Key
- PAR collaboration - egalitarian, for (a) ethics, (b) pragmatics. Inclusively crosses all possible lines: academia/non, center/margins, 1st/3rd worlds, wealth/poverty, insider/outsider... The PAR process should itself embody the very values the video project is projecting: to overcome inequalities, guarantee minima.
- The PAR network and cycle is key agent of transformative power, but also becomes object of that power, as it is empowered.
- Collaborative video that empowers and transforms through connections
- Double agenda: Local transformation and Global transformation
- Musical video for affective power developed through feedback (a single video, or in a PAR cycle)
- Always available, even if low-fi: goal of activism is not hi-fi, which has been used to exclude
- Necessity to resist academic norms, which tend to reduce critical edge
- Molten video: never need take on a final form. Continual improvisation.
- Critical video: unflinching - does not avert gaze: Image is so powerful.
- Moves beyond academia and its deference to conventions as product-orientation, in favor of a continually disruptive, subversive action-orientation
- Process is as important as product in the PAR cycle
- Rapid process: shooting/assembling/editing/disseminating
Ethnomusicological video becomes activist with the expansion of goals (socially and ideationally transformative, beyond "knowledge accumulation"), roles (inclusive, beyond trained ethnomusicologists), and habits of academic production (collaborative and egalitarian, beyond the solitary and hierarchical habits of most humanists).
MUSIC as subject or gateway to such Transformative, Inclusive, Collaborative Video:
PAR method: define a community of interest, then strive for openness and collaboration within it.
Result: emergence of new social/semantic networks of connection and awareness
- Goals: video is used to effect substantive CHANGE
- ... materially, on the "local" ground of video representation
- ... in awareness about it, locally and globally
- Roles: video production reaches out to include more people...
- ... non-academic artists and intellectuals
- ... on the ground of video representation
- Habits of academic production: work becomes more collaborative and (can become) more egalitarian, thus effecting a collective change in consciousness, locally and beyond, and connecting the two.
PAR -> forging new social networks. The video process is as important as the product. "Molten" video in digital form.
Exx: of Transformative, Inclusive, Collaborative Video
- Shadow video: aim to raise awareness (e.g. Banff)
- Sanitation video & documentary
- SNAR video: connect likeminded activists among ethnomusicologists and artists
Examples:
Shadow and music in the Buduburam Liberian refugee camp of Ghana https://vimeo.com/20009721
Sanitation with titles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmCk4WHPfSU&feature=youtu.be
Sanitation documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDal4NaYbw&feature=youtu.be
Songs of the new Arab revolutions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u4v7R9yF0o&feature=youtu.be
Marjorie Doyle - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNU-UQj22w0&feature=youtu.be
