Linda Lai's autoethnography
Auto-ethnography [field study about oneself] is by definition an experimental form of ethnography. According to Catherine Russell, many key examples of experimental cinema and autobiographical films could be understood as auto-ethnography. Linda Lai will discuss this view, trace such a history, and shed light on the notion of auto-ethnography in the practice of contemporary art. Various examples by famous artists and Lai’s own video work will be used for illustration.
Title of talk: “Autoethnography: experimental ethnography / a hybrid creative practice”
1:00 – 3:00pm / Saturday, March 6, 2010
1st floor, no. 99 Queen’s Road East, Wanchai
Studio’s open house session will begin at 12:30pm. Come early to have a cup of tea (or coffee).
Outline of talk:
│The basic problematic: the meeting of ethnographic research and contemporary art practice
│What is autoethnography?
│‘Self’ in auto-ethnography
│Autoethnography as an experimental action
│Autoethnographic methods: 3 kinds of visual autoethnography for the “I”
│Methods: personal and experimental cinema
│Methods: Autobiography – Resisting autobiography – ‘Outlaw’ genres of autobiography
│Jo Spence – a case study for multiple strategies in autobiography
│Ethnographic methods: frames of culture, forms of writing
│From research to art-making: mixed strategies / archiving / performance & performative strategies
│Sophie Calle’s Take Care of Yourself - a case study
Creative/film/video works discussed:
film/video: News from Home (1976 Chantel Akerman), Sans Soleil (1983 Chris Marker), The Ties That Blind (1985 Su Friedrich), I Told Them My Camera was On (2005 Linda Lai), Excitable Speech: all about Cinderella (2008 Linda Lai)
contemporary art: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s multimedia Dictee (1982), Gerard Richter’s Atlas (1962-2006), Jo Spence’s Nottingham Cancer Project and Picture of Health ? Part 1 and Part 3, Sophie Calle’s Double Game and Take Care of Yourself
comics: 《媽媽的抽屜在最低：性、 性別、性別政治》(莉莉), Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986 and 1991, 2 volumes, Art Spiegelman), Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios (1983 Cherríe Moraga), Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987 Gloria Anzaldúa )
novels《紀實與虛構》jishi yu xugou (2002 王安憶 Wang Anyi)
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it really gives me a refreshing idea of Visual Ethnography,
yes, if we want to understand the subject, we can re-write , re-visit, re-read. i am happy to re-attend the class of ethnography, though i re-discover there are many works waiting for me to do to complete my art piece, well, i should say the date of completing is never ending, haha
The mention of “dynamic self” and the “transparent POV” remind me to take care of “my role” in my planning project, even its find out may not be presented as an AEG.
And I really appreciate the strategies to listed.
I am curious about Fictional ethnography after all.
By the way, when I look up the famouc “MAUS”, I think of “Persepolis: 我在伊朗長大” and also another local comic “錦繡藍田”
One time, my professor in fine art said, “I think people doing media art, they don’t know art history, most of the works I came across are lack of depth.” I am glad, in SCM, we were told history is present tense, there shouldn’t be a fix set of history that every artist must know, we can always (re)EXPLORE history
After attending Linda’s talk on visual auto-ethnography, I realized that I have been too careless to perceive/read/understand such a subject/term, even though I have been developing and working on auto-ethnographic research for some time.
When Linda deconstructed auto-ethnography into ‘auto~’(self) ‘ethnos~’(culture) ‘~graphy’(research process/writing), I was shocked (and was a bit ashamed), by myself, that I have never studied the term in a more serious manner…
When doing auto-ethnographic research, one has to put focus and be conscious about oneself. But it’s sometimes (for me, most of the time) easy to put too much focus on personal matters then forgetting about the ‘outer world’ which is the ‘ethnos~’ portion.
It’s a bit hard to elaborate what I have benefited from this talk here, but please allow me to show the transformation I bore through the production of my future visual auto-ethnographic pieces.
Hi Linda
I am the curator of the Jo Spence Memorial Archive I am pleased to see you are discussing Jos work Please get in touch
I am happy to send you more Jo Images for your future talks
Best Terry Dennett
Thank you for yet another excellent post. Ive been lurking around the site for a couple days, and its now one of my favorite sites! With so many autogenerated blogs out there, its refreshing to find a real one. I run a website that is very similar, would you be interested write a guest post on it? If you are interested, please send me an email!