SM 4134 VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY & CREATIVE INTERVENTION: 2010

2010年12月15日星期三

A brief concluding personal statement about your experience in this course.

At the very first beginning my intented learning goals were,

Be able to create qualified artworks with the data collected during field visits and researches.
To explore and understand what kind of information and data should be collected; which are actually useful to achieve my research purposes...
To decide the most suitable mediums and styles for the outcome work...
Be flexible and make instant adjustments with the environmental and sujects' changes.
Being able to understand and adjust my relationships/positions with the everyday surroundings.

And in the middle of the courses my learning goals were,

Make some efforts in the process of tagging and coding
以小見大, 主觀內省
Photography as one of the medthodogies tools which, worth some more exploration and attention towards my self-learning processes
auto-ethnography
Inspired by Jeanne Dielma's 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, 201 minutes) and some Godard films and hope to make some works like those....
Love the guts and expressive power of the artists Jo Spence and Sophie Calle and plan to develop some photography projects and S.I things as some contemporary art practise

And now at this present moment I think I have achieved my intened learning outcomes set in the very first beginning of this course and efforts should be made with the learning goals made during the middle of this class.

First of all, I think tagging and coding are kinda hard with a whole collection of photos just like my experiences in the semester end project...since each photo tells its' whole story and tagging a certain amount of photos with details deserves a much longer period of time. And what tags should we apply is another task since we are deciding what we plan to focus and it's always a struggle and confused process for me since everything seem deserving certain amounts of attention...I have to be more firm with what I want to focus so to make the tagging process as a way to identify the details that deserve more discussion of the specific topics.

And for the 以小見大, 主觀內省 point, I can see myself is in a good process. :D I start to look at details of my everyday life and documents consciously with first describing the details and then analyzing and interpret them. And during those process, I also think of why myself describe, analyze and interpret that way and how my thoughts are related to my experiences and personalities.

What's more, I really did start my collection of family photos as an auto-ethnography project and I think it's a good start though I ignore the importance of creative treatment in this kind of research project and make it a report...The creative treatment and possibilities of researching some found materials/documents should be noticed in the coming future!!!!!! Love the expressive energy with its' personal experiences and social narration power in auto-ethnography works! Those works are so touching and good inspirations for me. And love how it is used as a therapy form and a exploration to the world...that's how I like art education to raise awareness of one self and his relationships to the world...

Last but not least, this course also enhance my interests in visual materials in particular photography and video works. With the thick description techniques learnt in Micro-Narrative class and influences of different artists such as Zoe Leonard, Jo Spence and Jeanne Dielma, the usage of photography and video works have interest me and wanna to develop my future projects in this two areas more. Though they both have long history and a lot of artists have been trying to develop works based on these two mediums, I really hope that personally I can break the norms and create my own systems and new perspectives...

Semester-End-Project- A collection of Family Photos

Hello lil' Fran!

Feel so good to express my feelings and share experiences abt my auto-enthnography project. Love to do some personal work like that...Feel like all those personal works are the courage and passion that prove my absence somehow... :D And personal works remain me the very first feeling of wanting to study something about art-related courses. Feel good and expressive at the same time!!!!

Yet as time goes by, I feel myself being less and less expressive in my created works...Maybe that's the reason why I don't quite enjoy creating them recently? Feel like they are mostly the heaps of "homework"-like matters only...Why concern abt how the other feel abt my own personal projects a lot ar francesfranfran ho!!!!!!! == Sometimes I feel like I am just onbody to others and no one finds my works worth for some certain attentions and they all fall asleep.......................== ummmmmm....if they don't wanna read it they will tell you lah dun worry abt the things that not yet happened!!!.....ARGH hahaha yuppp!

Hello auto-enthnography and thanks for remaining me what the roots of my passion n courage are...you are no longer only the theories written on books but smth really remain me the possibilities in life and my own creations. Thanks for reasoning the old activites that I use to do- Dressing up in a lot of different roles and photographed myself. All I was thinking is to see how myself's like in those outfits and photos in particular when I was really lose and sad...but I have never thought that I was using them to somehow cure my emotions...

The first self protrait that I took in the MTR instant photo machine...The day before my 19th birthday and SCM interview at 13/06/2008 heehee. Also the day I concerned as a very good chance to challenge myself... Frame it as "A great beginning." :D They were the outfits that I wanted to put on but yet I couldnt explain a 100% why...Maybe a way to express how I want a X'mas in sunglasses? or a question towards why everybody dress almost the same with the information from mainstream media? Why couldnt we wear a Christmas hair band with sunglasses on during the long hot summer day? well...

I think I have a lot of room to improve my techniques and thoughts but seriously this form has inspire me a lot since the presentation of Jo Spence.

Brave and adorable! Love the concept of photo-therapy!

Things with a future tense

"The Navel"

First of all, The navel in my photograph is appeared as a depression(innie) with some hair, of somebody with the honey brown skin. The longer and lusher hair crosses a straight line of the navel and the navel bottom has the most hair comparatively. Some shorter and softer hair are on the belly surface that surrounding the belly button.

Next, the belly button is a scar on the abdomen, and caused by the time the umbilical cord is removed from a new born baby. All placental mammal have a navel and it is fairly noticeable in humans. Due to the fact that navel is close to the sexual organ of lower body, the lusher hair around the navel is considered as part of the sexuality.

Then, the initial frame that applies in this photo is "Cancer inside", which is related to the social issue. The navel is a gateway to the intestines of human body; where a lot of daily operations are done. The intestines' duty is to absorb nutrients for the body but the imbalance of food consumption enhance the possibilities of illness occurred. Since the symptoms of those illness are not very obvious in the early stages, a lot of patients and their closed ones tend to ignore the urgency to seek doctor's advices. And when the germs start taking over their health, the mega alarms have already reached to the final stages of patients' lives...And the power of cancer is massive. Aside from its' attack to the patients' health, it is also the mentally tortures to both the patients and their families.

What's more, people often compare the belly button with on/off switch. It will be so good if people do have a chance to check their intestines once a while with just a press on their navels...They will have better understandings of their health and start minding their eating habits if the digestive operations are shown to their eyes. A lot of patients queue up for the medical treatment in local public hospitals and the demand cannot be satisfied with limited medical resources. Or can all of the patients just throw their whatever illness away with a press? It saves plenty of emotions, time and money; which also seem much more friendly to those who ain't even have enough money for the surgery fees.

Well, there are two new frames discovered. The first new frame is "Women showing off the navel" that shows the cultural issues. Since navels have been considered as part of the sexuality, women showing off the navel was once a taboo in Chinese and Western societies while Indian women tended to show off their belly buttons with traditional clothes Sari. And nowadays, there are countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where the women showing off their belly buttons is still forbidden. The new frame raises the possibilities of a few cultural issues: The cultural differences between ancient Chinese, Western and Indian societies, the cultural different between modern societies and the gender studies.

Another frame is "Intimacy between a mother and her new born baby", which concerns about the social issues. The navel is caused by the time the umbilical cord is removed from a new born baby and was the linkage between the baby and his mom. This connection is something more than a physical one and represents the intimacy between a mother and her precious baby. This frame raises a main social issue: Parents' attitudes towards their new born babies. A lot of young irresponsible parents just don't want the baby after they gave birth to him/her and they remove the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors without considering the infection. And in contrast, some other responsible parents are ready for their babies future with umbilical cord blood.

Finally, there are some possible steps, which are able to develop this photographic project. The first idea that comes to my mind is putting more and more photographs of different navels together as a series; in order to enhance the potential of raising different cultural issues. And people are all with very different belly buttons for sure...Or doing some video works of "Talking navels" with V.O will be a nice experiment hopefully...? The following step is researching about the potential issues mentioned above and try to get as much as useful information as possible...And myself will inter-venting during the process of photographing and selecting the materials needed.

2010年12月13日星期一

Handouts during the preparation of "A Day of Amy"

2010年12月12日星期日

Cinema Vérité: Defining the Moment

"Cinéma vérité (French: [sinema veʁite], "truthful cinema"; English: /ˈsɪnɨmə vɛrɨˈteɪ/) is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics."- Wikipedia

Peter Wintonick focus on showing how important cinema verite this technique is towards the film culture by protraying different directors' interviews. The modern documentaries are representing the creative treatment of the actuality that invovled constructed settings. The focus on documentary impulse is rather important than purely representing the 100% reality. Once ones' have a shooting plan in mind, his thoughts and plannings are already interventing the whole events.

Another popular term is "Docudrama" which, is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events in film, television, and staged theatre. 覃章柯的<二十四城記>就是近來的一個例子. Most of the cases are actually performed by actors with the actual historical experiences that ones have felt. Even though the whole story is >50 staged, the documentary impulse within still function as tool to figure out what they personally want to see.

Good to hear all those directors share their experiences and insights with clips from classic cinema verité documentaries. But really hope that more specific examples and analysis could be given from each interview so that we can compare the differences between them.

A few reminders to myself,

-No conclusion should be made in the work.

-Audiences should identify the details by themselves.

-Wanting what they audieces got instead of telling them what to get.

2010年12月9日星期四

CMC

9/12/2010 CMC

Have been to the hospital quite a lot recently to visit one of my family frds who is pending for his surgical treatment. Public hospital is undoubtedly my least favourite place NOW. My anger and sadness grow with the observation of medical staffs' attitude and behaviours. I feel that nowadays patients are treated inside such a mega black box they dun know what alternative treatments they can ask for but simply follow the choices tht those doctors offer...The doctors dun tell you a lot of things unless u ask for. Each doctor spends ard 5 mins only for each patient cuz there are crowds after crowds waiting everyday...The doctors are always looking dull and discouraged towards patients...all they mentioned during visits are abt the fee tht patients have to afford in their treatment...no medical treatments are offered unless ones' paying the fee first. Oh what a good business?!

Another thing tht I hate most is the nurses' attitudes. I understand tht they hv tons of works to deal with and for sure they hv a lot of pressure too. Yet does it mean they can being completely rude towards patients? I was with my frd in the surgical department last few days and here are two significant examples of the nurses' poor attitude,

1.) There was a male nurse who is around my age and he was scolding to one of the patients like, "抽血呀呀伯! 拿高你個手就啦!"...the patient was quite sick and couldnt really get the nurse's meaning and then the nurse became even angrier and said, "咁你抽唔抽呀! 唔出聲大晒呀! 我唔係好得閒既JEH! CHI SIN! "...some other patients was shocked too and I couldnt believe tht the nurse head leader who was beside didnt even speak any word...the doctor who was there just simply sighed. WTF?

2.) Another case is during my waiting at the hospital lobby I saw two young female nurses were chatting gossips with some really annoying bad words loudly; with their duty to lead a sick patient- an old lady in wheel-chair to an operation...omg that was a public area! and I cant imagine how hard and dizzy the patient was feeling...

JOBSJOBSJOBSMONEYMONEYMONEY.

I understand that we all hv to eat and to maintain a living but can they be nicer towards the patients? 政府常常宣傳不要醫院中病人對醫護人員的暴力, hv they even thought abt the real defensive ones are the medical staffs? How many of those present medical staffs are faithfully wanting to be there or simply just wanting to hv a stable job with nice incomes? Why do they work so hard in private hospitals instead? I hate how my pre-nurses frds are claiming how they r dying to work at private hospitals since there are more rich people... ;(

My creative intervention in this case should be maintaining a super healthy body and never never never ever stay in hospitals!

2010年12月6日星期一

Cheung Shan Wan

Cheung Sha Wan is the place where I spent my childhood and still my favourite community now. :D

Missing those time when my granny was holding my hand to primary school and helping to finish my artwork in Visual Art classes every morning...Love the times when our best family frds were living near by and they ran out of the flats once they heard us shouting their name on the ground floors of their house block....REALLY MISS EVERYTHING WHEN EVERYONE'S THERE.

I couldnt tell much about why I love that place and the very first reason of telling people why is the memories that me and my beloved ones shared there. I love to hang out there and always find there is a peaceful place to live since the streets are almost empty every weekends. I guess Cheung Shan Wan is not a very ideal place in the younger generations' mind since it's quite an old town now and people would like to afford better apartments somewhere near the sea maybe. I used to visit my dad daily and helped out a bit in his company but now the company has closed and I still like to walk pass by his old company area to see if the shop is taken by another industrial use or what...but the shop is still empty; nothing's there. My dad has been working on his business for 20 something years and I thought that he had some sadness and uncertainties by the time he sold his business...But he told me that it was just a way to make a living and he's okay with the decision.

This is the street where my dad's shop is used to locate and I lived there for some years as well. This place is filled with 田生集團's banners nowadays; and a lot of sex workers are working there too. Pink color lights can be spotted easily. Somehow in my mind I think renting the places for those sex workers is one of the trick that the land property company is playing. I hate seeing those pink lights and posters in neon colors everywhere.

And suddenly I had an idea of why I love that place so much while I was shopping for dictionaries there.(haha so random!) This place is not yet dominated by big business groups and still a lot of independent shops and stores where residents can get what they need with lower prices
! I can see one of the reason I like to hang out there is those independent shops provide me a n unique social communication and (window)shopping time! People there are nice and friendly! I used to have my photos printed out in a photo house there and once the owner helped me changing my photos formats from cmyk to rgb with an extra software that he downloaded just for my case!

Another reason is the lovely mysterious old buildings! There are a lot of old buildings there and by looking at the words on their outlook and stairs, it's not hard to see what those flats were used to be such as clinic, photo houses, kindergartens and even performing arts academy!!!!!!!!!! I tend to picture the old happenings at those flats!!!! They are fascinating for my imagination!!! Here are a few pics that I took,

However, a lot of old buildings are pulled down due to whatever kinds of development projects...miss them. City development process is on going with a high speed....we are forced to accept it... :( but I am excited to see how Cheung Sha Wan will be like in the future!

Cheung Sha Wan has been changing heaps compared to this picture taken within these years...

P.S That was the largest pornography cinema in 852(!!!) with 2 houses and using film instead of DVD!!! I used to freak out when I walked by...now it's closed and I can't help wondering who's gotta rent/buy this place and how he/she will use this place(?!) This is a very unique location since almost every cinemas are now located in shopping mall...

Check out those links if you are interested!

http://talkcinema.wordpress.com/2007/12/29/%E6%98%9F%E8%BC%9D%E6%88%B2%E9%99%A2%E3%80%80%E5%85%83%E6%97%A6%E7%B5%90%E6%9D%9F/

http://hongkongfilms.mysinablog.com/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=889119

This is a personal sharing and hope you all enjoy reading it heehee :D

xx

FRANCES

2010年11月28日星期日

My statement of "A Day of Amy"

At the very first beginning of starting the project- "A day of Amy", I felt kind of confused and frustrated about deciding the shooting formats and subject matters that will potentially involved in the shooting...And since there might be more or less some unpredictable factors/situations, I was quite worried that me and Becky would not be flexible enough...but things just went quite smoothly and we together dealt with some unsure and unpredictable matters as well. Thanks Becky!

"A day of Amy" is a video work, which tends more towards a piece of visual ethnography. During the shooting period, we observed the overall environment of Amy's house and activities of the family- Amy, her mum and sister; after getting a better image of their living style, me and Becky started to decide what to shoot. We looked and searched more and more potential subject matters other than originally focusing Amy's weekend routines and her interactions with her family members and beloved cat. And our camera languages are adjusted e.g using pan shots and still images since a lot of Amy's house environment deserves more attention and observation.

The shooting period is aim to collect all the images that potentially reveal Amy's life and important to Amy; which got us ready for the editing(selection) time. And during this period, we were not so sure if this piece is more towards to the documentary or visual ethnography...At the editing period, the footage collected showed a stronger potential towards a piece of visual ethnography and this tend to be piece that allows audiences to observe many things form their own discovery. We tried to show a n overall image of Amy's daily life yet we do not want to draw any conclusion and hope to provide some rooms for the audiences to think themselves.

Aside from our very obvious presence and observation of Amy and her cat, there are a few pictures of local daily culture that we started to see. The first thing we noticed is the power distribution in Amy's family. Amy's mum is the person in power in the house and meanwhile she respect the opinions and needs of other house members. Though Amy still has her own private drawers that she is free to decorate and store things, Amy's mum is in charge of most of the stuffs and furnitures' settings i.e. the kitchen and beds etc. And the way Amy and her cat "Green Green" response shows her mum's authority. And meanwhile she respects other family members' comments. In the dialogue between Amy and her mum, we can see that by the time her mum wants some food to eat, she concerns about Amy's need as well. Even though herself wanted a McDonald's meal set, she still wanted to satisfy Amy's wish of having Korean New Year Cake and Ice-cream. It shows the love and cares between mum and daughter. And from their body gestures and chatting tone which, they are hugging each other and having sweet talks; it reveals their close-relationship with each other.

Then we see the changes of local family values. Single-parent family is very common in our society. From the video we can see only 3 single beds for Amy, her mum and sister. And the open-structure of her house shows the audiences that it is not a place for the private time of a couple or the people who live at the house do not have the demand/need of it. And we started to see the importance of marriage is decreasing in our society since the boyfriend of Amy's mum is not living with them and just visit them a few times a week. It shows that their relationship may not is such a stable one that they both are not completely into one's life. One may not concern a marriage as important as the old days...

Next we see the changes of gender equality. From Amy's case, we can see that women are no longer dependent of men in their lives and are very independent. Amy and her family support their livings with their jobs and are fully independent of their lives. Even though Amy's mum and her sister are not too well-educated, they are able to work and maintain their basic livings without relying on any male. Our society nowadays welcome women to work and providing them fair salaries. Male are no longer placed in a higher position of women.

Also we see the immigration issues in Hong Kong. From the accent of Amy's mum, it shows that she's an . The majority of Hong Kog residents are not originally from Hong Kong and nowadays Hong Kong is still a popular place for immigrates who aim for better livings.

What's more, the labour policy is another issue that we noticed. We can see three different working formats that Amy and her family members are leading. Amy's working as a part-time private teacher for children during her leisure time and the pay is around $70-90 each hour. Working 6-12 hours a week provides her daily personal spending. And Amy's sister works around 11-11, 6 days a week as a full-time waitress is a higher-classed restaurant in Harbour City; with around $9000 paid each month. Her sister works long hour and is lacking of leisure time. Despite of the low paid salary, Amy's sister still responses parts of the family spending. Her job makes her having less and less time to communicate with friends and family and unable to expand her social networks other than her working group mates. And Amy's mum does not have to work during weekends which, provides her some family time spent with her beloved daughters and pet. I am not sure what her job and salary are though.

Hong Kong is very pricey and grassroots have no choice but to accept what government offers so to improve their living environment. Or paying a much higher rental fee for a small flat...Government is claiming to improve the living standards of grassroots but meanwhile not offering more efficient policies to maintain a reasonable house price.

From describing to analysing and interpreting a day of Amy, issues of Amy herself and our society are noticed; with deeper and more thoughtful thinking.

2010年10月21日星期四

Creative Intervention of Titicut Follies

Fredrick Wiseman has intervened in this film with hand-held camera shooting style which, reveals both of himself and the camera's presence. In the film, Wiseman is both the observer and one of the inmates in the hosipital. He is observing the happenings in hosipital while experiencing the inmates' life through the camera.

And with the hand-held camera style, he's forcing(or guilding) the audiences to look at those specific inmates' daily images that he wants them to focus. Wiseman is involving in the whole event and observing how the patients are being treated by the hosipital workers via his camera. The daily life happenings between the patients and hosipital workers are showing the audiences how patients are losing their basic human rights due to their illness. The patients' daily activities are restricted and they have to follow the instructions from the hosipital workers. Their free-will is controlled and some of them are still not knowing it. Instead of telling the audiences what Wiseman's mind is thinking, he is showing tons of images of how the patients are treated badly by the hosipital workers...with the hand-held shots, the inhumane environment and atmosphere of that hosipital are revealed.

What's more, a lot of discussions have been raised to argue if Wiseman is destroying the patients' human rights in this film. It's such a paradoxical situation since this film does showing the audiences the restricted life of mentally ill patients and how unfair they are treated by those hosipital workers; which, raises a lot of social concerns towards the patients. But in another hand, Wiseman is bringing the audiences to the patients' very priavte life which, the patients are not even realizing a "NO" could be an answer for his shooting...Is he making a move that harms the patients? Is he labelling the ones whose in a weaker social position? Are there any footages of the patients' life that he didn't show?

Titicut Follies's giving the audiences a visual experience(/tour) to explore and understand the patients' life in the hosipital. The majority of this film is showing the private life of how the patients are treated inhumanely and the director is guilding the audiences experiences in this visual tour. Apart from following Wiseman's intervention in this event, audiences should really keep their mind calm and critical while watching a film with such a controversial topic...

2010年9月23日星期四

Task 1-3

Task 1-on "Frame"

"Make a living"

Three promotional girls dressed in the same pink customs with a pair of sliver high heels. They are working for a cosmetic shop and forced to dress this way as part of their job. The customs are part of the promotion gimmick since the color is eye-catchy and normally people don't dress this way...The promotion girls may or may not like these outfits so much since we cannot see their facial expressions with their face turned back.

"In between"

Those three girls are wearing the same look that is hard to define. They are having the princess crown and angels' wings as part of the outfits...the color pink looks warm and girlish and silver looks cold and bold here. Dressing with crowns does not make them princess... Wearing wings does not make them look like angels...And the color pink and silver and such a contrast there...The outfits function as an overall promotional tool only and the details are not important.

Task 2- On using still photographs as methodological tool for fieldwork

23/09/2010