poetics+politics 4

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"> Review of Poetics & Politics 4: Documentary Research Symposium, May 16-19, 2019, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA Author: Shelby Johnson Undergraduate student, UC Santa Cruz May 27, 2019 <img src="https://i.imgur.com/vjVtqzx.jpg" width="100%"> The fourth iteration of the biennial Poetics and Politics Documentary Research Symposium was a generative investigation of traditional documentary narrative form. Co-curators Irene Lusztig and Irene Gustafson spearheaded a radical conference guided by the subtitle “Against Story,” which brought both academics and creators together to critically engage with the widespread expectation of identifiable characters and traditional story arcs in documentary. Over the four day span, participants grappled with story and considered how alternative documentary methods can spark more inclusive, thoughtful, and new conversations and provocations. [[beyond story]] [[against story]]

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"> “When did story become king?” -Alisa Lebow & Alexandra Juhasz <img src="https://i.imgur.com/Y9gwe0E.png" width="100%"> Beyond Story: an Online, Community-Based Manifesto by Alexandra Juhasz & Alisa Lebow, located at https://vols.worldrecordsjournal.org/02/03 The theme for this years Poetics & Politics, “Against Story,” was inspired by the work of Alisa Lebow and Alexandra Juhasz in their “online, community-based manifesto,” Beyond Story, which kicked off the conference with a presentation and a conversation. The short manifesto was presented in a short video of filmmakers and academics in a collective reading, sourced from individual videos of participants. Unsurprisingly, many of the participants in this video were familiar faces in the room, which served as a reminder of the small-scale, grassroots nature of the “beyond story” movement is at present time. During the conference, presenters and panelists responded to the manifesto and the theme “Against Story,” which arguably pushes the boundaries of even the manifesto; with thoughtful curation on the part of Lusztig and Gustafson, the symposium took great responsibility in highlighting non-narrative, alternative, and radical documentary work. During the first keynote presentation, filmmaker Lana Lin describes “beyond story” as a “social obligation to challenge received forms.” In her film The Cancer Journals Revisited, Lin brings Audre Lorde’s seminal book, The Cancer Journals, to queer, female cancer “survivors” of color to take part in embodied readings, which question survivorship and illness narratives that reign over people with cancer and illness. Taking up Lorde’s call to action, “I’m doing my work, are you doing yours?” Lin’s voice is a guiding force throughout the film, appearing as text in complex layered cinematic environments, where there are often contrasting images, voices, and words simultaneously. This strategy underscores the complexity of having cancer, and highlights the individual experience: the layers seem to tell the audience, “I dare you to think one thing I am showing you is more important than another.” This polyphonous element was shared amongst several other works in the conference, and the term “polyvocality” became seemingly ubiquitous during the symposium as a whole. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/7Ez7bc4.jpg" width="100%"> Keynote Speaker, Lana Lin, during her Friday presentation, "Possibility Made Real" Something important to note: Lana Lin and co-curator Irene Lusztig were both a part of the video manifesto in the opening presentation by Juhasz and Lebow. The sense of collectivity amongst registered participants at the symposium made it seem as if this “beyond story” framework was the norm, yet at the end of the last session on Sunday, participants came together to discuss where to go next— because although the cacophony of voices provoked generative discussion during the weekend together, the rest of the documentary world, especially gatekeepers, are slow to catch on to this critique of the tidy, traditional documentary story. [[polyvocality]] [[against story]]

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"> POLYVOCALITY and POLYPHONY A Friday panel, named “Polyvocality” was held to discuss and “explore the form, politics, and aesthetics of multi-voiced work,” as the program describes it. However, I would like to extend this “poly” adjective to include the work that embodies polyvocality and polyphony. Polyphony, from baroque classical musical theory, lends itself to encompass documentary work that takes a multi-layered approach. This application of polyphony to documentary comes from the writing of scholar Patricia R. Zimmerman, which features several viewpoints and voices which complicate subjects through multiplicity and inclusion, which results in work that pushes back against the heterogenuous, non-intersectional documentary. <img src="http://talatala.net/nuevo/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/habitacion1_mix_cut.jpg" width="100%"> <img src="https://www.valeriekabov.com/uploads/8/4/1/2/8412558/published/15.jpg?1493990940" width="100%"> Images from ZIM.DOC, directed by Rabia Williams Many presenters were engaged in these ideas of radical inclusivity through the incorporation of media and voice that represented different ideas and viewpoints, including those on the panel: Jeanne C. Finley, Iphigénie Marcoux-Fortier + Amy Magowan Greene + Meky Ottawa, and Rabia Williams, but also other speakers, like Lana Lin, Isabelle Carbonelle in her sound installation, Songs of Mud, and notably, Cecilia Aldarondo and Sarah Friedland who presented their works on Hurricane María and Palestine, respectively, on a panel about how prismatic documentary and polyvocal frameworks complicate colonial narratives of landscape and place. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/23sNQCw.jpg" width="100%"> Sarah Friedland, during presentation with Cecilia Aldarondo on polyvocality and place [[insider vs. outsider perspectives and animals]] [[against story]]

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"> INSIDER VS. OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVES and ANIMALS Presenters and discussion participants grappled over insider/outsider perspectives and their relationship to documentary ethics and aesthetics several times over the course of the symposium. Some participants self-presented their outsider experiences in filmmaking, like Cecilia Aldarondo’s identity as a Diaspora Puerto Rican, Sarah Friedland’s work in Palestine as an American Jew, and Sasha Wortzel’s work in the Everglades years after moving away from Florida, while others, like keynote speaker Kirsten Johnson and filmmaker Sarah Christman, were questioned by audience members about their role in the communities they filmed in. Johnson’s presentation, especially including the discussion of her memoir Cameraperson, struck up interesting ethical quandaries about shooting in other countries, and the power dynamics of the documentary camera. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/13cqYrk.jpg" width="100%"> Cecilia Aldarondo during presentation on polyvocality & landscape The only full screening in the symposium was an unofficial Bay Area premiere of Sarah Christman’s spectacular documentary, Swarm Season, which was followed by questions about her outsider perspective working with native Hawaiians, as well as the co-opting of the swarming bee for political purposes. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/RGjawS0.png" width="100%"> Still from Swarm Season trailer, directed by Sarah Christman Most of these conversations about insider/outsider ethics circled around culture, community, and borders, but, perhaps the most radical outsider perspective exists in the documentation of animals. Laska Jimsen and Jason Coyle’s film, Deer of North America, reframed one of the most common border crossings— between human and animals. The film is different from a lot of alternative non-narratives eco-cinema that works against the expectations of Disney Nature or March of the Penguins watchers, like Nenette, or Sweetgrass out of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab. Deer of North America, on the other hand is slow, and contemplative, which gives the viewer time to investigate feelings of attachment or curiosity toward non-human animal life, which often feed into empathy claims, as well as consider the human desire to relate and project onto animals as we look at them and what it means to look into the eyes of the animal with the power dynamics of being human. <img src="https://walker-web.imgix.net/cms/Dear_of_North_America_04_W.jpg?auto=format,compress&w=1920&h=1200&fit=max&dpr=1.5" width="100%"> Still from Deer of North America, Laska Jimsen & Jason Coyle [[against story]]

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"> AGAINST STORY and how to further engage <img src="https://i.imgur.com/g8h7J1e.jpg" width="100%"> These three themes [[polyvocality]], [[insider vs. outsider perspectives and animals]] all contribute to the greater mission of going “against story.” Thanks to the curation of Irene Gustafson and Irene Lusztig, the 2019 Poetics and Politics Documentary Research Symposium created a force of makers, scholars, and students critically engaged in the possibilities of pushing back against story in its received, popular form. The last conversation of the symposium revolved around the issues of gatekeeping and how to facilitate the growth of a movement. At one point after the last panel discussion, someone asked, “What can we do next? This has been an extremely generative and thoughtful weekend, but how can we take it outside of this room?” Ideas ranged from letter-writing campaigns to gatekeepers, shared syllabi in academia, to getting producers and funders into the room, to swarm them with non-narrative work. Alisa Lebow’s suggestion was presented at the beginning of the symposium on little cards dispersed around the room, titled, Beyond Story \ Ways to Engage: Extend or Challenge the Argument. I would like to thank Lebow and Juhasz for their [[beyond story]] manifesto and further extend this offer beyond [[Poetics and Politics]] to readers and symposium outsiders— get involved and join the conversation. As a student just beginning to make documentary work of my own, I want to have the freedom to create and share work that goes against the grain and progress the boundaries of documentary.