Passing the cameraDocumentary in the age of

broadcasting yourself

Susan AasmanUniversity of Groningen

15 januari 2010Conference Documentary Now!

family

friends

Tarnation, Jonathan CaouetteFlying, Jennifer Fox

How does one become visible?

Passing the camera =Intimacy + do-it

yourself

Jean Rouch•And tommorow? Tomorrow will be the time of color video portapacks, video-editing and instant replay. The dreams of Vertov and Flaherty will be combined into a mechanical “cine-eye ear”and of a camera that can so totally participate that it will pass automatically into the hands od those who were always in front of the lens” (1974)

• Imagine a world where symbolic forms created by one inhabitant are instantaneously available to all other inhabitants; a place where "knowing others" means only that others know us, and we know them through the images we all create about ourselves and our world, as we see it, feel it, and choose to make it available to a massive communication network, slavering and hungry for images to fill the capacity of its coaxial cables.

• Imagine this place that is so different from the society within which we nourish our middle-class souls, in which symbolic forms are not the property of a "cultured," technological, or economic elite, but rather are ubiquitous and multiplying like a giant cancer (or, conversely, unfolding like a huge ant magnificent orchid), and available for instant bans mission to the entire world.

• Imagine a place where other cultures...are available to all; a place where almost anyone...can produce verbal and visual images, where individual or groups can edit, arrange, and rearrange the visualization of their outer and inner worlds, and, place where these movies, TVs. .. can be instantaneously available to anyone who chooses to look....Imagine this place, for it is where we are at now (Sol Worth 1968).

• “The day is close when the 8mm home-movie footage will be collected and appreciated as folk art, like songs and the lyric poetry that was created by the people." – Jonas Mekas, “Movie Journal,” The Village Voice, 1963

• “[I] have come to be called a ‘professional,’ an ‘artist’ and an ‘amateur.’ Of those three terms—‘amateur’—is the one I am truly most honored by… Why have they come to make ‘amateur’ mean: ‘inexperienced,’ ‘clumsy,’ ‘dull,’ or even ‘dangerous’? It is because an amateur is one who really lives his life—not one who simply ‘performs his duty’—and as such he experiences his work while he’s working—rather than going to school to learn his work so he can spend the rest of his life just doing it dutifully.”— Stan Brakhage, “In Defence of Amateur,” 1971

James Moran, There’s no place like home video:The avant-garde & the home mode

Aesthetic

Conservativeradical

Social

Maya Deren

Stan Brakhage Window water baby moving, 1959

Hermine Freed, Art Herstory, 1974

How does one become visible?

Jo Spence:

“Deciding to become the subject of our own histories rather than the object of someone else’s.” (1990)

“Speaking for, Speaking about,Speaking with,

Speaking alongside”

An Anthropological and Documentary Dilemma

Jay RubyVisual Anthropology Review Fall 1991

Subject generated content

Jade Goody: “I've lived my whole adult life talking about my life ... The only difference is that I'm talking about my death now. It's OK. I've lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I'll die in front of them. “

Reality TV

                                        

EdMatos5221 november 2007

I made this video with the hope that it may help anyone out there from having to go

through what I am trying to endure. I made it with nothing but love for all. . . .  

I Have Cancer

“From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production”

(Lev Manovich)• Uploading on video sharing websites:

• Presently less than 10 per cent of the Internet population creates and uploads amateur videos. The global total for video uploading by individuals (not media corporations) across all Internet sites could measure anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million videos per day. (Source: Watching You Tube, 2009)

• YouTube Statistics, Mike Wesch, 4 May 2008 Total videos uploaded as of March 17th 2008: 78.3 Million

• Videos uploaded per day: over 150,000

• Unambiguously User-Generated (amateur): 80.3%

“By 2012, 25% of stuff will be created, edited, etc by mobile devices,” so suggests Mark Selby, Vice President Multimedia, Nokia.“ForumOxford: Future Technologies Conference” (2008).

Flying: Seventh episodeOH, AND DON'T FORGET TO "PASS THE

CAMERA"Following the informal flow of

conversation, hand the camera back and forth as you

each take turns talking. It is best when the

camera is pointed at the person who is speaking

andthen switched when the other person

talks (but you don't have to be rigid about

it!).SHARE YOUR STORY, POST YOUR VIDEO

ON THE FLYING SITE