Image/Sound/Text:
- Intro
- 'I am': self - identity among participants
- First Encounters
- Joining up the dots
- Domestic space and objects of significance
Joining up the dots
The next clip came about through what is probably the most intensive series of ethnographic encounters I have had with any of the participants so far. The participant, Deep Rajput, is one of the third wave of participants who started their 'encounter' from LSBU rather than Tate. It happened that the first and second workshops, the first Tate Encounter, the Entry Interview and a Lived Experience interview all happened within a two week period. Despite his being one of the latest to join the project, I now know as much about his lived experience of visual culture as I do about any of the other participants, if not more. The unfolding of this series of events is indicative of the nature of the ‘on the move’ urban ethnography, as regardless of attempts to plan research across time in neat phases, sometimes progress on a particular strand will accelerate due to certain factors working together, and the ethnographer must be prepared to run with it.
All the while, I am in a relationship with myself as a process, and taking on as many different identities as there are scenarios. In this fast paced kind of research, it is crucial to be constantly reflexive about being a person with a video camera, and the role(s) I am playing within the scenarios. In this following example, I was a catalyst in the development of events through a somewhat serendipitous act. In our initial round table discussion Deep had revealed that he had a keen interest in science fiction, and Star Wars in particular. By chance the following day I saw a brochure for the Sci-Fi London festival which was happening that week and took it to show Deep in his Entry Interview, where I picked up on the theme of his interest in science fiction and the part it played in his visual world.
In the brochure he saw that an aerosol artist, ‘The Artful Dodger’, whose work he had seen and admired the previous year at Star Wars Celebration Europe – a large Star Wars event at Earl's Court Exhibition Centre – was going to be doing live graffiti in the window of Forbidden Planet, a large Sci-Fi memorabilia store on Shaftsbury Avenue. As this was a kind of artwork that resonated strongly with him, we felt it would be a good idea to go there with the video camera and let him take me on a tour of this part of his visual world.