<html><head><style>body{font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px}</style></head><body style="word-wrap:break-word;line-break:after-white-space"><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px;color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0);margin:0px;line-height:auto">Thank you Patricia Zimmerman and Dale Hudson. I wonder if you might elaborate more on groups or projects working specifically on what we used to call nature documentaries — and if this might also involve animal-studies (with the non-human persons as collaborators). Is this parallel to the nature documentary or occupying that space?</div><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px;color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0);margin:0px;line-height:auto"><br></div><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px;color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0);margin:0px;line-height:auto">Thanks again.</div> <br><p class="airmail_on">On April 5, 2018 at 11:36:16 AM, Patricia Zimmermann (<a href="mailto:patty@ithaca.edu">patty@ithaca.edu</a>) wrote:</p> <blockquote type="cite" class="clean_bq"><span><div dir="ltr"><div></div><div>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
<title></title>
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<br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
<span style="color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">Our
concept of Open Space New Media Documentary explores the productive
interstices between documentary and the digital turn.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
<span style="color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in"> New
technologies, realigned social relations, and emerging contestatory
political challenges call for a reexamination of documentary’s
forms, functions, and roles.</span><span style="color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
<span style="color:black"><span style="border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">
No longer a fixed object, documentary is
taking on iterative, shape-shifting contours and migrating across
multiple interfaces. </span></span>Collaborative models of
production, distribution, and exhibition reject enclosure and
hierarchies.<span style="color:black;border:none"> </span>Open space new media
documentary projects gesture towards a nexus of collaborations,
community, convenings, histories, and technologies.</p>
<p style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-image: initial; background-">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">
Documentary studies has</span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black"> </span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">focused
on analog forms. </span></p>
<p style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-image: initial; background-">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">
However, new media
documentary presents a more place-based practice of co-creation,
collaboration, and community. Avoiding </span><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">vertical
hierarchies of production, the participatory documentary uses a
horizontal system.</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in"> No
longer auteurs, documentary directors transform into community
designers who convene people around contradictory, suppressed, and
unresolved issues. </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">In
open space documentary, technologies meet places and
people. </span></p>
<p style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-image: initial; background-">
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
The documentary triangle
of subject, filmmaker, and audience is a central metaphor informing
documentary studies. In contrast, the open space documentary
paradigm is circular, with media makers becoming place-based
designers and audiences becoming engaged participants in
collaborative encounters. </span><span style="font-size:12pt">These<i> </i></span><span style="font-size:12pt">collaborative documentary practices move across
the analog, digital, and embodied.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-indent:0.5in;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
Open space new media practices emerge from long histories of
collaborative, collective, and participatory media movements which
critiqued auteurism and focused on communities and broader
unresolved social and political issues. In the early
20<sup>th</sup> century, Dziga Vertov and the Kinoks (USSR)
and the Workers Film and Photo League (US) refuted auteurism for
collective work. In the 1960s, Challenge for Change (Canada) and
the Newsreel Collective (US) addressed political issues from the
perspectives of communities. In the 1970s and 1980s, Appalshop
(US), Paper Tiger Television (US), and the Black Audio Collective
(UK) advocated for collaborative processes to probe marginalized
ideas and communities. In the 21<sup>st</sup> century, digital
storytelling movements and global indigenous media production
processes proliferate.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
These
aggregated storytelling micro-documentaries build mosaics that are
localized, multi-voiced, and reciprocal. They experiment with how
to design dialogic approaches to political crises and traumas.
Rather than producing images or artifacts, they generate open-ended
ideas, questions, solutions, and actions across many platforms in
many voices, recombining many tactics and tools. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"">
Open space new
media documentary creates permeable space for dialogue. It engages
fluidity, intersubjectivity, and permeability to animate
provisional networks and temporary alliances. This mode is
human-scaled, localized, multi-voiced, reciprocal, and reflective.
This paper elaborates four features of these practices—small
places, designing encounters, polyphonic collaborations, and
inviting spaces.</p>
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<b><span style="background:yellow"> </span></b></p>
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</p>
<span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small">--Patricia
R. Zimmermann, Professor of Screen Studies, Ithaca College and
coauthor of OPEN SPACE NEW MEDIA DOCUMENTARY: A TOOLKIT FOR THEORY
AND PRACTICE (Routledge, 2017)</span>
<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0"><br></p>
<div id="Signature">
<div style="font-family:Tahoma;font-size:13px">Patricia R.
Zimmermann, Ph.D.<br>
Professor of Screen Studies<br>
Roy H. Park School of Communication<br>
Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival<br>
<br>
Ithaca College<br>
953 Danby Road<br>
Ithaca, New York 14850 USA<br>
<br>
<a href="http://faculty.ithaca.edu:83/patty/">http://faculty.ithaca.edu:83/patty/</a><br>
<a href="http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff">http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff</a><br>
<br></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%" tabindex="-1">
<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b>
<a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>
<<a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>> on behalf of
Dale Hudson <<a href="mailto:dmh2018@nyu.edu">dmh2018@nyu.edu</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, April 5, 2018 2:28:55 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to the April 2018
discussion: New Media Documentary Practice</font>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="BodyFragment">
<div class="PlainText"><font size="2"><span style="font-size:11pt">----------empyre- soft-skinned
space----------------------<br>
Post from one of this week’s guests: Helen De Michael<br>
<br>
><br>
> From: Thirtyleaves <helen de michiel><br>
> Date: April 5, 2018 at 03:42:57 GMT+4<br>
> To: Dale Hudson <<a href="mailto:dmh2018@nyu.edu">dmh2018@nyu.edu</a>><br>
><br>
> <br>
> I have seen many new medias arrive and depart on platforms
that were like mirages, and platforms that had grown solid, almost
real, as if I could touch them again in the years to come. But
because that will probably not happen, it has been liberating for
us as creators and scholars to connect new media documentary
projects to the open space framework: brave explorations that are
realized in the peripheral nodes beyond the theater or television
screen. <br>
><br>
> This is documentary untethered and participatory. It plays
within spaces not typically connected to the genre. It is about
shape-shifting the form, breaking it open to let the work meet
people, places and technologies in new combinations and patterns.
At its richest and most surprising, an open space documentary
evokes dialogue where there was silence. It gives form and meaning
to the times and sensibilities we live with now by fearlessly
embracing rapidly evolving techniques and critical approaches, not
knowing where they could lead.<br>
><br>
> What if I want to experiment with making an open space
documentary project? How can I plan a structure and form without
getting swept away and overwhelmed?<br>
><br>
> In my experience, the secret is in taking small steps and
considering your intentions and constraints as you proceed. To
facilitate this process, my co-author, Patricia Zimmermann and I
conceived of a toolkit to anchor both the practice and an
accompanying conceptual framework. As a toolkit, it can ground the
creative process when planning this kind of project. The toolkit
approach can also function as a theoretical scaffold when thinking
about and explaining the diversity of new media documentary.
We call these the ten “C”s to consider when a project is both
taking shape, and when discussing its outcome and ripple
effect:<br>
><br>
> <br>
><br>
> Community (what we’re building) <br>
><br>
> Complexity (that’s a given always)<br>
><br>
> Conversation (what kinds we are inspiring)<br>
><br>
> Collaboration (absolutely necessary)<br>
><br>
> Connection (empathy for the visitor and their
time) <br>
><br>
> Cost (estimate and review constantly)<br>
><br>
> Context (always
changing) <br>
><br>
> Continuum (where are we on the curve now?)<br>
><br>
> Circular (responsive and interdependent on the
web)) <br>
><br>
> Compost (the project will end, die, and where will it
go?)<br>
><br>
> <br>
><br>
> The ten “C” take advantage of the fact that new media is in a
swirl of constant change, response and adaptation. How do you feel
these elements can impact your work in and thinking about new
documentary media forms?<br>
><br>
> <br>
> <br>
>> On Apr 2, 2018, at 20:42, Dale Hudson
<<a href="mailto:dmh2018@nyu.edu">dmh2018@nyu.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> Welcome to the April 2018 discussion: new media
documentary practice, moderated by Dale Hudson (AE/US).<br>
>><br>
>> I hope that the discussion opens expectations about
documentary to modes that use digital technologies to help us
reengage the complexities our world. Some recover repressed or
overlooked histories; others speculate on possible futures. Some
analyze the everyday mediated images of the world that shape our
perceptions of global connections; others locate themselves in
particular locations to reveal subtle and often subjective details
that might otherwise escape notice.<br>
>><br>
>> The last three weeks will focus on artists, scholars, and
others participating in the “Invisible Geographies” exhibition for
the twentieth edition of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film
Festival, which reimagines how we think about documentary across
vectors that are visible and invisible, material and immaterial,
audible and inaudible.<br>
>><br>
>> Confirmed guests include: Philip Cartelli (US/FR), Dawn
Dawson-House (US), Helen De Michiel (US), Adam Fish (UK), Garrett
Lynch and Frédérique Santune (IE/FR), Erin McElroy (US), Liz Miller
(US/CA), Max Schleser (AU), Naz Shahrokh (IR/AE), Sarah Shamash
(BR/CA), Toby Tatum (UK), Steve WetzeL (USA), and Patricia R.
Zimmermann (US).<br>
>><br>
>> For the first week, the discussion will focus on Patricia
R. Zimmermann and Helen De Michiel’s new book _Open Space New Media
Documentary: A Toolkit for Theory and Practice_ (Routledge, 2017),
which reimagines how we think about and teach documentary
practice.<br>
>><br>
>> They highlight community-based practices that are
sustainable, scalable, and relatively inexpensive. They also select
and analyze documentary projects made between 2000 and 2017 by
artists and scholars in Argentina, Canada, China, Ghana, Indonesia,
Peru, Syria, Ukraine, United States, and elsewhere, including the
in-between spaces of diaspora and exile.<br>
>><br>
>> Their book also bridges what is often conceived as a
divide between theory and practice by offering a “toolkit” for
putting theory into practice, but also one for opening theory to
considering a range of practices that have emerged with new
technologies and even been ignored or marginalized by past
generations.<br>
>><br>
>> With this message, I invite the –empyre subscriber list to
discuss these issues in our soft-skinned space with our
distinguished group of weekly guests.<br>
>><br>
>> Best,<br>
>> Dale<br>
>><br>
>> Guest bios:<br>
>><br>
>> Patricia R. Zimmermann (US) is professor of screen studies
at Ithaca College in the United States. Her books include _The
Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema_ (2017); _Open
Space: Openings, Closings, and Thresholds of Independent Public
Media_ (2016); _Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational
Environments and Locative Places_ (2015), and many others.<br>
>><br>
>> Helen De Michiel (US) is a filmmaker, writer, and
community designer based in Berkeley in the United States. Her
documentary projects include the work-in-progress _Knocking on
Doors_, _Lunch Love Community_ (2015), _The Gender Chip Project_
(2004), _Turn Here Sweet Corn_ (1990), the dramatic feature
_Tarantella_ (1994), and many other shorts and media
installations.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> Moderator bio:<br>
>><br>
>> Dale Hudson (AE/US) teaches in the Film and New Media
Program at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) in the United Arab
Emirates. He is a digital curator for the Finger Lakes
Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) and coordinator of Films from
the Gulf at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) FilmFest. He
is author of _Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods_ (2017)
and co-author of _Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational
Environments and Locative Places_ (2015).<br>
>><br>
>> __<br>
>><br>
>><br>
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