[-empyre-] Welcome to the April 2018 discussion: New Media Documentary Practice

[Dale Hudson]

Post from one of this week’s guests: Helen De Michael

> 
> From: Thirtyleaves <helen de michiel>
> Date: April 5, 2018 at 03:42:57 GMT+4
> To: Dale Hudson <dmh2018 at nyu.edu>
> 
>  
> 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.  
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> 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.
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> 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?
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> 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:
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> Community (what we’re building)     
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> Complexity (that’s a given always)
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> Conversation (what kinds we are inspiring)
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> Collaboration (absolutely necessary)
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> Connection (empathy for the visitor and their time)            
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> Cost (estimate and review constantly)
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> Context (always changing)                                                    
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> Continuum (where are we on the curve now?)
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> Circular (responsive and interdependent on the web))        
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> Compost (the project will end, die, and where will it go?)
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> 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?
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>> On Apr 2, 2018, at 20:42, Dale Hudson <dmh2018 at nyu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Welcome to the April 2018 discussion: new media documentary practice, moderated by Dale Hudson (AE/US).
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 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).
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 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. 
>> 
>> Best,
>> Dale
>> 
>> Guest bios:
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 
>> Moderator bio: 
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>> 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). 
>> 
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