Using video to show action, interaction and atmosphere in a Sardinian fish market

1. Using video to show action, interaction and atmosphere in a Sardinian fish market Dr Dawn Lyon: d.m.lyon@kent.ac.uk@dawnlyon65 School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent NCRM Methods Festival, University of Bath, July 2018

2. Introduction • Video ethnography has been widely used to document and analyse everyday practices (Bates 2015) • It is valued as a form of ‘thick description’ which captures interaction, emotion and embodiment including where they exceed the capacity of the researcher to observe in real time (e.g. Brown and Spinney 2010, Pink 2015, Simpson 2011) • It offers material for the scrutiny of social life as it unfolds which can be constituted as data amenable to (textual) analysis • The mediation of the camera contributes to a recognition of the situatedness of the researcher – the body behind the lens (MacDougall 2005)

3. Video ethnography • Video creates opportunities for repeatedly watching encounters and events in different temporalities from those of their occurrence • This may help us notice the world in new ways, as in Doug Harper’s (1998) notion of ‘active observation’, including attention to materiality and the non-human • It also offers access to the pre-reflexive, for instance in Stephanie Merchant’s (2011) use of ‘videography’ with underwater scuba divers • Pink (2007) (amongst others) argues that the senses themselves are connected so that we might ‘read’ touch, smell and taste from the audio-visual

4. From the analysis of video to… • If audio-visual images show and connect the viewer (research participant and audience) to sensory experience, how can they contribute to analysis in their own right? • Suzanne Hall (2010) discusses the status of images as both illustrative and analytic • David MacDougall considers the audio-visual as a medium through which new knowledge can be created, noting that ‘images and written texts not only tell us things differently, they tell us different things’ (1998: 257) • Lucien Taylor (1996) argues for the recognition of film as form which contains its own analytical gestures • Or as Anna Grimshaw puts it, the properties of film offer ‘suggestive possibilities’ that lie ‘between the perceptual and conceptual’ (2011: 257-8)

5. ‘Creative video ethnography’ • ‘Creative video ethnography’ is a term coined by Garrett and Hawkins (2015) • Creative video ethnography seeks to capture the creative possibility andaffective forceof video-making • Garrett and Hawkins argue that editing as well as filming is a ‘creative-analytic process’ where editing is a mode of analysis in its own right • The video’s affective force lies in how the material is put together and how it works on audiences

6. Three examples • David Hockney, The Four Seasons • Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, Leviathan • (The rather more modest…!) Francesco Bachis, Dawn Lyon, Felice Tiragallo, The Passage of Fish

7. The Four Seasons The four seasons, Woldgate Woods (Spring 2011, Summer 2010, Autumn 2010, Winter 2010) - David Hockney https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/multimedia/the-four-seasons/

8. Leviathan Leviathan - Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vntC7OPDHs8

9. The Four Seasons & Leviathan • The four seasons - a video art work of a mesmerising journey through the seasons in Yorkshire countryside • Mobilisation of multi-directional and temporal gaze of human experience as we see in the present, through the past and on the move • Installation presents each season (composed of 9 screens) on a wall in a square room • Leviathan – an experimental and immersive ‘more-than-representational’ evocation of the experience of being on a fishing trawler • Footage gathered from small waterproof cameras positioned on people, fish, objects and the boat itself

10. The Passage of Fish 1 • Based on recordings of wholesale fish market in Sardinia - selections made from several hours of footage to create film • Takes the form of a day in the life of the market • Seeks to immerse the viewer in the material, sensory, practical and affective atmosphere of the market space • Explicit focus on sellers’ and buyers’ techniques of communication, evaluation, exchange, and care - and on what the fish do! (cf Lyon 2016 for alternative form with attention to rhythm) • Soundscape composed of multiple voices and noise of actions and interactions but does not rely on language

11. The Passage of Fish 2 • Aim - to be a form of knowledge that shows rather than tells directly, based on the creative-analytical process of editing • We present the fish itself as a focus of work - how it is ordered, aestheticized and staged in readiness for exchange • We show the deployment of the senses - ‘skilled vision’ and the haptic sensitivity of buyers to evaluating and handling the fish • The film attends to the material dimensions of work - use of objects and devices (scales, the ice machine, polystyrene boxes) and how they are animated by the social practices of the market

12. The Passage of Fish Bachis, Francesco, Dawn Lyon and Felice TiragalloJournal of Video Ethnography (2016, 5) http://www.videoethno.com/

13. Conclusions • Using audio-visual methods permits and cultivates attentiveness to materiality, practice, embodiment, emotion and the deployment of the senses • It helps to retain the vitality of the worlds we study (Back 2007) • Different deployments of audio-visual methods allow us to collect/construct research materials which give rise to different forms of knowledge • It offers rich and imaginative forms of showing and telling the social as a medium of inquiry and a basis for creative representation

14. References • BACK, Les (2007) The Art of Listening, Oxford: Berg. • BATES, C (ed) (2015) Video Methods, Social Science Research in Motion. Abingdon: Routledge. • BROWN, K and J Spinney (2010) ‘Catching a glimpse: The value of video in evoking, understanding, and representing the practice of cycling’. In Fincham, B, McGuinness, M, and Murray, L (eds) Mobile Methodologies. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. • GARRETT, B L and H Hawkins (2015) ‘Creative video ethnographies: Video methodologies of urban exploration’. In C Bates (ed) Video Methods, Social Science Research in Motion. Abingdon: Routledge. • GRIMSHAW, A. (2011) ‘The Bellwether Ewe: Recent developments in ethnographic filmmaking and the aesthetics of anthropological enquiry’ Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 26, No. 2, p. 247-262. • HALL, S (2010) ‘Picturing difference: juxtaposition, collage and layering of a multiethnic street.’ Anthropology Matters, 12(1): 1-17. • HARPER, Douglas (1998) ‘An Argument for Visual Sociology’ in Jon Prosser (ed.) Image-Based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers, London: Falmer Press. • LYON, D (2016) ‘Doing audio-visual montage to explore time and space: The everyday rhythms of Billingsgate Fish Market’ Sociological Research Online • MACDOUGALL, D (1998) Transcultural Cinema, Princeton: Princeton University Press. • MACDOUGALL, D (2005) The Corporeal Image, Princeton: Princeton University Press. • MERCHANT, S (2011) ‘The Body and the Senses: Visual Methods, Videography and the Submarine Sensorium’, Body & Society, Vol. 17, No.1, p.53-71. • PINK, S (2007, 2nd edition) Doing Visual Ethnography. London: Sage • PINK, S (2015, 2nd edition) Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: Sage • SIMPSON, P (2011) ‘‘So, as you can see . . .’: some reflections on the utility of video methodologies in the study of embodied practices’, Area, Vol. 43, No. 3, p. 343–352. • TAYLOR, L (1996) 'Iconophobia', Transition, 69: 64-88.