[Last modified: November, 25 2024 11:48 AM]
Our group tutorial activity for this week’s theme of multimodal ethnography was very interesting. We conducted a collaborative ethnography of sorts by engaging in improvisational and theatrical games together. Two fellow students led the activity, which was called Theatre of the Oppressed, a concept invented by Brazilian theatrical practitioner Augusto Boal. The activities were meant to provoke discussion about how much information can be conveyed nonverbally by considering the body, context, affect, and space.
In one exercise, the two students posed as statues in the middle of our circle. Nathan sat on the floor, hugging their knees, looking toward Noa with a defiant look on their face. Meanwhile, Noa stood outside our circle of participants, leaning against a pillar and looking toward Nathan with arms folded and a more calm expression on her face. We then discussed our perceptions of the given scene. I was surprised by how differently everyone interpreted the scene. Some saw it as a parent and tantruming child, while others saw the two as adults in a relationship or as siblings.
This exercise made me reflective on our lecture about multimodal ethnography and how point-of-view and context are inextricable from portrayals, even with something as “objective” as a photograph, for example. My first thought would be that photographs can’t be interpretive, because they portray a scene as it occured, without the mediation of drawing or textual interpretation. However, photographs must be taken from a chosen angle and distance, which will always exclude other surroundings that would be visible if you were there in person. Additionally, photographs exclude the context of other senses, like hearing and smell. And that’s all before we consider the wide variety of ways humans interpret affect, as demonstrated by the theatrical game we conducted in class.
As I move forward in my ethnographic practices, I will be more reflexive about my perceptions of multimodality as an anthropological tool. Of course, all ethnography involves positionality, but I’m excited about the possibilities of multimodal methods to interrogate and explore the subject from a new angle. The modalities of games and audio are two particularly interesting methods I will likely pursue in future projects. I find that the limitations of a modality are what gives it meaning. With careful deliberation in collaboration with my participants, I’ll choose my ethnographic methods with deliberate care.