Davie, Emma

English

An examination of new approaches to documentary under the auspices of the sensory ethnography lab at Harvard University, using a discussion with award winning director of Leviathan, Lucien Castaing Taylor as the basis for the exploration of what this cinema brings by melding art and documentary

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     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      New Cinema at the Sensory Ethnography LabCitation for published version:Davie, E 2013, 'New Cinema at the Sensory Ethnography Lab' DOX - European Documentary Magazine,vol Fall 2013, no. 99, 14, pp. 38-40.Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher final version (usually the publisher pdf)Published In:DOX - European Documentary MagazinePublisher Rights Statement:© Davie, E. (2013). New Cinema at the Sensory Ethnography Lab. DOX - European Documentary Magazine,Fall 2013(99), 38-40. [14].General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 20. Feb. 201538WORDS EMMA DAVIE * PHOTO LEVIATHAN COURTESY OF ARRÊTE TON CINÉMALike a band of !lmic pirates, the Sensory Lab plunders what they need from documentary to create something fresh. "ese are musings arisen from discussions with Lucian Castaing -Taylor and works from the lab. NEW CINEMA AT THE SENSORY ETHNOGRAPHY LAB THE PUNK CHILD OF ART: SEEING AND BEING SEEN39NEW CINEMA AT THE SENSORY ETHNOGRAPHY LAB The purity of felt experience and an awareness of the unknowableness of nature which runs counter to the resolute anthropocentric stance of most documentariesWhen I came up for air after seeing Leviathan by Lucian Castaing Taylor and Véréna Paravel, I, like many, was amazed by this quantum leap in film-making that plunges us into the gills, bulging eyes, swooping seagulls and Bosch like world of a fishing boat off Nantucket Bay."ere are no establishing shots, no interviews, no contextual information; just the purity of felt experience and an awareness of the unknowableness of nature which runs counter to the resolute anthropocentric stance of most documentaries. Delib-erately disorientating, sounds emerge in the dark along with insistent textures of close-ups of scales, skin and tattooed flesh. A disembodied fish head stuck on the draining slot on the deck of the boat, an arm with a mermaid tattoo all create questions in our minds as they jostle for meaning and visibility. But the credits made me even more curious. Here are the names, writ-ten in mock Gothic text, of the fish which appeared in the film – Melanogrammus Aeglefinus, Pollachius Virens etc. "is grunge attitude made me feel I was an accomplice more than an audience, witnessing a band of filmic pirates plundering what they need from documentary to create some-thing fresh – but also acutely aware of the limitations of lan-guage to define experience.Somewhere up there were the words – Sensory Ethnogro-phy Lab. Intrigued, I sought out more. "ese musings have arisen from seeing a sample of their ar-chive and also from discussions with Lucian Castaing -Taylor, its co- founder. He was at the Edinburgh Film Festival where Leviathan won the Michael Powell Award. Initially from the UK, Lucian is an artist and filmmaker who started the SEL in Harvard University but is insistent on its identity as a loose community of self-confessed “recovering” anthropologists, filmmakers, sound artists, all mistrustful of the hegemony of the written word. Lucien is also director of the Film Study Centre in Harvard, started by Robert Gardner (whose Forest of Bliss provides a great lineage of poetic film ob-servation) but wanted to create an experimental space where anthropologists and scientists collided with a creative practice. Shunning the posture of a teacher, he talks of their process as a community without a fixed notion of outcomes. Projects include films, installations, photographic displays and sound-scapes. Classes such as “sonic ethnography” encourage responses in visceral, sensed experience, to film from their bodies. In the “sensory photography” class they create a silent character portrait. "e alertness this awakens is apparent in the brilliant visual world created by JP Sniadecki. Sniadecki’s work ranges from the semi-hallucinatory Chi-nese fairy tale Yumen to the dazzling simplicity of People’s Park co-directed with Libbie Dina Cohn. "is 75-minute, single-shot trip through a park in China conjures a whole world remi-niscent of “the human realm” in the Buddhist wheel of life. Here is humanity at play – dancing, making music, talking on mobiles. "e cinematography traces the textures of life – a jade necklace, a woman tucking in her shirt. Few cinematographers see whilst moving through space. Peter Mettler or Dvortsevoy manage it, and Sniadecki shares this ability as there is a pro-found understanding of the reason to move in the first place. Movement is motivated by a questioning eye which finds illumination in the spaces between people. China, as exempli-fied by this park, seems all about the public space they share and negotiate. "e park becomes like a stage, leaving me won-dering not just about the individual in China today but also about how we become who we are. "e choreography of the camera makes the people seem like fictionalised versions of themselves.Much of the work made by the Sensory Ethnography Lab comes from the long field study encouraged by anthropology. Manakamana is directed by Stephanie Spray, who has spent 15 years living in Nepal, and co-directed by Pacho Velez. Manaka-mana is a deceptively simple film, about a cable car that takes pilgrims up the holy mountain of Manakamana. Out of the darkness of mechanical clunking and voices a woman in a pink sari bursts into being, sitting opposite with a bunch of flowers. For the eight minutes of the journey we see a world pass in her eyes. Musicians, old ladies, small boys, even goats emerge from the dark but we, as much as they, become the subjects. It is reminiscent of Herz Frank’s 10 Minutes Older in its un-derstanding of the magic of film to shrink time in a shared re-creation of the act of seeing and being seen. "ere are many more masterpieces in the archive of the Lab. Sweetgrass by Lucien Castaing Taylor and Ilisa Barbash immerses us in a summer herding of sheep, avoiding nostal-gia through a searingly acute presence which “feels” the strains of the physical labour behind this bucolic idyll. Only at the end do we realise this is “the last band of sheep trailed through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth mountains” and re-assess what we just saw. It becomes sweeter, sharper, rawer. “What are you going to do now?” the farmer asks John the herder. "e ques-tion expands beyond the personal to make us wonder at our ever-widening distance from nature.But these are films made primarily about being – not about meaning. A hinterland of questioning and musing is appar-ent but does not intrude. Lucien relates how the Lab Invites visiting filmmakers such as Leonard Helmlich to show cuts in critiques where they sit in silence as the group discusses their work. "e intellectual honesty galvanized by questions com-bined with such embodied filmmaking has created a move-ment which challenges us to wake up to our experience – as filmmakers and audiences. "e Lab’s website describes how it “opposes the conventions of visual anthropology that mimic the discursive inclinations of its mother discipline, those of documentary that mimic those of broadcast journalism, and those of art that are not deeply infused with the real”. "e punk child of art and academia which, thankfully, cares little about the conventions of either, seems to be hauling us into a new documentary world._creative-capital.org/grantees/view/568/project:726www.pachoworks.comA loose community of self-confessed “recovering” anthropologists, filmmakers, sound artists, all mistrustful of the hegemony of the written word

New Cinema at the Sensory Ethnography Lab

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