Review by Keanu Ramos

POETICS + POLITICS: SYMPOSIUM REVIEW
Keanu Ramos

For the numerous documentary makers and scholars visiting Santa Cruz from distant states and countries, bouts of stormy weather denied expectations of sunny California in May –just as the provocative theme of the symposium, “against story,” managed to prompt a discussion which frequently inverted conventional assumptions about documentary form, distribution and critique. Setting the tone for the following days were Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow, who presented their online community-based manifesto “Beyond Story,” offering voices which expressed frustration with the chokehold that expectations of “story” have placed upon documentary form, funding and distribution – ideas which inspired the theme of Poetics + Politics 4.

Immediately following Lebow and Juhasz were presentations from Rick Prelinger and Sindhu Thirumalaisamy, both of whom shared work that existed outside the realm of “narrative-influenced” documentary. Prelinger discussed archival footage, asking that we reframe our consideration of the archival image as secondary (something often forced to prop up “documentary narrative”) and instead expand its versatility and meaning as an object that offers a myriad of stories and historical significance. Thirumalaismy offered insight into her recent work Kere mattu Kere (The Lake and The Lake), which explores pollution, wealth disparity and toxicity around the lakes of Bangalore by replacing narrative with a style that works through durational observation of landscape.

Closing the first day of the symposium, a panel with Lebow, Juhasz, Prelinger and Thirumalaisamy set an excellent precedent for interaction between audience and presenters, with much of the discussion being steered by questions from the audience. Because the discussion was prefaced with the rather militant tone of Juhasz and Lebow’s ideas about documentary, the audience was motivated to engage with the divisive prompt of “against story.” In the rewarding discussion that followed, the binary of story and “non-story” was challenged, and the concept of story itself was exploded. By the end of the evening, those in attendance seemed to have come to a consensus: “story” needed not be targeted as an enemy, but the title of the symposium was helpful – in a field whose atmosphere is overwhelmed by a one-dimensional understanding of story, making room for the exploration of alternative modes of narrative and non-narrative is incredibly productive.

The second day of Poetics + Politics began with a keynote from Lana Lin, whose recent work, The Cancer Journals Revisited, expands upon Audre Lorde’s canonical book, complicating notions of survivorship by asking subjects with breast cancer to read and respond to excerpts from Lorde’s writing. Through the sheer accumulation of voices and stories which create both harmony and dissonance, Lin’s film provides an alternative to the one-voiced narrativization which often dominates discussions of cancer survivorship – much in the same way that co-curator Irene Lusztig’s Yours in Sisterhood manages to create a polyvocal space for reactions to 1970’s feminist dialog. In this vein, Lin’s work tied in neatly with the fourth session of the day, which focused on “polyvocality” in the collaborative project of Iphigene Marcoux-Fortier, Amy Magowan Greene, and Meky Ottowa, The Homes of the Women of My Rural Home, as well as with Rabia Williams’ project zim.doc and Jeanne C. Finley’s film, Journey’s Beyond the Cosmodrome. In the cases of all these works, it may be that an embrace of plurality is a more comprehensive, informative and overall realistic alternative to documentary narratives which bend to the will of a single voice.

Closing the day was a further expansion upon the concept of voice, with the consideration of those “without a voice:” animals. Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa opened the fifth session with a presentation that first reinforced the consensus that animal documentaries which frequently anthropomorphize and narrativize the lives of animals are not particularly profound or helpful; however, Schultz-Figueroa followed this line of thought by asking us to also demand more ideological rigor from experimental animal documentaries – films like Leviathan that have been showered in academic and critical acclaim – rather than immediately praising them simply because they offer an antithesis to the commercial animal documentary. After the talk from Schultz-Figueroa, the filmmakers Laska Jimsen and Jason Coyle discussed their recent feature, Deer of North America. Their presentation – a quiet meditation upon the implications of an animal’s return gaze – was followed by a rather commanding oration from Michael Gitlin as he explained how his work with moths investigates the alien relationship of their species with ours, perhaps even in the sense of science fiction. This strand of thought on animals was tied off by a preview screening of Sarah Christman’s excellent new film, Swarm Season, where the practice of wild beekeeping was used as a prism through which the film could examine issues of indigeneity and neocolonialism in Hawaii. Shortly after the screening, Christman and Irene Lusztig opened the floor for questions, allowing Christman to speak with an audience excited about both her process and critical thought around Swarm Season.

Saturday was started off with a presentation by the highly experienced documentary cinematographer Kirsten Jonson, whose recent film Cameraperson deals with a subject which she has been constantly exposed to over her long career: the complexities of filming another person. Johnson focused much of her discussion on the ethical issues of looking and being looked at, and more importantly the ways in which introducing a camera into this exchange of looks will invariably complicate the situation. Ultimately, Jonson suggested that documentary filmmakers not shy away from revealing their own position and gaze with their work, as this provides a stronger framework for a critical exploration of the numerous subjectivities at work in the filmed interaction.

Later in the day, Lee Ann Schmitt gave insight into her past and present work in a panel with nonfiction writer Rebekah Rutkoff and filmmaker Sandra Lim. Schmitt’s work manages to complicate notions of progressive history, using 16mm film and subjective narration to embody the “historical” in the present and the self. As examples, Schmitt showed California Company Town, which concludes by locating the old notion of a company town within modern day California industries like Silicon Valley, and also her most recent release, Purge This Land, which similarly locates supposedly “old” histories of slavery and racism within her own home and her son. Schmitt’s work in progress, Evidence, expands further on the precedent set by her previous films by focusing primarily on her own family history, and using an expanded set of images which explore her domestic life. Hence, Schmitt’s work overlaps with those of Rutkoff and Lim, whose projects also attempt to grapple with the ways in which cultural historical narrative complicate and are complicated by family history.

Although the symposium was held in UCSC’s striking and newly built Digital Arts and New Media building, Irene Lusztig and Irene Gustafson went to great effort to ensure that the building’s nebulous audio/video (and ventilation) setup was in perfect working order. Nonetheless, the final day of the symposium saw the organizers once again overcoming incredibly difficult circumstances, as the entire building lost power in the morning. The conference was moved to another room, and the two panels were still able to wrap up without falling behind schedule. Both panels – dealing among other things with the relationship between the documentary image and history – included UCSC alumni, giving a taste of some talent that had been nurtured at the school. The day was a relatively relaxed and casual end to what had been an intellectually rigorous and provocative symposium.