MA in Visual and Media Anthropology

A series of workshops, presentations, and performances become sites of inquiry working through shared expertise between design, anthropology, choreography, exhibition-making, and curatorial disciplines. What are the structures, conversations, methodologies, and reflections when one works with contributors, stakeholders, archives, communities, colleagues, institutions, and beyond? These questions informed the long-form essay in the Anthology "Curating After the Global: Roadmaps for the Present". MIT Press, 2019, edited by Paul O'Neill, Simon Sheikh, Lucy Steeds, and Mick Wilson.

In 2005, the Republic of Ireland was defined as the ‘most globalised economy in the world’ (IDA Ireland). The significance of this position is amplified by the fact that the South of Ireland never experienced an Industrial Revolution compared to other western European countries (O’Brien 1999). In the absence of significant audio and visual representation of labour, global labour practices and globalised industrial space in the context of this accelerated economic development, this study, both in its methodological design and implementation, stakes out new terrain through the combined use of photography, digital video and ethnographic methods, further engaging with the oral testimony of workers in the multinational location/fieldsite of Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, Leixlip, County Kildare. This article addresses the rationale for the multivocal framework in which this prac- tice-led research project has been methodologically undertaken and its role in the for- mation of the installation, The Breathing Factory (2006).

Centrally informed through the application of photography, my multi-media practice has evolved to one conversant in ethnography and the principles of a critically reflexive practice. Ethnography can be viewed as an epistemological position or “a commitment”, as Zsuzsa Gille states, “to study an issue at hand by understanding it from the perspectives of people whose lives are tied up with or affected by it”. The thematic concerns within my research practice have critically addressed the predatory context resulting from the flows and migrations of global capital. To this end, and drawing upon my own practice-led fieldwork in the Lausitz (Lusatia), Brandenburg in the former East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), this article and the illustrations frame a long-term research project (2003-2009) constructed in a landscape inscribed with the utopic “wounds of modernity” (Berman) — Industrialisation, Socialism, and now at great cost, Globalisation — and the re-representational strategies employed to evoke the “wounded” landscape of the Lausitz, a landscape of the here and now. viewing always at its centre the cata- lyst, the 'Tagebau', and critically seeing it as an allegory for late capitalism itself — finite, fragile and ultimately unsustainable.

This practice-led thesis constitutes a timely response to the absence of audio and visual representation of labour practices and post-industrial space in the context of Ireland’s accelerated economic development during the past decade, resulting in its current status as the most globalised economy in the world. The significance of Ireland’s global position is amplified by the fact that the South of Ireland never experienced the Industrial Revolution and has thus been propelled from an agricultural-based economy to one defined as post-industrial of the so-called, 'Celtic Tiger'. In both its methodological design and implementation, the study stakes out new terrain through the combined use of photography, digital video and ethnographic methods, further engaging with the oral testimony of workers in the post-industrialised multinational location/fieldsite of Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Technology Campus, Leixlip, County Kildare.

The thesis comprises three chapters together with an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter situates Hewlett-Packard’s presence in Ireland within an historicised and economic framework, while simultaneously providing critical readings of propagandist representations by the public and private enterprise sectors. The chapter’s juxtaposition of these readings, together with disparate spatio-temporal labour practices, historical periods and the introduction of different theoretical paradigms, enacts a strategic textual device used throughout this chapter and the following two. The second chapter engages directly with methodological questions underpinning the research project, alongside foregrounding different fieldwork practices. The textual presentation of interview transcript material, photography and digital video is brought into dialogue with depictions of industrialisation from the late nineteenth century to the present. The third and final chapter both identifies and establishes theoretical and representational strategies at work in the rationale, design and content of the re-constitution of the research material in the format of an installation titled, ‘The Breathing Factory’.

Completed through the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, TU Dublin (2002-2005).

Note: One of the first practice-led postgraduate research projects in the Republic of Ireland and the first using photography as a central research method.

Questioning the reasoning and application of the 'Ethnographic Film' and the discipline of (Audio-Visual) Anthropology.

A response to:
Asch, Timothy & Asch, Patsy (1988) ‘Film in Ethnographic Research’ in  Principles of Visual Anthropology by Paul Hockings (ed.) - 2. ed. – Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995 (Also in Senri Ethnological Studies no.24)

Visual / Sensorial Anthropology holds a curious position within in the home of the social sciences that it grew out of. And like a rebellious teen breaking free of the parental ties, a fixation of redefining a scope of identity has claimed much of the discipline’s efforts. However this point of distinction cannot be trivialized, for at its core the dilemma of political and ethical consequences of representation, are exposed with a characterized depth. The point of significance here in the question of ethics, pertains to the inherent nature of critically engaging with a medium without a focus on the cultural context within which engaged. And this lay as the missing link in body of literature of the discipline, whereby when we develop an ethical code(s) for visual / sensorial anthropology, we do not merely need to address the overarching points of ownership and representation in context that hinder all film, but so too we need to ask, ethics according to whom?

Practice-led-ReSearch exploring hitchhiker's relationship with the digital platforms: BlaBlaCar (www.blablacar.com), Hitchwiki (www.hitchwiki.org), Couch Surfing (www.couchsurfing.com), TrustRoots (www.trustroots.org) and HitchGathering (http://hitchgathering.org).

On behalf of UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund).

The Climate Youth Movement, as popularised by Greta Thunberg has had an undeniable impact on the discourse of the Climate Emergency globally. The varying movements as geographically defined, #SchoolStrikers and #FridaysforFuture, have had an influential effect on both the global and local contexts of communication and engagement of Climate Change.
This research explores the School Strikers and the wider Youth Climate Movement, through the lens of a media anthropology to understand the modes of engagement of participants, and attempts to ascertain key insights from their own experiences and learnings. With the objective to produce content that will both support and develop the Youth / Climate Movement, this enquiry explores both the nature of climate messaging, as well as the formats within which participants engage.

The key objectives were to understand : how the participants feel ; participant’s under- standing of globalised relationships between developed and developing countries ; and furthermore how to develop ‘empathy’ within this context of global human rights disparity; and finally, recommendations for what content UNICEF could create to support these students and the climate movement.

Consolidated / Abridged Report available on request .

Tsumu? I asked the children in the school and youth club when they came to my storytelling workshop, “Where do we go?” In the smartphone, children down to 6 years old have access to all the audio-visual tools needed to tell and share their stories. The workshop was offered in September 2014 and then again in May and July of 2015. The workshop framed my visual ethnography and participant observation, and was the gateway to learn more about the community in which I had been working the last two summers as a tour guide. Now, as an anthropologist, I came with a research-question: How can a popular media-equipment such as the smartphone be best utilized to find, record and share stories and worldviews of the children in Kulusuk, East Greenland? And the other side of the question is: What can we learn from such practice?  This is my MA thesis for Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität, Berlin, a visual and textual account of my ethnographic fieldwork.

Tsumu? I asked the children in the school and youth club when they came to my storytelling workshop, “Where do we go?” In the smartphone, children down to 6 years old have access to all the audio-visual tools needed to tell and share their stories. The workshop was offered in September 2014 and then again in May and July of 2015. The workshop framed my visual ethnography and participant observation, and was the gateway to learn more about the community in which I had been working the last two summers as a tour guide. Now, as an anthropologist, I came with a research-question: How can a popular media-equipment such as the smartphone be best utilized to find, record and share stories and worldviews of the children in Kulusuk, East Greenland? And the other side of the question is: What can we learn from such practice?  This is my MA thesis for Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität, Berlin, a visual and textual account of my ethnographic fieldwork.