SHORT_CUTS: collective image making - as regenerative practices

Why

We consider the urgencies and complexities of a triple transition (climate, digital, social) demand fundamentally new concepts and understandings of research and innovation facing increasingly complex societal challenges. They are sources of development and we see development as non-linear, sometimes contradicting and certainly interdependent processes requiring imagination, hybrid creations and creative experimentation. We approach these complexities through the lens of microcosms of everyday lives, situated in the rural in which a microcosm of complexity is “graspable,” and we step into this complexity with film-methodologies in itself a microcosm of ways of organizing that we can also grasp and reconfigure into seamless ways of making (Lefebvre, 1991). We begin by co-creating spaces that relate to everyday lives, through shared filmmaking methodologies, situated in the context of the rural municipality of Genalguacil and with an initial small crew of people from KIT/NTNU and LAB Genalguacil.

What

In 2023 - we started a small experiment: what happens if you share the story of Genalguacil, a pueblo blanco, a whitewashed village atop the mountains of Andalucia, with a group of MFA students. The story shared was a snap-shot of how Genalguacil since 1994, has been fighting depopulation by commissioning contemporary art works that populate the entire village and the practices that shape this. The story inspired a group of students to organize a visit to Genalguacil in the coming May - in which they created audio-visual works inspired by a brief (Farocki, 2011; Busch, 2024) which culminated in a moment of collective sharing with people from Genalguacil as well as surrounding villages of the Genal Valley in the Roof-Top Cinema - each student created a perspective, to be shared as an outdoor event with “neighbours.” The videos were not only searching for narratives of innovation in the places one would least expect them, but were innovative in their playful and performative encounters with the art, architecture, natural environment and everyday happenings of life and livelihood in the village (de Certeau, 2011). These initial interactions between students, locals prompted the desire in some of the group to start a film festival that is not a film festival. Drawing lines of similarities with depopulation experiences, with the potential for art and culture, in rural regions in other parts of Europe and the world – the places where the students were from. Imagine a multi-place film festival not only as an event, but as a site of production, research and learning. In which filmmaking is a methodology for the production and sharing of situated knowledge - as collaborative relationships between people, place, arts, reframing narratives of innovation (Haraway, 1988). A festival, dedicated to address the various challenges of rural areas within their respective historical backgrounds through the collective and inviting methodologies of filmmaking and film viewing. To spark innovative ideas in exchange with other peripheral, rural places - challenging people’s ideas or stereotypes about what being rural really means.

As the students returned to Trondheim, the smaller crew inspired by the “rooftop cinema” - as a way to reimagine a film festival began the work of making a film-festival that is not a film festival, making it one scene at a time, iterating and connecting through the relationships made in May and beyond.

How

Our first next step was to relate with the needs and desires of everyday life and to continue to connect with the young people of the village. Our frame becomes “El Huerto” a project to develop cooperatives linked to the recovery of traditional knowledge, fused with artistic practices to nurture innovation ecosystems and enhance the potential of local products. In this context, we situate our approach to filmmaking as a learning space. We reach out to the local youth to work with us in various capacities—as translators and co-ordinators, as co-creators and co-producers of the audio-visual material. We also reach out to local women, as their involvement as interlocutors and co-creators is crucial and their perspective on labour and value is essential to the re-framing of concerns around regenerative economies. This became the first co-production, filmmaking in the collective making of lunch at a finca.

The “festival” is beginning to enable collective image-making as a site for sharing multiple perspectives, film viewing as a third plane that creates common ground (Busch and Annas, 2008), and gives us insight into how we can create opportunities to participate in innovative, open and care-centric ways of cultural production and to get hands-on experience with video production, design and publishing not only as skills but as methodologies for research. The next scene is now emerging of film-making as a learning space, with the development of “festival” as a framework for conversations and reflection, learning to see and to create relations between film narratives, the corresponding environment of the local areas and the relationships we can generate to foster shared creativity, and creative confidence (Lefebvre, 1991).

This learning process brings together locals, visiting students, filmmakers, artists who are actively engaging with practices, with place. They are working together through the making of new audio-visuals and developing questions, insights, skills, potential solutions—a way to understand the value of on-site production (Haraway, 1988) and to propel and change perspectives with an audience as makers. Integral to this is the work together to foster spaces for reflective practice - reflecting on the exchange of knowledge and experiences with the NTNU students over the familiar scene of making food together. For example, we asked one of the youth from the village to reflect on her process of interacting with the NTNU students, being part of creative processes, as she observed her friends learn filmmaking, in a reflective voice-over over the footage of food-making at the finca (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Figure 1. Nerea Holgado Holgado, Ana Alvarez Gutierrez, Beatriz Alvarez Urda, Maria Jose Alvarez Rubio.

E.g., “It is so interesting, that people from all different places share something which is the desire to learn about new places, and a place that you have always known - is suddenly made new by sharing them with someone else from somewhere else” Maria de los Angeles.

In addition, we are learning how to develop feedback loops - by taking care of the “rituals” of place - to bring in new questions, and topics into these conversations and the new “everyday moments” that are coming through the film/food making.

E.g., We are sharing the films back in the village, in the lab, distributing them on people’s phones, showing them live and recorded on the TVs in the restaurants and bars. This sharing of the “film” from making to viewing is as the process of food-making to sharing a meal, they are always connected to reflect food, festivities, and collective making, sharing - from the neighbourhood rooftop cinema, or as part of opening the LAB Genalguacil, or to new initiatives such as the open kitchen turning the streets of the village into a lab, a place of experimenting and connecting.

E.g., We are introducing ways to frame encounters (Lefebvre, 1991) (puntos de encuentros), working on questions, repeating the question “what is innovation?”. By bringing different combinations of people, with different knowledge and interests, together to discuss it with each other. We take care of the framing – both the question and the camera – as a prompt, a spark, and let it roll.

E.g., We are actively exploring the museum collection as a way to combine and recombine practices the audio-visual, art and local knowledge, By re-engaging with the archives of the museum, the art in the village, through filmmaking, through reading and filming short scenes with people connected to the art works (not the artist). In this way we wish to iteratively collapse stereotypes of knowledge of labour.

These are some ways we are developing methods of filmmaking as artistic research: begin to frame conditions in which we are sharing knowledge and skills across film-making and food-making. By teaching basic camera skills, camera and image making as a way to observe closely the techniques of food-making. Familiar recipes are broken down into bite-sized processes. Following the process, filming the process - the process film (Skvirsky, 2020). The parallel dishes, the parallel montage. De-familiarising the familiar - a way to study, reflect on the (gendered) labour of food-making. The filmmakers, the youth, are also familiar with the people, and are participants in the food-making - laying the table, taking care of small servings, and playing with the children. It is all about exploring how to foster the elements for “mixology”.

In addition, we are developing a carefully curated selection of films across genres that opens up global perspectives on rural issues, including questions of time, material and heritage, artistic and collective entrepreneurship, care, agriculture and food production, and ways to foster regenerative practices and cooperative models of production.

The structure and dynamic of the festival itself is changing accordingly. The festival-time is not seen as a representative endpoint of an exclusive preparation process, but as a period of intensification as part of a pre- and post production, and as a new starting point. The subsequent process of editing and re-viewing will allow for a time of reflection and preparation for the next festival, not through the pressing logic to increase and surpass, but as a continuation according to the needs, questions and experiences raised through the previous one.

SHORT_CUTS

Addresses the impact of artistic research and the necessary framework as collective image making - as regenerative practices to help us develop artistic research practices for complex societal challenges structures as well as enabling frameworks for advanced practices in artistic research for today and in the future.

Ethics statement

Written informed consent was obtained from the [individual(s) AND/OR minor(s)’ legal guardian/next of kin] for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgments

Nerea Holgado Holgado, Álvaro Holgado Sánchez, Inmaculada Corral Cantero, Ana Álvarez Gutierrez, Beatriz Álvarez Urda, Maria Jose Álvarez Rubio, María Isabel Navas Rodríguez, Monsalud Bautista Galindo, Manoli Núñez Calvente, Carmen Mateos Arrebola, Inmaculada Corral Cantero, Rafael Centeno López, Fernando Centeno López. El Huerto is supported by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

Busch, A., and Annas, M. (Editors) (2008). Ousmane Sembène: interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (Conversations with Filmmakers Series).

Google Scholar

Busch, A. (2024). Encuentros de innovacion, part 1, genalguacil rooftop screenings. Available at: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2014059/2168353?c=8 (Accessed November 4, 2024).

Google Scholar

de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Translated by S. Rendall. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California and London, England: University of California Press.

Google Scholar

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. FS 14, 575–599.

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Farocki, H. (2011). Labour in a single shot, labour in a single shot. Available at: https://www.labour-in-a-single-shot.net/en/project/concept/ (Accessed November 4, 2024).

Google Scholar

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. 1974th, 1984th edn. Translated by D. Nicholson-Smith. Oxford United Kingdom, Cambridge United States: Wiley-Blackwell.

Google Scholar

Skvirsky, S. A. (2020). The process genre: cinema and the aesthetic of labor. Durham and London: Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/978147800707

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar