Alexandra Mateus . Ethno Media Scapes Testimonial
A. What brought me to this lab in particular?
The word ethno was what really brought me to this lab. While browsing through the labs' program the word ethno immediately grabbed my eye. Culture, people and their relationships with their surroundings are some of my study interests. Combine that with media and sounded like a really promising workshop. On the other hand "Scape" was a word I was not familiar with which left me a bit intrigued.
The two day lab started off on the 16th with a meet and greet between all of the attendees. Olga Glumac and Pedro Carvalho de Almeida, the speakers, talked about the intents behind the workshop: record with sound and image the spaces where Olga's research project was being developed at, a retirement home and a school both located in Miragaia, and with those recordings make an emotional map of people's feelings towards the spaces.
Olga's research focused on documenting the space through the emotions of its regular users, children at the school and elderly people at the retirement home.
We as first timers were challenged to reinterpret the same space without knowing the link between the space and the users’ feelings.
B. What did I do as part of the lab proposal?
1st Step: Expectations, Contributions and Challenges
Olga begun the workshop by asking the participants to write down what they were hoping to get out of the lab activities.
Images 1,2,3 & 4 - Scans of the first lab task. Courtesy of Olga Glumac
On the images above it can been seen the diverse array of responses the challenge got from participants, ranging from “I expect nothing and everything” to “I challenge we change the world.”.
2nd Step: Theoretical Background
Pedro Carvalho de Almeida gave a brief introduction to the theory behind the word scape and its five different dimensions of global cultural flow according to Appadurai. (Ethnoscapes, Mediascapes, Technoscapes, Finanscapes, Ideoscapes.)
Images 5 & 6 - Images of the theoretical background of scape according to Appadurai.
3rd Step: Methodological Approach
Olga briefly introduced her research work on the Map of Emotions of Miragaia, but by general consensus the group decided it was best to go into these spaces not knowing beforehand what where the emotions its regular users linked with each space. At the end of the lab the map of emotions of the regular users would be revealed to the participants of the lab, showing the obvious differences between newcomers to the space vs its regular users.
On the second day of the lab the participants available went to both the school of Miragaia and the retirement home to collect the sound and image recordings of these spaces. Unfortunately I could not attend the fieldwork day, neither the exhibition day at Passos Manuel due to professional reasons. The following images and links, courtesy of Olga Glumac, show some of the work done on site as well as the post-production outcomes. The multimedia content was published on several open source platforms on the web such as Vimeo and Mixcloud.
Images 7 & 8 - Images taken at the school of Miragaia by Chân Sovannara and Pedro Carvalho de Almeida.
Video 1 & 2 by Patricia Nogueira:
https://vimeo.com/album/3131645/video/111824581
https://vimeo.com/album/3131645/video/111824579
Sound 1 & 2 by Pedro Carvalho de Almeida:
http://www.mixcloud.com/emc12_playground/1-school-ethno-media-scapes/
http://www.mixcloud.com/emc12_playground/2-school-ethno-media-scapes/
http://www.mixcloud.com/emc12_playground/3-school-chairs-ethno-media-scapes/
Interview by Asha Kae Self & Filipa Matias:
http://www.mixcloud.com/emc12_playground/3-talking-pupils-ethno-media-scapes/
Images 9 & 10 - Images taken at the retirement home of Miragaia by Filipa Matias, Chân Sovannara and Pedro Carvalho de Almeida.
Video 3 by Filipa Matias:
http://vimeo.com/album/3131645/video/111919855
Sound 4 by Pedro Carvalho de Almeida:
http://www.mixcloud.com/emc12_playground/1-social-center-ethno-media-scapes/
Sound 5 by Pedro Carvalho de Almeida:
http://www.mixcloud.com/emc12_playground/2-social-center-ethno-media-scapes/
As stated before I could not take part on the exhibition of the lab outcomes at Passos Manuel on the 18th of October 2014 due to professional reasons. The visual outcomes of this lab were projected juxtaposing the map of emotions created by Olga mapping the regular users feelings and emotions towards the same space.
On the 10th of December Olga Glumac and her pioneer students invited the participants of the lab to join their Christmas party at the school of Miragaia. Its purpose was to reveal the outcomes of the lab as well as have the chance to interact with the students who are actively cooperating on Olga’s Phd research project.
Images 11 & 12 - Images taken at Festa Pioneira de Natal in Miragaia on the 10th of December.
The link below redirects to a Youtube video I did while the students were singing and dancing with Asha Self, an american artist and performer living in Porto.
http://youtu.be/saoNtOq6VQA
Next, everyone was invited to try Serbian food made by Olga and a Serbian friend. At the end of the party, Olga and Pedro talked a little bit about the work developed at the future places’ lab while showing images, videos and sounds recorded back in October.
Images 13 & 14 - Images taken at Festa Pioneira de Natal in Miragaia on the 10th of December.
On the closing moments of the party, Olga invited the participants to a meeting to be scheduled on January to address further developments of the lab’s work. People still involved in the project are arranging the best schedule possible and try to take the project a bit further according to everyone’s expectations and interests.
Later I got to understand, while talking to Olga, one of the many purposes of the work being developed at school of Miragaia by her. Exposing students, from a socially challenged background, to experiences they would not have otherwise. For example having foreigners talk about their culture and experiences, hoping it will have a positive impact on their future lives as teenagers and young adults.
D. How can I best disseminate the work?
How and when the outcomes of the lab will be presented is still something that is being discussed as a group. Some participants talk about having an online library of all of the recordings made on an website back, other people talk about revisiting the post-production material and do another exhibition with the work.
E. How was this experience useful?
To me the experience served as a way to connect with people from very different backgrounds from mine, as well as learn what is being done in the community to improve lives of future young adults.
From the meeting to be held on the 27th of January, to discuss further work I hope I have a chance to have everyone on board on shooting a short documentary portraying Olga’s work and its impacts on the local community.
