Category: Film/Video

Film/Video Intersectionality Life PhD storytelling Writing

Donna Haraway’s Vision

from Haraway’s 1998 article ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’

Donna Haraway’s treatment of ‘Vision’ in her 1988 Situated Knowledge text is extremely helpful for my work, as it explores Vision in a political and epistemological context, giving a switched on academic framing to my use of (audo)visual research techniques. Haraway uses Vision as a metaphor to unpack ways of seeing, knowing and positioning.

She criticises the all-seeing Eye of the God-trick (the conquering gaze from nowhere that represents and marks bodies, while itself remaining unrepresented and unseen).

She advocates for embodied situated Vision that recognises and deconstructs it’s own positionality, specificity, difference, technologies and prosthetics for seeing; in the process making itself accountable, responsible, answerable.

She problematises ‘Seeing from Below’ and the vantage points of the subjugated:

… Donna Haraway’s Vision
Barcelona Collective Intelligence Film/Video PhD Sound storytelling

Storytelling Research #2 :: ‘It’s Alive!’ // ‘¡Está Viva!’

Source: https://flashbak.com/eeygaah-and-other-vintage-comic-book-screams-of-terror-384820/


As the old comic book exclamation goes… ‘It’s Alive…!’ And the aliveness of the Decidim community in Barcelona made itself known loud and clear during my fieldwork experience. ‘It’s Alive!’ is now the first of the storytelling devices I am using to both analyse and share the research. It started with ‘the sound of the hive’ [of the Decidim office] ringing in my ears after leaving Barcelona, and it’s still going. This sense of aliveness is now guiding me through an exploration of how collective intelligence works in Decidim.Barcelona and related tecnopolitical networks.

… Storytelling Research #2 :: ‘It’s Alive!’ // ‘¡Está Viva!’
Barcelona colours Creative Practice Film/Video PhD Visual

How do you define collective intelligence?

Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND

Many versions of collective intelligence are active around us. From the social media Hive Mind, to wikipedia’s Wisdom of the Crowd, to the ant colonies under our feet, to Extinction Rebellion’s swarming tactics, to talk of citizen assemblies solving Brexit or even climate change. To name but a few. My PhD aims to organise different conceptualisations and manifestations of collective intelligence into written and visual meta-analysis. In the wider video work, I am also working with audio-visual analysis and am currently exploring “The Sound of the Hive”. In other words, exploring an understanding of collective intelligence and the hive, through sound and patterns of sounds.

… How do you define collective intelligence?