Media Appropriation

as Performance Ethnography

and Critical Documentary

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Begin email exchanges (chronological):

Snooping around the internet, I discovered the on-line journal RECONSTRUCTION.  An upcoming call for papers for "The Avant-Garde as Critical Practice" piqued my interest.  Not knowing exactly how to approach a submission, I decided it was best to simply restate my long-standing commitment of giving all my work away for free (to them, as I do to everyone).


During this communication exchange with journal editor Alan Clinton, another scholar entered my purview, Jay Ruby.  The overlapping discussions weave an excellent illustration of the many obstacles for hurdle when practicing odd, provocative, surreal research.


And it all started because of this video: 

ZAPOOK OF THE NORTH


 
From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: The Avant-Garde as Critical Practice Date: March 13, 2008 8:37:37 AM MDT To: alanclinton@earthlink.net (Alan Clinton) Greetings! I offer this to Reconstruction and "The Avant-Garde as Critical Practice" Issue 9.2 : http://www.culturalfarming.com If you like anything here... art-direct me. I will happily recompose to suit. peace, Holland Wilde  From: alanclinton@earthlink.net (Alan Clinton) Subject: Re: The Avant-Garde as Critical Practice Date: March 13, 2008 6:00:46 PM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Thanks for this Holland. John and I will get back to you as we have time to take a look and think about the overall composition of the issue. Best, Alan Clinton  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: Ethnographic video Date: April 18, 2008 5:35:16 PM MDT To: ruby@temple.edu (Jay Ruby) Jay Ruby, Greetings. I apologize for this rather blunt, unorthodox email. I am a 2nd year PhD misfit in the Faculty of Communication and Culture, Here is my bio: Here is the link to one portion of my ethnographic video research... it may interest you, it may not. I am appropriating TV content (my exotic tribe) and attempting to ethnographically remediate it into civic discourse. My aim is to test existing theory as much as to 'write' with moving images. My projects arc from Bronislaw Malinowski through yours to Bertolt Brecht -- cable news through Paulo Friere to Sergei Eisenstein. It is ambitious, provocative, and utterly unpublishable. My work is informed by much of yours. Although, since most of visual media is sold off the bodies of women, my work is also taking a radical feminist turn. Regardless, wouldn't it be nice to chat with a brother sometime? About what?... About the resistance I am receiving using video as dissertation. I know you must be so very busy, but it would mean an awful lot to me. Either way, a reply would be most courteous. Thanks so much for all. peace, - Holland Wilde    NOTE #1: The photo, above, of Jay Ruby pictured with Frank Zappa was taken from the front page of Ruby’s personal website. I included it here in my email to Ruby as visual acknowledgment of his (?) surreal, avant-garde, provocative history... and possibly to invoke some unspoken parallel-connection between us.   From: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) Subject: Ethnographic video Date: April 19, 2008 6:14:57 AM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Holland, As one misfit to another, hello. Your bio and culturalfarming sites are most interesting. Are you subscribed to my listserv, VISCOM? You should be and the listmembers should be aware of your work. I will subscribe you to the list if you wish. Why not join SVA if you are not a member and submitting some work to their journal VAR for publication and also why not submit something for the next years' Amer Anthro meetings via SVA. I think you need more contact with these folks. As to the problem of getting your committee to accept video as part of your dissertation, I suggest you look at the Society for Visual Anthropology web site, they have passed a resolution about this matter. As to chatting, find with me. Chat on, Jay Ruby  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: Ethnographic video REPLY Date: April 19, 2008 12:41:31 PM MDT From: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) On Apr 19, 2008, at 6:14 AM, Jay Ruby wrote: Holland, As one misfit to another, hello. * * * To begin, I am stunned to I have received a reply - a laser-fast reply. Thank you. You have now been moved into the 'mensch" column. Ha. I am not bashful and regularly reach out to those I admire - with marginal degrees of success: David MacDougall, Gregory Ulmer, Roderick Coover, Henry Giroux, Robert McChesney, James Elkins, etc. I do it for two reasons, obviously to announce my work, but more importantly to challenge, test, provoke what I read with what I do. Particularly, I want to materialize the numerous calls for a 'new' (auto?) ethnographic video - for I believe my work is a response to that call. However, few humans ever welcome provocation. Your bio and culturalfarming sites are most interesting. Are you subscribed to my listserv, VISCOM? You should be and the listmembers should be aware of your work. I will subscribe you to the list if you wish. * * * Please feel free to do so. Why not join SVA if you are not a member and submitting some work to their journal VAR for publication and also why not submit something for the next years' Amer Anthro meetings via SVA. I think you need more contact with these folks. * * * This is helpful, thank you. I will investigate. In the next two months I will be here (click): London - The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Moscow - Education and the Media As to the problem of getting your committee to accept video as part of your dissertation, I suggest you look at the Society for Visual Anthropology web site, they have passed a resolution about this matter. * * * Excellent, again, I will investigate. FYI: I want to write my candidacies with moving images as well. As to chatting, find with me. Chat on, * * * Super, but email does prohibit depth.... so, may I be presumptuous and offer my oral presentation from last week at the “Visual Rhetoric” conference at RIT, Rochester: The text sketches all I want to discuss with you. Bottom line: The bravest decision may be to withdraw from my studies. I went back to school for theory and methodology. I got it. The rest of my graduate time is structured to push my necessary round work through the academy's square hole. Do I have time for that? I think not. Why stop my work; freeze one small segment of it; turn that into written text; only to wait for 'sanctification' from a body that questions my motives? Why not just DO THE WORK? Anyway, I ramble. If you are true to your acceptance to 'chat'... I suggest your read the 'chatty' .pdf file above... and spend some time in: http://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/bouleversement.htm In return, maybe you can send me something. We can cross-pollenate. That's really what brilliant work is about. Moreover, I would happily travel to you... to hang for a while... whatever. Jay Ruby * * * Thank you so much for all! Seriously... thank you. peace, - hw  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: Thanks Date: April 20, 2008 10:48:21 AM MDT To: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) On Apr 20, 2008, at 10:36 AM, LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDU LISTSERV Server (14.5) wrote: You have been added to the VISCOM mailing list (Visual Communications Discussion) by Jay Ruby <ethnographic@EARTHLINK.NET>. ******** JR, Sweet. Thanks for the listing. Anywhooo... I believe my videos are what really 'speak'. peace, - hw  From: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) Subject: Ethnographic video REPLY Date: April 21, 2008 5:56:40 AM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Holland, I read your talk. I am uncertain what exactly what are your plans. The talk was alienating but then it appears to me that that was your purpose. The problem with reflexivity is that sometimes people tell you more than you need to know that is certainly the case with your talk. If your intention is to establish yourself as an outsider tilting at windmills then this talk would be effective to some degree. The tone is one that would make listeners turn you off. Telling people that you are so hip and they are square is a perfect way to be ignored. I do not know the program that you are enrolled in but if you are really interested in becoming an academic in some field, then learn to walk the walk and talk the talk as that is the only way one can "push the envelope." It really is the case the less is more. The trouble with blogs is that they tend to be endless, unedited and often off the top of the head of the maker. I have yet to find one that I think is worthwhile. Your web site is simply too filled up to be manageable for me but then I am an old fart who also hates what iPods and MP3 files are doing to recorded music. I think you have to decide whether you wish to continue your role as the holy hipster who is simply too far out to be appreciated or someone with a sufficient knowledge of a particular discipline that your critiques will be within a particular dialogue so that you can really push the envelope. I sense that we have a very different approach to the development of a new ethnography. Good luck but if you really want to be listened to tone it down. Jay "We are all generating more media that we can consume. The amount of photography, recorded material, text, the cloud of metadata that we are all leaving behind, is overwhelming." Clay Shirky, NYU, Interactive Telecommunications Program.  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: REPLY #2 Date: April 21, 2008 5:29:30 PM MDT To: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) On Apr 21, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Jay Ruby wrote: Holland, * * * Doctor, again, thank you so very much for replying. Hang in there. I read your talk. I am uncertain what exactly what are your plans. * * As am I. I went back to school for three reasons. groundings in theory-methodology to assess a crazy mediated postmodern world mentorship fraternity. I've only found the first, so far, and most of that on my own. Now I stand at a crossroad. Do I continue forward for the PhD union card? ... or go it alone? The latter is the loneliest, bravest, yet possibly the most effective pathway for DOING THE WORK. But I remain unsure. The talk was alienating but then it appears to me that that was your purpose. * * * Oddly, the talk has been well received 3 times - including at RIT where it garnered a personal invitation to visit-lecture at Cal-Fullerton in Fall. I wouldn't call that text alienating, exactly... But I wrote you for YOUR assessments, and I truly appreciate them, Jay, all of them. ...Primarily, though, I am attempting to connect what I have seen, felt, experienced. The problem with reflexivity is that sometimes people tell you more than you need to know that is certainly the case with your talk. * * * I certainly agree with that. The talk, however, is structured as auto-ethnography-mystory, with performativity a key missing ingredient (picture me performing it). I am telling 3 tales in one. Establishing authority (ethos), explicating my media project (logos), and why it is necessary - yet marginalized (pathos). Since I am new, an outsider, and unorthodox, I feel compelled to fully contextualize. Remember, no one knows me from Adam, and that 2 years ago I knew NOTHING of this stuff: the theory, methodology, terms, YOU...nothing. All this has only been discovered by me over the last two+ years. I am still a virgin... a student... struggling to connect dots in your field. I'll make plenty of mistakes. If your intention is to establish yourself as an outsider tilting at windmills then this talk would be effective to some degree. The tone is one that would make listeners turn you off. * * * This same talk (rejigged) was first presented at IVSA at NYU, last year. It was highly successful as contextualization to a long-form video I also screened. So successful, it caused a row, with most attendees fiercely coming to my 'defense'. It was a sight to see. Douglas Harper led the charge for support. (It was there I asked Harper to offer an introduction to you... that didn't materialize.) But that presentation directly garnered my invitation to retell my-story at City University in London next month as well. Telling people that you are so hip and they are square is a perfect way to be ignored. * * * Of course, you are exactly right... which is why I openly establish my work as NOTHING precious, simply something we all can, and probably should be encouraging. I do not know the program that you are enrolled in but if you are really interested in becoming an academic in some field, then learn to walk the walk and talk the talk as that is the only way one can "push the envelope." It really is the case the less is more. * * * I can't really assess my own program; I know so few for comparison. I can say that I am clearly unhappy (but that's not the end of the world either). But, I also wasn't born yesterday. I have 35 years of dealing with multinational clients, top management, assistants, vendors, and contractors of all stripes. I can work a room, and, I deeply know how to listen between the lines, gauge comments, when to shut up, how to enlist those who can't speak for themselves, how to reign in-support, encourage egos and disparate personalities. Design is communication. I'm good at both with a history of success. But then, I also always knew exactly what I wanted from my clients: their money. Today, it is entirely different. I am a 'free' man. I primarily want to learn and work - from here forward - period. The question is will I be granted permission to proceed within the PhD structure or not? And if so, what will I gain, what will I lose? To your larger point, I have received little departmental support. I'm unsure I can even gather a dissertation committee. I struggle mightily to find interest in my department, while support oddly appears to be building outside of it. And so my willingness in fulfilling their precise (logocentric) requirements is waning. I am human after all; I gravitate to where I am valued. That said, yes your advice above is exactly the party line. I hear it regularly and I deeply understand the premise. But again, I am not a usual case. I will never become the traditional "academic". It is too late for me. I am too old, too opinionated. Nor is it particularly my dream, either. I did not go back to school simply to land a faculty position that largely keeps me from the work I feel I must do. Yes, I am a very good teacher and I love it. But my primary goal is to DO THE WORK. I don't need the job or the money. Barring an act of god I am financially solvent. I could go on here... but it is most interesting how so few academics are willing to argue any equal-but-opposing viewpoint. For instance, that the academy IS today simply another corporate structure; that new faculty are slave-labor who do the departmental heavy-lifting; that any kind of anomaly, like writing a blog, can and will be held against promotion; that tenure as 'the prize' is often abused, etc. On the other hand, a PhD is seen as a benchmark with granted affiliations. Let me rage on a bit here. Too many scholars I’ve witnessed are posers, having garnered their PhDs and now tenaciously hold court over their tiny domains, counting their precious articles and books, crushing students, baldly and badly engaging in grotesque self-promotion, cynically complaining about the very realities they help to build, employing vicious insider politics because the stakes are so small. So many have no logical grounding whatsoever in the on-going world of ‘interdisciplinary visuality’. Indeed many are frightened(?) by my 35 year visual career in theatre, art, film production, graphic design, architecture, performance, broadcast media, journalism. My MFA terminal degree is utterly marginalized in PhD-land even though my original graduate studies were significantly more rigorous than my current PhD studies. Maybe that’s why I've taken double the requirement of UofC courses with an overall grade point of 4.12. (blahblah). The academy needs me – but unfortunately most seem almost 'bound' not to admit it. And now I am beginning to interpret these reoccurring scenarios as a personal insult. Whew, I said it.... (PLEASE know that I know there are MANY brilliant others who do not represent any of the above.) For me, however, the bottom line is simply this: After all the mountains of traditional media scholarship to date, our mediated world only continues to grow 'worse'. Maybe it is time to embrace a kind of scholarship with more vitality, my kind. All things evolve or die. The academy is no different. Before we two are dead, 'writing' scholarship with moving images will be commonplace. It is inevitable. Why not me now? Someone has to be first. The trouble with blogs is that they tend to be endless, unedited and often off the top of the head of the maker. I have yet to find one that I think is worthwhile. Your web site is simply too filled up to be manageable for me but then I am an old fart who also hates what ipods and MP3 files are doing to recorded music. * * * Never hate, Jay. haha. Seriously... I understand your point (and I can help teach you to accept...it's easy). But importantly, it is living-working-writing in THIS world that I see as lacking. If Moore's Law has any legs, most everything is expanding exponentially each 18 months... which again is why I argue for methodologies that spring from today's worlds. Yes, novelty was THE currency of my old career. Now, however, I simply want to harness some of that for good research for wider audiences. Many new viewers come to my research blog Media Nipple because they are searching key-words like 'nipple'. To me that is terrific. It was one small part of the premise why I incorporated breast images in the first place: A pedagogical bait-and-switch. I would much rather 'preach' to the congregation than the choir. Someone surfing for porn and stumbling across my visual communication site - and LEARNING something - is for me significantly more rewarding than burying a paper about the subject in a journal for academic-eyes-only. I think you have to decide whether you wish to continue your role as the holy hipster who is simply too far out to be appreciated or someone with a sufficient knowledge of a particular discipline that your critiques will be within a particular dialogue so that you can really push the envelope. * * * Let me re-paint this comment. I have a life-time of being ahead-of-the-curve. Hunters and gatherers always know the lay of the land best. I do not seek "holy-hipster". Indeed, look for my name around Cultural Farming? It can be found, but my work is essentially anonymous. There is no narcissistic cult-of-celebrity there... but I hear your point. Moreover, my work is deeply embedded and embodied in a wide, existing literature. But, being so new, so green, I do indeed wonder aloud (as I am to you now) whether or not my work is sheer folly. And this comes from the very fact (and our emails are further examples) that most scholars want only to discuss academic machinations, or my written words, or my tone. What of my VIDEOS? I have had so few actual discussions about my VIDEOS. Jay, I will be forever be indebted to you for taking this much time with me already. And I dearly hope we can extend this chat for another round or two. If so, what of my methodology? What of my appropriation of anthropological, ethnographic 'film' sensibility for telling (parodic-ally surreal) visual stories about our mediated world? Are you able to make out any of this sense in my videos? Do they smell anything like scholarship? Is my work any more experimental, controversial, confusing, or misunderstood than Jean Rouch's during his time? Certainly I don't fetishize my equipment - as with most filmmakers. Can it be seen that I'm doing what Bruce Conner did 40 years ago - only maybe better, more grounded in methodological purpose? I sense that we have a very different approach to the development of a new ethnography. * * * I wonder. But I sincerely think not. I write to you exactly because your words so richly inform my moving images. Maybe you can expand upon 'new ethnography'? Good luck but if you really want to be listened to tone it down. * * * I fear I may have already shot myself in the foot with you. If not, please know that I am almost never angry - I am earnest. I am not ‘pissy’ - I am provocative. Very likely ignorant - but not stupid. And that I am profoundly dedicating the rest of my life to doing the work... work that will necessarily evolve over time... as yours has over 45 years. I'm on your side and trying to pull on the same end of the same rope. I am simply a student... alive and well in this world. And still rather stunned I'm actually having a 'conversation' with someone I so respect. Jay * * * Peace, my friend. hw ps: ...then again, maybe I should just try to say everything visually:   From: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) Subject: My Reply Date: April 24, 2008 7:25:29 AM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Holland, My interests and yours are a bit different. I am a committed anthropologist who has been trying to develop an anthropology of visual communication within the confines of mainstream anthropology. Sounds to me that you are not committed to becoming an academic and probably should not bother if I understand your complaints. What you are experiencing is normative for a grad students. You either accept the narrow confines of a discipline or quit. Your critique of academics and academia is accurate but my question is what do you expect? That world and the real world are about the same. What isn't? Your fantasy that media studies will somehow have an impact on the media empires is amazingly naive. I use to tell my students if you want to change the world do not pick up a camera, pick up a gun. Academic research even the so-called activist, radical media critiques only preach to the choir and seldom have any impact on the real world. Scholars talk to other scholars. As ask about what I meant by "new ethnography." See the attached. Your choice is rather simple. Becoming a good scholars within a discipline. Continue to be a maverick but within the acceptable limits of your profession or drop out stay a professional outsider. I seriously do not believe that ranting against the machine will never yield the results intended. An example, Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly produced a classic "Harvest of Shame about the plight of the farm worker. Since that production literally dozens of other docs have been produced dealing with the same issue. As far as I can see the farm workers are still dirt poor, uneducated, etc. Now if the hundreds of thousands of dollars had not been spent on those productions but rather on educational and health programs then we would see some actual results. And an old 60s radical, I feel like Dylan hoping to not go through all these things twice. Enjoy your windmills. Jay Ruby "We are all generating more media that we can consume. The amount of photography, recorded material, text, the cloud of metadata that we are all leaving behind, is overwhelming." Clay Shirky, NYU, Interactive Telecommunications Program.  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: Reply #3 Date: April 24, 2008 11:08:12 AM MDT To: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) On Apr 24, 2008, at 7:25 AM, Jay Ruby wrote: Holland, * * * Greetings. My interests and yours are a bit different. I am a committed anthropologist who has been trying to develop an anthropology of visual communication within the confines of mainstream anthropology. * * * And this is why I write to you. I respect this. Sounds to me that you are not committed to becoming an academic and probably should not bother if I understand your complaints. * * * You prefer to critique my emails and not my work. My 'complaint' is that I am meeting great resistance writing my media research with the media content I study. And that this is complicated further by (visual) scholars unwilling to support alternative approaches to ethnographic storytelling. What you are experiencing is normative for a grad students. You either accept the narrow confines of a discipline or quit. Your critique of academics and academia is accurate but my question is what do you expect? That world and the real world are about the same. What isn't? * * * This is just about the saddest thing I've ever read. As to what I expect: I expect the academy to hold itself to a higher standard - and at the very least accept, applaud, and promote those willing to challenge and extend that higher standard. Your fantasy that media studies will somehow have an impact on the media empires is amazingly naive. * * * "Media" is not some inevitable blob in the universe, Jay. It is made daily by smart people just like you and me. Indeed, I know many of these people. They, like us, fundamentally want to do the right thing; and all are persuadable when presented with logical, ethical, profitable recourse. Isn't one worthy goal of scholarship to uncover 'recourse'? I use to tell my students if you want to change the world do not pick up a camera, pick up a gun. * * * Again, if you spent time in my work you would find that my message is, exactly, that cameras ARE guns. Academic research even the so-called activist, radical media critiques only preach to the choir and seldom have any impact on the real world. Scholars talk to other scholars. * * * And this is a good thing? As asked about what I meant by "new ethnography." See the attached. * * * Thank you. But if you mean this as a definition for NEW ethnography: "The ethnographies, designed to be seen on a computer, combine text, photographs and video in an interactive way. These innovative works bring together the traditional publishing outlets of a book, a photo essay and film in a way that enhances the usefulness of all three. " ...or this: "Jay Ruby has long espoused the use of visual data as a powerful tool for academic research. In his Oak Park Stories he has provided a clear example of how his theories can work and bridged the gap between visual and mainstream written anthropologies." Then...where, exactly, is the difference between your work and mine, Jay? Isn't mine equally 'good to think with'? Your choice is rather simple. Becoming a good scholars within a discipline. Continue to be a maverick but within the acceptable limits of your profession or drop out stay a professional outsider. I seriously do not believe that ranting against the machine will never yield the results intended. * * * ".... a good scholar..." Humm. Again, if you spent time in my work you would see that ranting is not my MO. I rant to you in email - rarely with my work. You seem intent on confusing and extending this point for the purpose of deflating creative alternatives... as if every worthy possibility has already been exhausted, scholarly or otherwise. An example, Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly produced a classic "Harvest of Shame about the plight of the farm worker. Since that production literally dozens of other docs have been produced dealing with the same issue. As far as I can see the farm workers are still dirt poor, uneducated, etc. Now if the hundreds of thousands of dollars had not been spent on those productions but rather on educational and health programs then we would see some actual results. * * * I would argue that many more dollars have been spent on education and health programs than on all docs combined. Regardless, could it be that maybe the wrong people are making most docs... and/or making them the wrong way... for the wrong audiences? Maybe it is time to encourage the 'seldom heard' to tell their own 'media mystories'. And an old 60s radical, I feel like Dylan hoping to not go through all these things twice. * * * As a 55yo radical I continue to read all of Dylan: "All the tired horses in the sun. How am I supposed get any riding done." Enjoy your windmills. * * * With Cervantes, as with Bertolt Brecht, Shakespeare, James Joyce, the Dadaists, the Surrealists - Jean Rouch - and so many others, a worthy political and educational goal is to shock the audience, to shock our students into the awareness that social life, and art, and scholarship are all human creations, all socially constructed works capable of reconstruction and recuperation. Jay Ruby -- "We are all generating more media that we can consume. The amount of photography, recorded material, text, the cloud of metadata that we are all leaving behind, is overwhelming." Clay Shirky, NYU, Interactive Telecommunications Program. * * * Think about this end quote, you keep including at the end of every email, for a minute. Does it mean we give up? What kind of challenges are you willing to accept, Jay? hw http://www.culturalfarming.com http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=2bjqYPH7rAo&feature=related  From: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) Subject: RE: Reply #3 Date: April 24, 2008 11:27:58 AM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Holland, Good luck and good bye. Jay -- "We are all generating more media that we can consume. The amount of photography, recorded material, text, the cloud of metadata that we are all leaving behind, is overwhelming." Clay Shirky, NYU, Interactive Telecommunications Program.  From: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) Subject: your submission to "The Avant-Garde as Critical Practice" Date: June 20, 2008 9:15:45 AM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Dear Holland, I really enjoyed perusing your website culturalfarming.com and think that your work definitely fits in with what we are looking for in this issue. I would ask, however, that you do 1 of 2 things. 1) Submit a new work to us that you would be willing to delay putting on your website until publication in _Reconstruction_. or... 2) Submit an artist's statement that culls/mashes from your existing work (no more than 20 pages of text/image) and includes no more than one video. Let us know if this sounds workable and/or desirable to you. Best wishes, Alan Clinton  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: Re: your submission to "The Avant-Garde... Date: June 20, 2008 10:27:09 AM MDT To: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) On Jun 20, 2008, at 9:15 AM, Alan Clinton wrote: Dear Holland, * * * Greetings. I'm off to Australia in 6 hours. But let me briefly respond. I really enjoyed perusing your website culturalfarming.com and think that your work definitely fits in with what we are looking for in this issue. * * * Thank you. There are hundreds of hours of video content in Cultural Farming. Through 'track-back" software, I can see you briefly perused. Already you have seen more than most academics. I am smiling. I would ask, however, that you do 1 of 2 things. 1) Submit a new work to us that you would be willing to delay putting on your website until publication in _Reconstruction_. * * * I have numerous new works not posted. Indeed, I made a new 13min. critical piece this week that reconsiders visual communication hubris rife throughout historical anthropological 'film'. In it, I employ Flaherty's Nanook, YouTube, social media, and Frank Zappa music and interviews. It's an excellent piece. or 2) Submit an artist's statement that culls/mashes from your existing work (no more than 20 pages of text/image) and includes no more than one video. * * * My videos are my "artistic" statements; though what I do is not art. Mine is critical, experimental, surreal, auto-ethnographic media commentary. I love to write - with whatever tool (sounds, words, images) works best. But I recoil from academic demands to re-interpret audio-visual works into logocentric "statements" so profoundly privileged within the academy. Let us know if this sounds workable and/or desirable to you. * * I gave you my work in my first email. It is yours. All of it. Freely. This remains today. No strings. Maybe YOU c(sh)ould write on what YOU see in my work! And this may be best since your email echos with notions of propriety ownership, copyright, and publication requirements. This is not a bad thing... simply an oppositional binary to my (avant-garde?) sensibility. That said, I am an optimist and always open to suggestion. Best wishes, Alan Clinton * * * Back at ya. I appreciate this shout-back. I'm very curious to see how Reconstruction pans out. Let me know your response. best of luck. peace, Holland Wilde bio - http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?holland_wilde  From: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) Subject: Re: your submission to "The Avant-Garde... Date: June 20, 2008 5:37:20 PM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Dear Holland, I have been to the site more than once and, as I said, dig what you are doing. Perhaps I was a bit too lazy in my phraseology in #2, but if you'll forgive me, I intended the phrase "artist's statement" to suggest the fact that you are an artist who makes critical statements and vice versa. You do have "texts" on the site and of course elements which employ writing (in the Derridean sense) of all kinds. I would assume that an "artist's statement" from you would involve sound, image, and text. You should reconsider the idea behind "giving" me culturalfarming.com. By placing it on the web, you have already given it to everyone. My suggestions were less about property than about the chance to present yourself before a gigantic audience (I can get you readership #s for Reconstruction) in a format that will entice readers to go to the site and engage with it. But simply putting up the site will not really encourage readers to do this. The avant-garde has always had to advertise itself and, if you want to do this through Reconstruction's issue, I would want you to present us with something that does this, whether it is a new work or some kind of verbal, visual, sonic manifesto. In the current climate of artistic/academic self-promotion, I'm dubious about the "generosity" you propose to be inherent in your presentation of your website. Yes, I could do my own essay on your work, but that is not something I feel I need to do right now. I do think your work is provocative, and I'm saying that I would be interested in you "editing" yourself for the specific constraints of a special issue of a widely-read cultural studies journal. Perhaps at some point journals will do special issues on the work of Holland Wilde, but until that time comes it is up to you to present yourself to whatever publics you deem worthy in a way that is rhetorically effective. There is no propriety wrt copyright in our journal, which refers back to the producer upon publication. _You_ responded to the CFP. Obviously you felt there was something in it for you. If that is still the case, then send some new material along and please don't assume that I'm completely clueless as to what is at stake in your interests/projects etc. Best of luck whatever you decide, Alan  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: From: Holland WIlde - Submission to "The Avant-Garde... Date: July 5, 2008 12:51:14 PM MDT To: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) AC, Well, my ass hurts after Glasgow, London, Stockholm, Frankfort, Moscow, LA, and Brisbane. Saddle sores.... but I'm finally home. I was re-reading our emails below. I kinda sound like a dick. (I'm not... but I do have one.) Bottom line: I put a video up on YouTube once, as an experiment, just to see first hand what would happen. So why not with you, I suppose? Tell me how you want a 'previously unpublished' video received. You wanna disc? You wanna link to my server? And then let me know your parameters for citation. Can I remain anonymous? Can it be created/submitted by Cultural Farming? Must there be a written textual accompaniment? If so... what exactly. I like to write with different tools. It still seems easier if you just TAKE my work yourself... for your own purposes... But I'm not kicking that discussion again. Lemme know either way... maybe you've changed YOUR mind. ha. No worries. peace out, h  From: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) Subject: Re: Submission to "The Avant-Garde... Date: July 5, 2008 8:21:27 PM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Bottom line: I put a video up on YouTube once, as an experiment, just to see first hand what would happen. So why not with you? * * * Sounds good to me. You'll probably get more hits with us than you tube. Tell me how you want an 'previously published' video received. You wanna disc? You wanna link to my server? * * * A link would be fine. Or sending as a file. And then let me know your parameters for citation. * * * Our parameters are fairly flexible for this issue and your kind of work. Can I remain anonymous? Can it be created/submitted by Cultural Farming? * * * I would suggest submitting it as Cultural Farming, so that John and I could include a link to your site. If for some reason you wish to remain completely anonymous, that would probably be fine. Must there be a written textual accompaniment? If so... what exactly. I like to write with different tools. * * * No, whatever tools you would like to use in your submission will be fine. It's your representation of Cultural Farming, Holland Wilde, or anonymous introduction of whatever to the world of Reconstruction readers. Think of it as a new audience, one potentially interested in what you do. Looking forward to it. Alan  From: ethnographic@EMBARQMAIL.COM (Jay Ruby) Subject: Programs in Ethnographic Film Production Date: July 8, 2008 7:13:24 AM MDT To: VISCOM@LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDU Has anyone compiled a list of places where ethnographic film production is taught? I am aware of the programs in the U.S., U.K and Nordic Country? Where else? Jay Ruby  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: Re: Programs in Ethnographic Film Production Date: July 14, 2008 8:32:24 AM MDT To: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) http://www.culturalfarming.com/Extras/Wilde_ZAPOOK.mov   From: ethnographic@earthlink.net (Jay Ruby) Subject: Re: Programs in Ethnographic Film Production Date: July 14, 2008 2:35:43 PM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) I have no idea who you are but the video is a piece of shit. Eskimos prefer to be called Inuit but you are too ignorant to know that. There are no polar bears in Nanook. Nanook is copyrighted. Please go away. Will not respond to any more emails. Will delete. I have removed you from viscom. People like you do not belong on the list. Jay Ruby   NOTE #2: Allow me the opportunity, here, to visualize Ruby’s scatological characterization of Zappok of the North:    From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: From: Holland WIlde - Video Link & Text Date: July 14, 2008 8:17:03 PM MDT To: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) AC, OK then, here is a video link (as yet 'unpublished'): http://www.culturalfarming.com/Extras/Wilde_ZAPOOK.mov And, how about this for an accompanying text?..: (Ruby/Wilde emails, above.) This episodic and enlightening exchange ended just today (verbatim). I think it provides a good summation of my work and my predicament. (I avant-garde-double-dare you to publish it... even though it addresses every 9.2 topic.) Hummm... I think I can hear you saying as well.... "This is a 'piece of shit.'" FYI: I will soon be quitting my current studies in communication and culture studies and transferring to Queensland University of Technology - Institute of Creative Industries, Brisbane, AU (…if they’ll take me). They seem to welcome 'practice-led' PhD research. ... let's hope so: PS: I like your article: Wavespeech, Tapespeech, Blipspeech Holland Wilde  From: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) Subject: Re: From: Holland WIlde - Video Link & Text Date: July 20, 2008 10:39:28 PM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Dear Holland, I think the e-mail exchange is fascinating as a means of, as you put it, articulating your predicament (and maybe the predicament of any avant-garde). It will leave readers curious as to the videos that lie behind and are linked. I particularly enjoyed Zapook of the North. I actually think it would be more powerful as a document if you "ficto-criticized" it a bit, just a bit. In other words, make up names, lists, and e-mail addresses for Jay Ruby while leaving everything else intact. If people pick up on the fact that it's Jay Ruby, fine, but no need to humiliate him so directly---indeed it would be a more powerful statement to others who identify with your predicament if Jay Ruby just became the Kafkaesque Castle, the Lacanian Other, etc. of academia. It would still retain the punctum of your rejection by Ruby while refocusing attention on the drama of the cultural farmer/avant-gardist attempting to communicate with an audience. If you'll agree to this--resend with the concession to Ruby's "anonymity"--I will strongly push this intro to your work on my co-editor for inclusion in the avant-garde issue. He's on vacation in Finland at the moment and can't look at this at the moment anyway, and I don't know his tastes in everything, but I think the question of taste is not so much important here as the question of risk. I will frame this as a risk that we should take with the issue. John Sundholm is even more keen than I am to include streaming video content of various kinds in the issue so there is a good chance I think that I can get him to see the significance of this. Hope you'll consider this minor modification. At any rate, I hope things go well in Australia. Alan  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: From: Holland Wilde - Sorry Date: July 21, 2008 8:50:24 PM MDT To: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) On Jul 20, 2008, at 10:39 PM, Alan Clinton wrote: Dear Holland, * * * Greetings, Alan. Let's have another go at it. I think the e-mail exchange is fascinating as a means of, as you put it, articulating your predicament (and maybe the predicament of any avant-garde). * * * That's what I thought, too. It will leave readers curious as to the videos that lie behind and are linked. * * * That's what I hope, too. I particularly enjoyed Zapook of the North. * * * That's how I feel, too. RECAP: Most visual scholars know Nanook is 'questionable' representation. And Ruby knows better than most. (Picturing Culture, 2000). It's standard discussion in both Anthropology 101 and FILM 101. All of Nanook was selected, scripted, staged, edited... LIKE MANY ANTHROPOLOGICAL FILMS TODAY... ... regardless of a film's importance for data collection. That is my primary point. (remember: cameras are guns) I montage'd Nanook (indeed, much of the 'eskimo' footage used is NOT Nanook footage - which is yet another kind of academic parody) with Zappa interviews simply because Zappa is telling a similar story differently. That's why I looped the song phrase: "I can't see. Whoa. Whoa. I can't see." And also why I took two minutes yesterday to mix this YouTube video with Dali - Buñuel horror... http://www.culturalfarming.com/Extras/unchien%20analog.mov This is the way I write... and the way I'm trying to 'see'. BOTTOM LINE: Nanook of the North is a CARTOON film. Exactly because this is what cameras do to context: http://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/53_Leave%20Britney%20AloneX.mov (...do you really think these Inuit folks were offered confidentiality waivers during this 'proper' anthropology in 1922? No, and that's why I mashed it as a riff on blatant paparazzi.) We must 'read' differently for different times. And so the question I ask is how should we read today?... and with what? The YouTube kid I also mashed into the video... well, he goes right on blissfully (and conveniently) interpreting - as do most photographers and (media) academics (and like Ruby does to me)... as if nothing has ever changed. Ruby knows better, so then what is his REAL beef? I dunno. (Maybe he just isn't receptive to 'bitch-slapping' so-called reverential scholarship?) THIS IS THE PURPOSE OF MY SURREAL ETHNOGRAPHY: To bust open literal, convenient (media) interpretations... to remember/engage/provoke existing theories/methodologies/methods... to confuse, confound... to encourage ACTIVE meaning-making participation. And maybe, yes maybe, even to cajole folks into MAKING THEIR OWN MEDIA. We are smart enough for polysemy. At least we better be... because polysemy is the terra cognita of visuality. (Hey, I like that line.) Indeed, that is the upside (for lack of a better word) of journalistic photo manipulation... it creates confusion - discussion - debate - and ultimately awareness during production and consumption. In my head, my work is NOT Surrealism or avant-garde (it is surreal ethnography). The Surrealists most often provoked for the sake of provocation... and then they promoted that for still more provocation. (Their manifestos might have been significantly advanced had Leiris actually been lynched by the mob-cops.) Moreover, Sergei Eisenstein (AFTER he was a stage designer) was montage-ing almost a century ago... Bruce Conner, three generations ago... so where, exactly, is the 'avant-garde'? All I'm trying to do is get people to think purposefully about our mediated world... to participate in what "mediated world" means? Not to spiral communication deeper into non-sensical postmodern nihilistic hell-holes. If anyone thinks I'm out on some weird juxtaposing-limb... twisting in the wind ... LOOK AROUND! I just ripped this directly from CNBC as I'm writing you: (VIDEO) Hideous non-sensical montage is happening everywhere. Montage needs critical recuperation. But... as Zappa says in the Zapook video...(and as I would paraphrase to Ruby if I thought he would ever open another email from me): "If I could find the group that had the ideal membership we'd be able to do both, that is, play complicated music and also do theatre. But, unfortunately the music I've written right now is so complicated that the people who can play it are not very theatrical." NOTE: I would love to ask Jay Ruby why he features that photo of himself with Zappa so predominately on his personal website. Does he want to be interpreted as cool through association?? Maybe if he had juxtaposed his photo WITH something else I would understand his VISUAL INTENTION. I actually think it would be more powerful as a document if you "ficto-criticized" it a bit, just a bit. In other words, make up names, lists, and e-mail addresses for Jay Ruby while leaving everything else intact. * * * Powerful? Humm, I wonder what you mean here...? Shall I now call Jay Ruby: Bob Smith? Robin Emerald? Jim Rubin? Is he now from "Church University" - not Temple? Why -exactly- are you asking me to fictionalize just Ruby's info? "Changing the names to protect the innocent" does not really apply here. These are his EXACT WORDS. Do you fear repercussion from Ruby himself? Would it be better scholarship if I "killed like the Pope" in the soft-dulcet-tones of academic-speak? But importantly... I'm not doing anything TO Ruby. I am offering his words to better inform your readers of MY work. Yes I know... I have not asked Ruby's permission to do this... but must I? Did he say "off the record', 'confidential', or 'between us"? (HINT: I didn't do this either...nor am I in these emails to you.) On the contrary, he first suggested everyone on the viscom listserv "should" know my work. Is it too voyeuristic to publish emails, when $1m's are paid daily for Britney nipple-slips? Do we fear our own exposure in today's "gotcha world"? Maybe we all should think a bit better BEFORE we communicate. This isn't: (VIDEO) Look, I was not writing to Ruby with publication in mind, either. There is a lot of righteous student-talk from me in those emails that I would like to omit too. But I'm not doing that either. I don't come off sounding particularly brilliant. Besides, I'm just a fucking STUDENT for chrissake... and frankly, no one will ever give a rat's ass about me or my pathetic little ‘shitty’ videos - including your readers. (HaHa. It's liberating to acknowledge this - and especially to say it aloud this way! - even though self-deprecation isn't kosher in our branded world - our publicity-mad world which the Surrealists would have mastered and perfected decades ago.) Regardless, we should all occasionally take a swing at miniaturizing ourselves. Mine is no middle-aged conceit to embody a teenaged Rimbaud. If people pick up on the fact that it's Jay Ruby, fine, but no need to humiliate him so directly---indeed it would be a more powerful statement to others who identify with your predicament if Jay Ruby just became the Kafkaesque Castle, the Lacanian Other, etc. of academia. * * * Again, why -exactly- are we beating around this bush. How -exactly- am I "humiliating him so directly"? Ruby is a big boy and so should be your readers. Do you really think some brouhaha will develop out of this. I don't. I'm the academic size of a french fry. There's simply too much stuff out there for this one micro-incident to be of importance. Another drop in the bucket. My work, ideas, and thoughts are simply not that precious. (And if they are... then what the heck are we talking about?) Indeed, few would claim I am doing scholarship at all! Do you fear publication as an act of impoliteness? Are you seeing this as "do unto others..."? If so, I'd argue that is an ethically tweaked notion as well... for it precludes all action upon some a priori fear of personal harm. I prefer to let the research lead me where it may. Is this Kant's notion of "duty"?... hell if I know? Kafkaesque Castle - Lacanian Other?? If the suggestion here is to repurpose my submission to help paint Ruby into some sorry literary chiasmus - forget about it. Ruby's a human; and coyly dancing around what really happened by whom insults my sensibilities as well. I rarely 'doctor' content; I collide it with other ideas to encourage active meaning-making. I was ranting TO him about the academy, not ABOUT him as the academy. I was begging him to try and hear/see/read my work... since he gave me many of these ideas first. It would still retain the punctum of your rejection by Ruby while refocusing attention on the drama of the cultural farmer/avant-gardist attempting to communicate with an audience. * * * Alan, I left dramatic stagecraft after my theatrical career. And your point that I am, or that my work is, 'rejected' by anyone is of little importance. Rejection means nothing. (Hopefully I made Ruby think... if not, c'est la vie.) It is, however, PRECISELY BECAUSE it is Ruby speaking that this exchange has any importance at all. If I am to fabricate a text, why not make something entirely new from whole cloth? I can certainly write a fictional story better than this. Only I'm not interested in fiction... not at least until it is ignorantly called up as fact (cable news). Indeed, Ruby called me "ignorant". I take no umbrage at this. I am. But importantly, I'm not interested in telling folks they are wrong... rather to encourage critical reflexivity better known as: SELF-confrontation. Funny thing... I ADOPTED THIS STANCE FROM JAY RUBY WRITINGS. FYI: Punctum is the easiest part in visuality. However, Studium is where my greater interests lie: The interests which we show in a photograph; the desire to study and understand what the meanings are in a photograph; to explore the relationship between those constructed meanings and our own subjectivities. (See the image I made, below) If you'll agree to this--resend with the concession to Ruby's "anonymity"--I will strongly push this intro to your work on my co-editor for inclusion in the avant-garde issue. He's on vacation in Finland at the moment and can't look at this at the moment anyway, and I don't know his tastes in everything, but I think the question of taste is not so much important here as the question of risk. I will frame this as a risk that we should take with the issue. John is even more keen than I am to include streaming video content of various kinds in the issue so there is a good chance I think that I can get him to see the significance of this. * * * Ruby's anonymity? Why not leave HIS name in and CHANGE mine? Oh well, you can only do what you must; Reconstruction is your baby. From my POV, the comments you offer above bring to mind only two solutions...: The EDITORS should either reject my submission, or probably preface the whole submission with a thoughtful-softening reminder to the readers of EXACTLY what the importance 'avant-gardism' means to our crazy world. (Distribution is never let off the ethical production 'risk-hook'. Simply intimating you want to publish my submission signals complicity. Ha.) Still, maybe there is another option I am not seeing. NOTE: I've said "exactly" many times in this email, as a provocation to WORDS - to say more clearly what images cannot! At any rate, are you interested in why avant-garde sensibilities should be employed within today's academic predicament - or do you (or John Sundholm) simply want to "sex up" your issue with some, as Ruby puts it, "holy-hipster" controversial moving image content? Because if my work is indeed about 'provocation'... then I am not going to sit around and pick-and-choose, to my benefit, who and what to provoke. Indeed, mine is about 'how and why' I purposefully montage. And so, I am going to provoke whatever happens to pass before the research cross-hairs. And your helping me publish this well is affirmation of your role in the continuing idea and importance of critical surrealism. Hope you'll consider this minor modification. At any rate, I hope things go well in Australia. * * * I just did. And as for Australia... It may still not be FAR ENOUGH AWAY. Getting accepted looks grim. If it doesn't happen, I will most likely give up my PhD quest altogether. I have yet to find a 'fit' for me in academia. Maybe it's simply better to just stay home and do the work myself... alone. Time must be running short for your issue deadlines, so I understand if you are also running short on patience with these email exchanges. But, I hope not. Teach me, my friend. I need somebody out there to talk to. I look forward to your response. h  Here... I made this for you. "... punctum can be ill-bred" (1980:43).  From: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) Subject: Re: From: Holland Wilde - Sorry Date: July 22, 2008 12:00:22 PM MDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Holland, Feel free to explain why your subject heading reads "sorry"? RECAP: Most visual scholars know Nanook is 'questionable' representation. And Ruby knows better than most. (Picturing Culture, 2000). * * * This is why Ruby, not you, comes off looking so badly in the e-mail exchange. Let me put it this way, by at least making a gesture to "anonymity," it will suffer less accusation/misrepresentation of being merely a "published flame war" from an angry young 55 yo man. Those things will detract from the potentially provocative effects of the "piece." Ruby will hear about this. And he needs to. Indeed, other than being about the predicament of "surreal ethnographers," the exchange is a demonstration of shifting mediums in general. Ruby would never have said the things he did, in the off-hand, unresearched flame-war way he did if not for the nature of e-mail as a medium itself, which Ruby has fully absorbed if not acknowledged. Our nonrobotic readership is around 1500 hits per day from 110 countries. That's what's at stake, the "risk" worth, on your part, considering the rhetorical effects of. Btw, funny names like "Church University" or "Robin Emerald" would be great. We must 'read' differently for different times. And so the question I ask is how should we read today... and with what? The YouTube kid I also mashed into the video... well, he goes right on blissfully (and conveniently) interpreting - as do most photographers and (media) academics (like Ruby to me)... as if nothing has ever changed. Ruby knows better, so then what is his REAL beef? I dunno. * * * I actually thought the YouTube kid was great. To point out the fact that Nanook dies as something worth "mourning" in whatever way someone can in the here and now--that is punctum as I understand it, which is far more opaque than your characterization. If anything, one critique I would make of your approach is its attempts to deny the importance of punctum. Read Ulmer here (you already have) on the death of studium as a means (unto itself) of argument. And why not apply to the University of Florida where Ulmer teaches and where a performance-based dissertation could fly? Anyway, the combination of studium and punctum is what we are looking for, which your work testifies to. Everyone blissfully (and conveniently) interprets--thats what people do. You can't get beyond or outside rhetoric (you know this but sometimes the old "false consciousness" language seeps in), but we can change its terms--see your "statement of purpose for confirmation". THIS IS THE PURPOSE OF MY SURREAL ETHNOGRAPHY: To bust open literal, convenient (media) interpretations... to remember/engage/provoke existing theories/methodologies/methods... to confuse, confound... to encourage ACTIVE meaning-making participation. And maybe, yes maybe, even to cajole folks into MAKING THEIR OWN MEDIA. We are smart enough for polysemy. At least we better be... because polysemy is the terra cognita of visuality. (Hey I like that line.) Indeed, that is the upside (for lack of a better word) of journalistic photo-manipulation... it creates confusion - discussion - debate - and ultimately awareness during production and consumption. I would love to ask Ruby why he features the photo of himself with Zappa so predominately on his personal website. Does he want to be interpreted as cool through association?? * * * yes. Do you fear repercussion from Ruby himself? * * * Not so much that I'm not willing to consider your "piece." But while we're on the topic, let's get mystorical. I am an untenured scholar who, unlike you, does not have his financial independence sewn up. Anything but. I did what I did. I went into academia which was a bold (and potentially foolish) move for me. I am a feminist who has once been fired because of the uninvestigated and easily refuted claim of one disgruntled and disturbed student about a "hostile environment." I am suing, but I have to say that when power comes down on you like that in such forceful and irrational ways, it can fuck with your head. Fortunately she had no gun, or she probably would have used that against me as well. So, yes, repercussion is something I think about. Look, I was not writing to Ruby with publication in mind, either. There is a lot of righteous student-talk from me in those emails that I would like to omit too. But I'm not doing that either. I don't come off sounding particularly brilliant. Besides, I'm just a fucking STUDENT for chrissake... and frankly, no one will ever give a rat's ass about me or my pathetic little shitty videos - including your readers. * * * Again, I cite our readership figures and the viral nature of digital media as to who will give "a rat's ass." You come off sounding earnest and fairly brilliant, unlike Ruby. You raise several important questions in the "piece," both deliberately and inadvertently---like the question of "exhaustion." Is Ruby unfair to mention his lack of time or lack of interest with your website? This is a valid question. . . to what extent are random people like Ruby obligated to pay attention to random people like you? This is the question of the avant-garde with its potential audiences. Kafkaesque Castle - Lacanian Other?? If the suggestion here is to repurposed my submission to help paint Ruby into some sorry literary chiasmus - forget about it. Ruby's a human; and coyly dancing around what really happened by whom insults my sensibilities as well. I rarely 'doctor' content; I collide it with other ideas to encourage active meaning-making. I was ranting TO him about the academy, not ABOUT him as the academy. I was begging him to try and hear/see/read my work... since he gave me many of these ideas first. * * * Montage is 'doctoring' content. You doctor content more radically than the doctors, which is your strength not your weakness, as it foregrounds the "rhetorical" nature of all images etc. So you don't like my allusions. They are both historically and _politically_ pertinent. But there is no accounting for taste. Alan, I left dramatic stagecraft after my theatrical career. And your point that I am, or that my work is, 'rejected' by anyone is of little importance. Rejection means nothing. (Hopefully I made Ruby think... if not, c'est la vie.) It is, however, PRECISELY BECAUSE it is Ruby speaking that this exchange has any importance at all. If I am to fabricate a text, why not make something entirely new from whole cloth? I can certainly write a fictional story better than this. Only I'm not interested in fiction... not at least until it is ignorantly called up as fact (cable news). * * * Again, I'm somewhat disturbed by the implications of this fact/fiction, "false-consciousness"/"truth" dichotomy. You are not interested in drama or fabrication? That's your MO. Embrace it for what it is. There is no outside of rhetoric. And that is not postmodern nihilism but the beginning of viable political critique of any fabric. The interests which we show in a photograph; the desire to study and understand what the meanings are in a photograph; to explore the relationship between those constructed meanings and our own subjectivities. * * * Roland Barthes and I would suggest that the above, invested as it is with "interest" and "desire," cannot be dissected from punctum--at least not any way that is rhetorically/politically effective. Indeed, I would say that your work is heavily invested in punctum which is a good thing. But hey, I could be wrong. (Distribution is never let off the ethical production 'risk-hook'. Simply intimating you want to publish my submission signals complicity. Ha.) Still, maybe there is another option I am not seeing. * * * The other option is the one I suggested--and to not be so goddamned uncompromising all the time. But, whatever, if Reconstruction is my baby, your submission is yours. Because if my work is indeed about 'provocation'... then I am not going to sit around and pick-and-choose, to my benefit, who and what to provoke. Indeed, mine is about 'how and why' I purposefully montage. And so, I am going to provoke whatever happens to pass before the research cross-hairs. And your helping me publish this well is affirmation of your role in the continuing idea and importance of critical surrealism. * * * Then do it to my benefit, if you are feeling charitable. Of course you choose who and what to provoke, we live montage as much as we make it. And, as suggested above, some of us enter the "cross-hairs" with less body armor than others. I am not your enemy. Time must be running short for your issue deadlines, so I understand if you are also running short on patience with these email exchanges. But, I hope not. Teach me, my friend. I need somebody out there to talk to!! * * * Don't we all. Perhaps we can teach each other. . . Alan P.S. As a sign of good will, I'll let you have the last "quoted" word below. "... punctum can be ill-bred" (1980:43).  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: From: Holland Wilde - Re: Gurgitate Date: July 22, 2008 1:55:35 PM MDT To: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) On Jul 22, 2008, at 12:00 PM, Alan Clinton wrote: ...and to not be so goddamned uncompromising all the time. ******** Dr. Alan Clinton, hahahaha... so true. Ya got me. And now that you do... you will find me fiercely loyal - - the same passion you will need to defend me soon. Consider your request done. All will arrive to you shortly. peace out. h PS......: (Montage is not 'doctoring content'. It is content creation. There is little attempt by me to somehow make the content I use better, healthier, or healed. (Heal thyself!) I am making an entirely new monster with old body parts. But maybe I should experiment anew.) ********* ********* On Jul 22, 2008, at 12:00 PM, Alan Clinton wrote to Holland Wilde: And why not apply to the University of Florida where Ulmer teaches and where a performance-based dissertation could fly? ********* On Tue Feb 12 02:49:20 EST 2008, Holland Wilde wrote Gregory Ulmer: Gregory Ulmer, Greetings. Well, I'm just about at my wit(tgenstein)'s end. I'm thinking about dropping out of my PhD studies. Norman Denzin, David MacDougall, Doug Harper, James Clifford, George Marcus, all the surrealists, the early Russian filmmakers, James Elkins, Martin Jay, Derrida, et al... I mean, I'm trying here... but... Regardless of pun, parody, wit, oralysis, bricolage, bliss-sense, Joyce's 'feelfulthinkamalinks'.....TELETHEORY... Still my work falls on deaf eyes. How will anyone ever smell my project as scholarship when so few want to join me in the kitchen? Here, I made this silly 2minute "monster text" for you, just now: http://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/0extras/Wittgenstein_Miranda/Gregory_Ulmer.htm Maybe you'll respond in some depth. Maybe not at all. I'm figuring Ludwig would "lean forward" during the second half of the video. I sure do. peace, - hw ********** On Feb 12, 2008, at 6:42 AM, Gregory Ulmer wrote to Holland Wilde: Hello HW thanks for that Wittanda morph. I like it. Perhaps you know my own theoretical effort along the same lines: "The Miranda Warnings," in Hypertext and Theory, Ed. George Landow, Johns Hopkins, 1995: 345-377. In any case, what can I say: in graduate school I didn't get to do any of things I liked to do, but then I didn't know what they were exactly. I wrote a completely conventional and forgettable dissertation. I wasn't hired to invent electracy. My advice is: get the PhD in the usual way. Get a position somewhere, and start morphing the institution from within. best regards Greg Ulmer ********** ... too like Ruby... so I gave up on Ulmer as well. hw  From: holland@culturalfarming.com Subject: From: Holland Wilde - Robin Emerald Date: July 25, 2008 3:59:56 PM MDT To: reconstruction.submissions@gmail.com (Alan Clinton) On Jul 22, 2008, at 12:00 PM, Alan Clinton wrote: Perhaps we can teach each other. . . ******** AC, Greetings. Here is what you requested - Jay Ruby changed to Robin Emerald. (attached) Do with it as you will: However, if Reconstruction were my journal... I might 'publish' this series of email exchanges instead. Good luck and keep me posted, my friend. I have truly appreciated, enjoyed and learned from our conversations. I gravitate to your kind of scholarship. Thank you for this opportunity. Time will tell how all is received. Warmest regards, hw    NOTE #3: On 06/09, almost a year after the last email above, the digital journal Reconstruction finally published Issue 9.2. I am unhappy with the outcome. I understand now it is almost always better to self-publish exactly what happened, all that happened, as it happened... and to do it here on my own work site.   ...but of course, being an eternal optimist, I thought maybe I could do better next time, with yet another issue of Reconstruction... So, I reached out again. I was wrong.   On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 5:10 PM, Holland <holland@culturalfarming.com> wrote: Nate Hinerman and Michael Benton, Greetings. As stated in Reconstruction:  "Please send proposals, abstracts, completed essays, multimedial performances, etc... We also welcome perspectives that interrogate the stability of meaning(s) assigned to such terms ("culture," "religion," "popular," etc.) and their complex inter-relations." My scholarship - media (re)mix as critical ethnographic surrealism - is different.  I write with video, sounds and words. Here is the link to my research site: http://www.culturalfarming.com Here is the link to my bio: http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?holland_wilde Here are two links as 'manuscript' submission for Reconstruction 10.1: Graven Image  (16:15) http://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/79_Image%20Stain.mov Hungry for More  (1:45): http://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/74_Hungry%20For%20More.mov Please feel free to contact me at any time. Warm regards, Holland Wilde  From: religionculture@gmail.com Subject: Re: From: Holland Wilde - Reconstruction 10.1: Religion and Popular Culture Date: February 1, 2009 9:53:55 AM MST To: holland@culturalfarming.com Holland, I am very interested in multimedia projects and appreciate your attempts to map out the stream of media images, however, in this issue we are seeking critical analysis of these images.  Your multimedia presentations "alone" would not be enough as a submission, you would need to provide a critical framework, a manifesto, and/or artistic statement about the mashup videos.    Would you be willing to do this and how many of these videos are you planning on compiling for the presentation?   What is your overarching theme?    Feel free to call me if you want to speak to me directly or email me a response.   Michael Benton 859-948-0359  From: religionculture@gmail.com Subject: Re: From: Holland Wilde - Reconstruction 10.1: Religion and Popular Culture Date: February 1, 2009 9:59:19 AM MST To: holland@culturalfarming.com Also... Holland--are you planning to do one longer piece (like your cultural framing series) or a series of short ones (the two examples you sent).  I like the artist introductions and theoretical quotations to your longer pieces--what I was thinking... I will have to wait to check out  the longer works when I get back to the college tomorrow as my home computer is not loading them quick enough ... Michael Benton  From: holland@culturalfarming.com Date: February 2, 2009 9:25:58 AM MST To: religionculture@gmail.com On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Michael Benton <religionculture@gmail.com> wrote: Holland, I am very interested in multimedia projects and appreciate your attempts to map out the stream of media images, however, in this issue we are seeking critical analysis of these images.  Would you be willing to do this and how many of these videos are you planning on compiling for the presentation? ** Michael Benton, Greetings, and thank you for your reply.  Here are your words: "We also welcome perspectives that interrogate the stability of meaning(s) assigned to such terms ("culture," "religion," "popular," etc.), and their complex inter-relations." Ethnographic montage is critical analysis -- and bracketed by an overarching body of literature from early Russian film, to anthropological documentary, through absurdist theatre, including typical production/dissemination found throughout all contemporary television.  My work - my videos - ARE critical writings that "interrogate" exactly as you request.   Your multimedia presentations "alone" would not be enough as a submission, you would need to provide a critical framework, a manifesto, and/or artistic statement about the mashup videos.  ** This is not my concern, it is yours.  I GAVE you my work -- two videos that pertain exactly to your Call.  Do with them as you will.    ....or are you insisting alternative scholarly writing forms and styles, for instance video, are simply insufficient for or incapable of academic rigor, review and publication.  ...manifesto? ...ha. What is your overarching theme? ** Again, my 'theme' is your theme.  You called, I responded. Feel free to call me if you want to speak to me directly or email me a response. Michael Benton 859-948-0359 Let me know what you think. hw  From: religionculture@gmail.com Subject: Re: From: Holland Wilde - Reconstruction 10.1 Date: February 16, 2009 9:49:26 PM MST To: holland@culturalfarming.com, nphinerman@gmail.com Holland, no problem, if you are too lazy to think about your efforts, then you can hardly expect anyone else to attempt to take you seriously... I find it, as is, laughably weak and pathetic, but then different strokes for different folks. I hope you enjoy masturbating... Michael Benton   NOTE #4: During the 108th American Anthropological Association conference in Philadelphia in December 2009, I briefly, yet publicly, recounted my Jay Ruby exchange during my session presentation. I did so, precisely because I needed personal closure on anthropology’s turf, and because I hoped Ruby himself might indeed attend. Jay Ruby did attend the conference, but not my session. I passed Ruby in the hotel hallways many times during conference proceedings. He looked old, wizened, ill. I dearly wanted to approach him, to introduce myself, to remind him how much his work informed mine, and to thank him. But I did not. I doubt I will ever have the opportunity again.   UPDATE: Well, it has been over eight years now since the above exchanges. Much has happened to me. My work has expanded and contracted many times. I am now taking time to deeply re-reading some of my oldest projects, like this one. Even today, this entire episode leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would still be honored to just have one chance to speak with Jay Ruby and thank him for his important work. So I figured, why not now. I’ll just reach out, one last time, if he is indeed still alive. So I did:  From: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) Subject: Visual Anthropology Date: July 12, 2016 5:29:30 PM To: ethnographic@embarqmail.com> (Jay Ruby) Well, Jay, it's been eight years, I guess.  Maybe you've cooled down from our last email exchange.  Ha. Hopefully today you feel up to taking another swing at my experimental ethnography.  But again, maybe not.  And so it goes.   All I can do is offer: UNDERSTANDING TELEVISION Regardless, I would like to thank you for your works. Holland Wilde bio  From: ethnographic@embarqmail.com> (Jay Ruby) Subject: My Reply Date: July 12, 2016 5:48:36 AM EDT To: holland@culturalfarming.com (Holland Wilde) I am sorry but I have no memory of a dispute with you.  In fact, I have no memory of you at all.  I took a once over lightly look at your work.  You are apparently unaware that several years ago, I left the field of visual anthropology as I saw little of interest there.  My two immediate reactions to your vast, wandering web site is first, I see nothing there that would qualify as being what I would call ethnography.  The term has been appropriated by media scholars in a way I find annoying.  Second, why do you avoid explaining who you are, qualifications, etc. I am far too busy with my own work to take the time to explore your web site but my impression is that it is probably nothing that would interest me. Given the nature of your email, I would expect an argumentative response to my email.  Don't bother as I am uninterested to engaging you in a debate. Good bye Jay Rubymailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:alanclinton@earthlink.nethttp://www.culturalfarming.commailto:alanclinton@earthlink.netmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ruby@temple.eduhttp://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/ruby/mailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ethnographic@earthlink.nethttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/bouleversement.htmmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:ethnographic@EARTHLINK.NETmailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ethnographic@earthlink.nethttp://www.culturalfarming.comhttp://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=2bjqYPH7rAo&feature=relatedmailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.comhttp://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?holland_wildemailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ethnographic@EMBARQMAIL.COMmailto:VISCOM@LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDUmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ethnographic@earthlink.nethttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Extras/Wilde_ZAPOOK.movmailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:holland@culturalfarming.comhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Extras/Wilde_ZAPOOK.movmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.comhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Extras/Wilde_ZAPOOK.movhttp://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewArticle/251/234mailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.comhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Extras/unchien%20analog.movhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/53_Leave%20Britney%20AloneX.movhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/53_Leave%20Britney%20AloneX.movmailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.comhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/0extras/Wittgenstein_Miranda/Gregory_Ulmer.htmhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/0extras/Wittgenstein_Miranda/Gregory_Ulmer.htmmailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:reconstruction.submissions@gmail.comhttp://reconstruction.eserver.org/092/contents092.shtmlmailto:holland@culturalfarming.comhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?holland_wildehttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/79_Image%20Stain.movhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/79_Image%20Stain.movhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/74_Hungry%20For%20More.movhttp://www.culturalfarming.com/Civic%20Media/74_Hungry%20For%20More.movmailto:religionculture@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:religionculture@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:religionculture@gmail.commailto:religionculture@gmail.commailto:religionculture@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:nphinerman@gmail.commailto:holland@culturalfarming.commailto:ethnographic@earthlink.nethttp://www.understandingtelevision.com/http://www.understandingtelevision.com/Understanding_Television/BIO.htmlmailto:ethnographic@earthlink.netmailto:holland@culturalfarming.comshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5shapeimage_1_link_6shapeimage_1_link_7shapeimage_1_link_8shapeimage_1_link_9shapeimage_1_link_10shapeimage_1_link_11shapeimage_1_link_12shapeimage_1_link_13shapeimage_1_link_14shapeimage_1_link_15shapeimage_1_link_16shapeimage_1_link_17shapeimage_1_link_18shapeimage_1_link_19shapeimage_1_link_20shapeimage_1_link_21shapeimage_1_link_22shapeimage_1_link_23shapeimage_1_link_24shapeimage_1_link_25shapeimage_1_link_26shapeimage_1_link_27shapeimage_1_link_28shapeimage_1_link_29shapeimage_1_link_30shapeimage_1_link_31shapeimage_1_link_32shapeimage_1_link_33shapeimage_1_link_34shapeimage_1_link_35shapeimage_1_link_36shapeimage_1_link_37shapeimage_1_link_38shapeimage_1_link_39shapeimage_1_link_40shapeimage_1_link_41shapeimage_1_link_42shapeimage_1_link_43shapeimage_1_link_44shapeimage_1_link_45shapeimage_1_link_46shapeimage_1_link_47shapeimage_1_link_48shapeimage_1_link_49shapeimage_1_link_50shapeimage_1_link_51shapeimage_1_link_52shapeimage_1_link_53shapeimage_1_link_54shapeimage_1_link_55shapeimage_1_link_56shapeimage_1_link_57shapeimage_1_link_58shapeimage_1_link_59shapeimage_1_link_60shapeimage_1_link_61shapeimage_1_link_62shapeimage_1_link_63shapei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Holland Wilde: WHITE


Alan Clinton: YELLOW


Jay Ruby

RED


Gregory Ulmer

BROWN


"Robin Emerald"    GREEN


Michael Benton

VIOLET

July  2008



   

   

HOLLAND WILDE:

An American

resident in Canada, experimenting with new forms of critical media ethnography in Cultural Farming.

 

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