Electronic Knowings

Abstract

Through short essay films, Christine Rogers and Catherine Gough-Brady, creative practice researchers and filmmakers, attempt to collaborate with each other and the theories of ethnographers and documentarians David and Judith MacDougall. Christine and Catherine use the writing and films of the MacDougall’s as prompts to turn their attention to the processes of filming. Christine speaks to how holding the camera viewfinder to her face can manufacture belonging, and at other times, provide welcome distancing. Catherine explores observational filmmaking as a methodology that can applied to other endeavours, for instance academia. Alongside this, Catherine uses this film to explore how to create a visual dialogue (or collaboration) between filmic elements within the film. Because of their divergent responses the final works by Christine and Catherine become related rather than collaborative. They reveal that this may result from them both allowing research questions to arise as part of their independent creative processes, rather than being set at the outset.