Documentary Representation Research Articles

Classifying Musical Medium of Performance: Object or Property?

ABSTRACT: How best to classify musical medium of performance? We welcome the advice and expertise of the community of Notes readers to inform our deliberations. Specifically, when referring to the sources of musical sound, should we be describing the objects (e.g., aerophone), the properties (e.g., piccolo), or some combination of the two? The Institute for Knowledge Organization and Structure convened a research group to discuss “the phenomena of music for classification.” What does it mean to classify the phenomena of music rather than musical documents or documents containing texts about music? How might we represent music apart from its documentary representations (scores, recordings, etc.)? We considered the Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus (LCMPT) and Hornbostel-Sachs (H-S) classification. The universal Basic Concepts Classification (BCC) is interdisciplinary and is organized around phenomena (things), relators (the relationships that exist among phenomena), and the properties that phenomena and relators may possess. We sought a comprehensive classification of medium of performance for the BCC. H-S focuses on the physical nature of instruments and how they make sound, the LCMPT effectively identifies specific instruments by name. H-S does not provide the level of granularity that we need but LCMPT’s larger set of terms are organized with only a few layers of hierarchy. H-S avoids local nomenclature, LCMPT embraces it. The two are attractive because they provide well-developed vocabulary and because their differences manifest as different strengths for a Semantic Web application. Ultimately our analysis reaches no specific conclusion. Instead, we have reflected thoroughly on the panoply of phenomena associated with the representation of medium of performance as phenomena of music in nondocumentary contexts.

Cinema of Rupture: Urbicide, Eastern European Rubble Films, and the Documentary Impulse

AbstractCurrently in Ukraine, and previously in conflicts such as the Bosnian War (1992–96), local film collectives have expanded the mediation of wars to include the perspectives of those close to their subjects, foregrounding the participation of filmmakers in the wartime urban setting. In the 1990s, during the four‐year‐long siege of Bosnia’s capital, the collective Sarajevo Group of Artists (SAGA) produced sixty films of varying lengths, many of which included footage of destroyed buildings. Since 2014, several Ukrainian video projects and collectives, including Babylon’13, Freefilmers, War Against War, and Thickets (Khashchi), have made films documenting various aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although there is no evidence of direct influence, structural and contextual similarities make SAGA an important earlier model for Ukrainian collectives of local filmmakers determined to define the consequences and experiences of war from the perspective of those with personal stakes in the conflict. This essay comparatively examines the creative wartime documentaries of Bosnian and Ukrainian film collectives specifically to consider how filmmakers with close personal connections to conflicts produce documentary representations of wartime destruction

The Status of CIF Contracts between the Sale of Goods and the Sale of Documents

The intricate nature of international trade is encapsulated in the complexities of CIF (Cost, Insurance, and Freight) contracts, which stand at the intersection of the sale of goods and the sale of documents. This paper seeks to dissect the pivotal roles played by documents and goods within CIF contracts and to ascertain whether these contracts are more accurately defined as sales of documents rather than sales of goods. By examining legal cases and dissecting the contractual obligations of parties involved in CIF contracts, this study aims to shed light on the essence of these contracts in the context of international law and trade practices.
 The research is divided into four main parts. Initially, it analyzes the duties of parties and the role of CIF documents in the sale of goods. The second part delves into the implications of documents and goods concerning the transfer of risk and property, probing into the critical claim of documents. The third part scrutinizes the buyer's right to refuse the documents or the goods, and which aspect takes precedence. The fourth part evaluates the claim that CIF contracts made en route are essentially 'sales of documents'.
 This study culminates by presenting arguments on the nature of CIF contracts, weighing the significance of documents against the goods themselves. Despite the increasing tendency to use documents to represent physical goods in trade, this paper concludes that CIF contracts inherently constitute contracts for the sale of goods. It highlights the distinctive rights related to the rejection of either documents or goods, thereby reinforcing the primacy of the actual goods over their documentary representations in CIF contracts.

Co‐temporality and Sovremennost': Late Imperial and Early Soviet Photographs

Co‐temporality and <i>Sovremennost'</i>: Late Imperial and Early Soviet Photographs

Social aesthetics and an unreliable narrator: engaging with homelessness in Cities of Sleep

ABSTRACT How can documentary film overcome ‘engagement at a distance' to perceptively express urban experience? In this article, I examine modes of sensory mode of spectatorial engagement in Cities of Sleep (Dir: Shaunak Sen, 2015) to foreground the place of the body and lived experience in portraying homelessness in Delhi. Drawing upon the concept of social aesthetics that recognises the perception of culturally patterned responses produced in socio-cultural environments as a form of knowledge about the world, I make two arguments. A corporeal focus on the sensuous body conveys urbanisms translated into effect, sensation, and behaviour that invite bodily connections with the documentary's traditional outsiders and victims. Next, by revealing individual negotiations with subjectivity, the film dismantles the notion of unified on-screen subjectivities to challenge audience expectations of a stable self in documentary representation. Instead, subjectivities are shown to respond to social experience, and everyday encounters, revealing a terrain of power relations experienced corporeally and emotionally. Political meaning, therefore, I contend derives not so much from the verifiable value of evidence or documentary transparency but from the act of feeling, sensing and perceiving which attempts to collapse our distance from a represented subject and world ‘out there’.

WAR AND HERITAGE: EXPERIENCE OF PRESERVING CULTURAL IDENTITY

The culture and conflicts have always been intertwined throughout the history of humanity. During armed conflicts, deliberate targeting of cultural heritage sites takes place. The aggressor's goal is not only the occupation of lands but also the imposition of a different ideology and the erasure of historical memory. As cultural heritage is a component of cultural identity, it can also be directly attacked for ideological reasons, as we can observe in Ukraine. Disrespect for another's cultural space manifests itself in the deliberate destruction of historical structures and monuments, the theft of artworks, the burning of archives and libraries, and the destruction of architectural and urban spaces. The preservation of cultural heritage in the context of armed conflicts is one of the most challenging tasks within the spectrum of global conservation efforts. The inadequacy or absence of preventive measures in accordance with the 1954 UNESCO Convention is a significant obstacle to the effective preservation of cultural heritage during times of war. Now it is essential to study global experiences in preserving cultural treasures in situations of armed conflicts to find ways to address the conservation challenge, Redefining and emphasizing national and local cultural identity, as well as reflecting memory in restoration projects in Ukraine. The aim of the article is to analyze global experiences in post-conflict cultural heritage restoration and propose principles for preserving cultural identity during the reconstruction phase in Ukraine after the war. During the heritage restoration phase in Ukraine, within the framework of urban restoration projects (revalorization, regeneration), it is crucial to focus on experiences from situations of armed conflicts. More attention should be given to post-conflict memory in restoration projects. Based on the analysis of literary sources and field studies, we propose five principles that can be applied during the post-conflict reconstruction phase: "Immortalization of Memory", "Global Identification", "Documentary Representation", "Museification, Symbolic Marking", "Interpretation". Among international projects and implementations, there are various approaches, including those with opposing views on the preservation of cultural identity, which align with the proposed principles of іmmortalization of memory and global identification.

Fascist space and film: spatial practice and ideology in El Valle de los Caídos (1963) and La sombra de la cruz (2013)

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how film reproduces and/or contests the spatial practices of the most emblematic fascist monument in Spain, the Valley of the Fallen. I focus on two documentary representations of the monument made by foreigners, Hollywood director Andrew Marton’s El Valle de los Caídos (1963) and Italian Alessandro Pugno’s La sombra de la cruz (2013). I analyze how montage and cinematography tell a story of a Francoist space in two distinct moments in time. Though products of considerably different historical and social contexts, both documentaries tell a similar narrative of a monk who joins the Benedictine order located in the Valley, and both works seek to translate a national Spanish essence to a wider audience through a cinematic representation of a symbolic space. Marton’s film, a product of Samuel Bronston Productions, is a performance of the spatial aspirations and ideals of the Franco regime: we observe a “will to architecture” and a desire to create or recreate what Lefebvre calls “absolute space” through long shots and a filmic-cartographic aviator gaze. In the contemporary film La sombra de la cruz (2013), the gaze is dissonant and full of temporal and spatial contrasts, revealing the fragility, frictional core and threat of fascist spatial practice and ideology. Ultimately, this article reflects on the legacy of Francoist space in Spain and how the filmic gaze has evolved in response.

Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century

Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century

Emergence: Documents in Crisis

This essay suggests the etymologies of emergence, emergency, and crisis create a useful framework for theorizing documents. Indeed, the overlapping semantic associations of the words allow for the idea that documents emerge in crisis. The semantic overlap also allows a means for theorizing how documents descend into crisis. Theorizing documents in crisis, the essay argues, usefully complements documentalist theories of documentary representation suggested by thinkers like Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet, as well newer conceptualizations of documentality as conceived by Michael Buckland and Maurizio Ferraris and documentarity as described by Ronald Day.

The Emperor at the Council. Imperial Interventions in Late Antique Church Councils in Literary Sources and Documentary Records

Abstract This paper examines the modes of imperial interactions with Church councils, focusing on the emperor’s participation in episcopal meetings and its representation in late antique sources, both literary and documentary. The author argues that the availability and strategic dissemination of conciliar records could affect, for better or worse, the understanding of the imperial religious policy and attitude towards Church institutions. This is most clearly illustrated by Marcian’s behaviour at Chalcedon, and by the active steps he took to produce an official and imperially endorsed edition of the conciliar acts. The significance of Marcian’s initiatives emerges more clearly when placed in the context of developing practices with respect to conciliar procedure (and the imperial role therein) and the circulation of conciliar information. After considering possible precedents in both these fields, the article reconstructs the early circulation and reception of the Chalcedonian acts, focusing particularly on the records of the sixth session, which was presided by the emperor himself. The author discusses the role played by the imperial initiative at the council and in its aftermath, and how it contributed to shape the reception of Marcian’s image as a Christian ruler.

Authenticity, power and the case record: A textual analysis of the participation of children and young people in their child protection conference

AbstractThis paper adds to the limited evidence base around documentary representation of the wishes, feelings and views of children and young people involved in the child protection system. It presents the findings of a critical discourse analysis of 114 documents relating to 28 children and young people in the North of England who were the subject of a child protection conference (CPC) due to having experienced significant harm or the high likelihood of significant harm occurring. Three dominant and interlayering discourses were identified: a discourse of childhood, a discourse of participation and a discourse of professional social work practice. While some children and young people came to life in the reports and were afforded a unique identity, others were invisible and their views were marginalized. The findings support a dominant discourse of the unseen and unheard child, with participation normally mediated by power relationships between adults and children, and which marginalizes the experiences of children through a structurally constructed lens of risk and vulnerability. The findings signify the need to establish assessment practices and case reporting systems in which children are heard themselves as well as reported on by others.

Diversity in Representations and Voices of Terminally Ill People in End-of-Life Documentaries.

Background: The 21st century has seen a proliferation of end-of-life documentary films and television documentaries that contribute to building a public image of hospice and palliative care. The way in which terminally ill patients are represented in these documentaries creates impressions of who is welcomed to receive end-of-life care. These documentary representations have not been previously mapped. Methods: Using quantitative content analysis, I analyzed 35 contemporary Western documentaries and studied their diversity in the representations. I focused on terminally ill patients who are given time and space in the narration to voice their views about the end-of-life process. I paid attention to such elements as gender, race and ethnicity, age, class, religion and sexuality. Results: The documentaries welcomed the representations and voices of terminally ill people. Class, religion and sexuality often had a marginal role in narration. The gender diversity of the representations was quite balanced. Regarding age, the documentaries preferred stories about working age patients for dramatic purposes, yet all age groups were represented. However, the documentaries had an identifiable racial and ethnic bias. With a few exceptions, terminally ill who had a personal voice in the narrations were white. In comparison, racial and ethnic minorities were either absent from most of the documentaries, or their role was limited to illustrations of the general story. Conclusions: End-of-life documentaries provide identifiable access to the patients’ experiences and as such they provide emotionally and personally engaging knowledge about hospice and palliative care. While these representations are people-oriented, they include racial disparities and they focus mostly on the experiences of white terminally ill patients. This bias reinforces the misleading image of hospice and palliative care as a racialized healthcare service.

Seeing “Apostates” Clearly: Reconsidering the Legitimacy of Ex-Member Testimony in Documentary Representations of Scientology

ABSTRACT This article analyzes popular and academic reviews of the book and film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief in relation to scholarly debates over the status of “apostate” testimony in the study of New Religious Movements (NRMs). Using a Foucauldian discourse analysis – an examination of contested statements of “truth” – it accounts for the significance of ex-member testimony in recent Scientology exposés and argues the tendency to dismiss such testimony as automatically unreliable needs to be reassessed. Using these exposés and the debate surrounding them as a case study, we can see that considering ex-member testimony as disputed but productive discourse, documentary and journalistic representations of controversial new religions can operate as important sources of information, helping us better map a larger discursive domain wherein allegations of harm intermix with claims of benefit in remarkably complicated ways.

A Turbulent Path: Constructing Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in Hegemonic Documentary Film

ABSTRACT The death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was accompanied by startling revelations concerning the strategies employed by the apartheid state in the (un)making of her political image. This commentary considers how documentary representation of Madikizela-Mandela derailed her political ambitions in the context of the new post-apartheid hegemony, and confused the manner in which her responses to apartheid-era trauma were represented in collective memory. In the documentaries under discussion, Madikizela-Mandela is portrayed in contradictory poses: as a powerful, internationally renowned female leader and as a deranged tyrant. Arguably, such representations capture aspects of South Africa’s “difficult past” which the ANC-led government sought to manage. Given this context, this essay explores the ways in which representations of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela be viewed as a site for remembering and forgetting. And how are her individual acts of memorialising apartheid’s trauma to be received.

Los modos del cine documental. Análisis de tres modelos

El presente trabajo es un estudio teórico que compara los modos de representación documental proporcionados por Bill Nichols, Michael Renov y John Corner. Estos paradigmas corresponden al auge de los estudios sobre el documental de inicios de los años noventa del siglo veinte y han devenido matrices prominentes a partir de las cuales se reinterpreta la estética fílmica y la historia del documental. La revisión crítica que se propone aquí incluye el análisis de algunos ejemplos puntuales del cine documental cubano producidos por el Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) entre 1959 y 1991. Los tres modelos clasificatorios que se siguen identifican fondos teóricos diferentes sobre el que proyectan la imagen del documental, por esa razón, este estudio defiende la triangulación de sus cuerpos categoriales ante el examen de volúmenes significativos de documentales.

다큐멘터리 재현양식의 변화와 변주

다큐멘터리 재현양식의 변화와 변주

Между правдой и вымыслом: проблема свидетельства в документальных фильмах Криса Маркера

The article brings forward the analytics of documentary representation strategies used by Chris Marker in his nonfiction films. The cinematographic work of a famous French director is explored in its connection with the overall process of evolution of nonfiction films. Based on the transformation of the very idea of veracity, Marker’s cinema is described and analyzed as a radical way to overcome the politics of documentary representation expressed in expository mode films. Transforming the structure of a documentary image through re-distribution of verbal and visual, Marker manages to create a specific form of cinematographic evidence.This new type of evidence is placed within spectator’s experience; spectator’s memory and affectivity are involved into the structure of evidence and the spectator becomes responsible for veracity or non-veracity of an image. The analysis of Marker’s film work involves the theoretical concepts of documentary representation modes by Bill Nichols and the idea of distribution of the sensible by Jacques Ranciere. The films analyzed include Lettre de Siberie, Sans Soleil and Le Tombeau d’Alexandre.

A INVENÇÃO DO ARQUIVO PESSOAL DE SANTOS DUMONT

O trabalho objetiva discutir como se deu a constituição do que hoje se conhece como o Arquivo Pessoal de Santos Dumont. O referido conjunto documental foi doado ao Centro de Documentação da Aeronáutica (CENDOC), Organização Militar (OM) do Comando da Aeronáutica (COMAER), em 2004 e é constituído por 2716 unidades documentais, sendo 764 documentos iconográficos e 1,57 metros lineares de documentos textuais, reunidos pelo pai da Aviação até 1932, além dos acréscimos selecionados pelo Brigadeiro Lavenère-Wanderley, na década de 1960. Esse conjunto documental, apesar de não ser fruto das funções e atividades desenvolvidas por Dumont, é representativo de sua trajetória numa perspectiva pessoal, visto que esse conjunto fora acumulado a partir de clippings ora solicitados por Santos Dumont. No nível de conteúdo, os documentos refletem suas atividades. Esse conjunto hoje possui, portanto, força de representação documental sobre a vida de Santos Dumont e apresenta documentos provenientes da ação do Santos Dumont de agregar registros sobre sua vida. A pesquisa se fundamentou em problematizar o processo de constituição do conjunto documental que hoje é considerado o arquivo pessoal de Santos Dumont. Nesse sentido buscou-se, através de diálogos com a teoria arquivística, descrever a história arquivística do acervo, a fim de comparar o processo de produção desse arquivo com o de um arquivo pessoal. Espera-se, com este trabalho, demonstrar que, apesar não podermos considerá-lo, no sentido canônico da definição, um arquivo pessoal, este é sim o arquivo pessoal de Santos Dumont, a partir da história arquivística apresentada.

Política de indexação no contexto da política arquivística de preservação digital do Centro de Documentação e Memória da UNESP – CEDEM

Resumo: O acesso e recuperação de documentos da memória social brasileira é necessário para comprovar a identidade de movimentos político-sociais brasileiros. Para isso, existe uma logística operacional que envolve estratégias metodológicas da arquivística, da indexação, de interoperabilidade tecnológica e de preservação digital. A união dessas estratégias necessita planejamento mediante elaboração de política de indexação para representação documental com finalidade de precisão e revocação na recuperação. Este trabalho, de característica ensaística, propõe uma abordagem sobre as relações existentes entre as políticas de gestão documental e de indexação com o objetivo de refletir sobre a aplicabilidade da elaboração e implementação da política de indexação no âmbito arquivístico do Centro de Documentação e Memória da Unesp. A análise de uma política de indexação realizou-se com a avaliação do contexto da instituição mediante requisitos para a definição de elementos e variáveis influentes tanto na indexação quanto na recuperação. Entre os resultados destacam-se a necessidade de uso de vocabulário controlado e a sistematização do processo de indexação que propiciarão especificidade e/ou exaustividade. Considera-se que os resultados desta análise ensaística têm inovação porque proporciona visão gerencial à sistemas de recuperação da informação e de recursos informacionais em suporte digital para o contínuo aprimoramento dos métodos e instrumentos de representação documental direcionados ao contexto arquivístico.

Potencialidades das visitas técnicas na docência universitária

A prática educativa realizada nas instituições de ensino superior representa uma atividade louvável, sobretudo por proporcionar, sobremaneira, a formação profissional. Embora constitua um fazer de suma importância, desafios não deixam de permear a docência universitária, o que requer a constante reformação dos métodos de ensino adotados nas salas de aula. Portanto, este texto aborda o potencial das visitas técnicas, consideradas como métodos inovadores de ensino, e os reflexos por elas promovidos quando aplicadas em disciplinas de cunho técnico-operacional, no Curso Superior de Biblioteconomia. Também apresenta fundamentos teóricos sobre docência universitária, algumas características das visitas técnicas e reflexões a respeito do ensino superior de Biblioteconomia - com foco nas disciplinas de Representação documentária. Trata-se de um estudo descritivo, de natureza qualitativa, sendo conduzido por meio de uma pesquisa participante realizada em duas disciplinas de Biblioteconomia: Representação Descritiva I e II, cuja técnica utilizada na coleta de dados foi a observação direta. A fim de fortalecer as evidências coletadas, o estudo também estabelece diálogos com a literatura, por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica. Constatou-se que as visitas técnicas funcionam como instrumentos pedagógicos que provocam a motivação e engajamento dos participantes com o aprendizado, como também promovem a identificação e a visibilidade das práticas de catalogação em acervos bibliográficos. Em síntese, as visitas muito contribuem com o lecionamento de disciplinas técnicas, como a catalogação de documentos, proporcionando a fusão entre teoria e prática; entre sala de aula e mercado de trabalho.