INTRODUCTION
CAN EVERYONE TURN THEIR CAMERA ON
It was in one of the online meetings that we had so many of, the past eighteen months. With the Artistic Research Week in sight, we discussed with the 11 researchers graduating this year what title would work as an umbrella term for all of their different research projects. Many relevant suggestions were made. Among them: ‘transitions’, ‘acts of transformation’, ‘methods of intimacy’, ‘turbulences’, ‘how to think the future’. And then someone suggested ‘Can Everyone Turn Their Camera On’… That was it, all agreed. A multi-layered phrase, playful, yet serious. Referring not just to Zoom meetings or our increasing reliance on technology more generally, but also, of course, to the different uses of the camera for researchers ‘in and through cinema’. What do we film, where and when do we film, how do we film, and most importantly: why do we film? Do we turn our cameras on to document and observe or to provoke, or perhaps to heal? What political, ethical and epistemological choices and questions are involved when we’re using our cameras – or more broadly our medium – as a research tool? True, ‘Can everyone turn their camera on’ is not a term that will withstand the test of time, but that ‘datedness’ is precisely what makes it interesting. It marks a moment in time, and one that has had enormous impact – on the researchers and on their research. It meant that some of the researchers, for financial and family reasons, had to move back to their home country, for others that it put their shooting plans on hold (almost permanently), while for all it meant a confrontation with the fundamental question of why to make art, and for whom. It’s no surprise that for several of the researchers the question of the sustainability of their artistic practice took centre stage during Covid times – even when, of course, it wasn’t a completely novel concern for them. For many the situation also reinforced the need to turn the camera towards themselves and more generally to intimate subjects, which called for finding and further developing their methods of work and research. Given the strong political and ethical commitment of this group of researchers to their research work, some have thus developed alternative methods for doing (documentary) interviews, while others propose to sidestep the traditional chain of film production altogether. The pandemic didn’t just force our researchers to ask fundamental questions. It also demanded that we, as educators and institution, rethink or legitimise anew why we do what we do. For me, the Corona crisis, combined and connected as it is to the climate crisis and the systemic inequalities in our societies, in fact shouts out the need for art and artistic research. Intrinsically valuable, art and research have a critical role to play in society, and as art institutions we need to create the conditions of possibility for that. The eleven graduates that present themselves in this publication, through their fundamental and critical research, deserve our fight.
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