On the Performativity of Participatory Video

Keywords: Film Geography, Participatory Video, Participatory Research, Performativity, Refugees
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 12

Abstract

This paper illustrates the performative nature of the participatory video (PV), drawing on JL Austin’s well-known work on speech acts, utterances, and performative sentences as well as Butler’s reworking and application of the notion of performativity. During the research, I used PV as a method. Sub Saharan African refugee research participants who had not known each other before the PV project negotiated issues to be filmed and made a short film together, creating a small community where none existed before, who are taking steps to organize collective action. The emergence of this new community in and through the making of the film during the fieldwork illustrates the performativity of participatory video, what is accomplished in and through its making. This performativity works not only through people who take part in creating a video, distributing the video, and watching the video, but also may have effects on people who have never seen the given video, as they are in a landscape and embedded in social relations affected by people who took part in it or saw it. Participatory video is thus both a way of gathering data to learn about the world, and it is also involved in changing it, bringing forth new relationships and new ways of being.