What I’ve done so far : read, meet, discuss, make a film.

Katja Frimberger, RA at the Creative Hub.

When I speak to you…

[a poem about research encounters. Please. 3 lines. 15

words max.]

“The importance of value-free research in the modern research ethic”. (Appadurai 2000:11)

When I speak to youColdly and impersonallyUsing the driest wordsWithout looking at you

(I seemingly fail to recognise youIn your particular nature and difficulty)

I speak to you merelyLike reality itself

(Sober, not to be bribed by your particular natureTired of your difficulty)

Which in my view you seem not to recognise.(Brecht, 1976: 140)

Research bribed by particularity

• Appadurai (2000): The ethics of new knowledge: how not to eliminate private sources of confidence in research/research as practice of the imagination

• Atkinson (2003): unpredictability and uncertainty as crucial aspects of research/transgressive forms of validity (also Ahmed, 2000/Butler, 2005)

• Levin & Greenwood (2001): context-bound, collaborative and co-generative research that is measured according to the ethical impact of the research’s instruments’ discursive structures.

• Nicholson (2011): Nowhere is an empty space –responsibility for my own speaking position

• Bal (2005): Migratory aesthetic. What makes an aesthetic is the sentient encounter with subjects involved

Lost in Space (17min.) 2005 | 17mins | Colour

Directed by Mieke Bal & Shahram EntekhabiGenre: Documentary

Multi-lingual with English subtitles

“When asked in English what he missed most about being away from home, an Iranian long-term asylum seeker burst into his native Farsi and said that, of all the things he sorely missed, the primary thing was his language. This remark triggered the aesthetic of this experimental film.”

http://www.miekebal.org/artworks/films/lost-in-space/

We are producing a short film for the launch of the 3 year research project, "Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, Law and the State.“

We would like to invite you to come and contribute to the video in a short informal interview.

The film aims to put us in the mood for the exciting possibilities of multilingual research as well as celebrating the richness of our languages, our personal connections to the languages we speak and the human connections we make through language.

Would you like to contribute to the film?This would involve a short interview to camera in a relaxed

atmosphere. We will be asking you to chat briefly about a language that is close to your heart, how it makes you who you are and to talk to us in that language.

Lessons from the launch film

• Finding the right tone and language to speak about language

• Order to interviewer: Find something people are passionate about/care about

• Homesickness: when your voice breaks and you become poetic

• The aesthetic of language – sound & rhythm (and ‘tuning in’) and editing narrative

Research imagination: Facing the insufficiencies of the self

“Facing the insufficiencies of the self in ways that create openness to others is, for Bhaba, a political act that relies on a combination of imagination, narrative and performativity”. (Nicholson, 2011: 156)

• Ethics form (it is difficult to argue on paper that unpredictability is essential part of one’s research ethics)

• Fab 4 - Case study conversations : analysis of our speaking positions/pedagogy (treasured opportunities)

• Visiting 16+ ESOL class as classroom assistant (I learn about Big Sean) • Welcoming languages event