Here, There, and Everywhere: Leviathan and the Digital Future of Observational Ethnography

Abstract

s Leviathan (2012) is often analyzed in terms of its radical film language and the unique immersive spectatorial experience it creates. Contrary to this approach, which tends to rely on a critical discourse of rupture and newness, this article discusses the film in terms of the continuities it forms with the observational sensibility in ethnographic filmmaking. Leviathan, it argues, marks a noteworthy maturation of this tradition by deploying digital technologies to create new conditions of visibility and listening. Registering explicitly and self-reflexively how its makers are inextricably bound up with the world they document, Leviathan marks new horizons for participatory observation in ethnographic cinema. [digital, documentary, ethnography, Leviathan, observational] bs_bs_banner

Enactive Filmmaking: Rethinking Ethnographic Cinema in the First Person

“…This sense of immersion is complemented by the soundtrack, produced by sound editors Jacob Ribicoff and Ernst Karel, giving them a layered and composed acoustic dimension. As has been noted (Landesman ), though, these films have a degree of continuity with the observational tradition.…”

“…This sense of immersion is complemented by the soundtrack, produced by sound editors Jacob Ribicoff and Ernst Karel, giving them a layered and composed acoustic dimension. As has been noted (Landesman 2015), though, these films have a degree of continuity with the observational tradition. Inspired by these works, I wanted to develop strategies that could put my experience of hunting with the donso in dialogue with the specificities of local hunting styles and conceptions of vision and hearing.…”

The Aesthetics and Perception of Documentary Film: A mixed methods approach and Its implications for Artistic Research

“…Hall, 2003). According to Hall (2003) (Hattendorf, 1999;Hohenberger, 1998;Huck, 2012;Kreimeier,1997;Landesman, 2015;Odin, 1998). The strategies of authentication of a chosen cinematic form or a certain documentary method are thus among the basic considerations in the creative decision-making process (Iseli, 2009;Dux, Iseli, & Vitija, 2020) and were given appropriate weight in the conception of the comparative studies.…”

Evoking Imaginaries: Art Probing, Ethnography and More-than-academic Practice

“…I would create a work that was looking at presence from another angle and that approached the sometimes fetish-like ethnographic obsession with the notion of ‘being there’. What does it mean to be or not to be there as a researcher, artist, fieldworker, or partaker of a residency (see Frykman and Gilje, 2003; Hannerz, 2003; Landesman, 2015; Lennartsson, 2011; Pink, 2008)? I would be ever absent from a number of the crucial social issues and from the things that mattered for people living in the Washington Park area.…”