Unsettling Video

Abstract

This article is a reflection on the process and epistemological affordances of co-producing video with an infant. Through the lens of montage filmmaking, a number of novel perspectives on learning came into view. For one, the infant’s ways of knowing through the body were foregrounded, and speech and language played a backstage role. This then placed attention on how bodies carry intensities and vitality not adequately represented through text (Manning & Massumi, 2014; Stern, 2010). In addition, this approach supported going beyond conventional uses of video as data; data tend to be taken as “given,” or alternatively, as “created” but then given over to the analytic gaze. As another approach to video recordings of learning, video montage reanimated aesthetics and movement instead of discourse and meaning as the leading foci of inquiry. The result unsettled received notions of both video production and knowledge production.