mi6021radinamavrodieva

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Just a really interesting and cool looking installation that I want to look at more when making the film because I like how it makes me feel - quite uneasy but at peace at the same time? I can’t really explain it, I have so many things going on in my head at the same time. I like how incredibly tangled everything is, feels like you won’t be able to get out if you end up in between the webs. Feels quite suffocating and creepy-it reminds me of the complex human nervous system and the brain.

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Research: books I’ve read and found useful for my dissertation (pt.2)

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Research: books I’ve read and found useful for my dissertation

I did so much research prior to starting my dissertation...like so much. I spent a few very long days in the library and tried to read as many books and articles as possible. These are some of the ones I read/skimmed through. I had already read some of these before so that helped me save time. I did also have a mini breakdown because I lost all of my notes from last year that I needed and had to re write them... not fun lol. Other than that I really enjoyed doing research as I love reading about gender, sexuality, feminism etc. :))

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Research: “Get over it”- perspectives on divorce from young children (article)

I discuss divorce in my dissertation and wanted to find an article about the effects it has on young children especially between the ages of 3 and 7. It was an interesting read and I ended up using a couple quotes from it so it was definitely helpful. Here are some interesting quotes from it:

Specifically, studies have shown that children with separated or divorced parents are more likely to exclude family members from family drawings.

Few studies have sought to summarise children’s attributions for  divorce or their post divorce perceptions of parents. Two studies utilising interview methods found negative changes in children’s perceptions of their father (or nonresident parent) following divorce, with children describing fathers as more blameworthy and less aware of children’s feelings than mothers. However, the negative views of the  father  depended  on  the  level  of  parental  conflict  and  the  quality  of  the  pre divorce parent–child relationship.

With  respect  to  divorce,  young  children  may  be  in  a  state  of  mind  thatconflates denial and fantasy with acceptance and realism.

In the wake of divorce, children’s views of their world—their home, family, and dailylife—shift  like  tectonic  plates. 

Our  findings  suggest  that  young  children  often  understand  moreabout divorce than is commonly assumed and that they are actively coping with divorce-related changes.

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Bird animation

This was quite fun to do and it didn’t take much time (due to it being rotoscoped again :)) I found a nice clip online of birds flying in different weather and environments and so decided to quickly roto over one of them. It turned out quite cool and I might use it in my final piece. I do want to make a few more simple bird animations because I think they would fit nicely with some of the archive footage I will use.

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Quick character animation (boiling line)

Another quick test animation of a character (me?). All of these animations are quite random and are not in order but I am just trying to be more experimental and just do what I feel is right in the moment. I don’t have a particular plan for any of the animations yet, I just sometimes come up with ideas that I want to bring to life. Used a still image for this as I just wanted to see how it would look like. The image is a screenshot from one of the archive videos that I might use.

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Kickflip animation (roto, using footage of me doing a flip)

I haven’t skated in months and I miss it so much! I just haven’t had the time to go out and have a nice long sesh :(

This is one of my favourite clips that I decided to turn into an animation. I love it and had fun making it - this is probably one of the best kickflips I’ve landed on camera lol. Again, this animation might seem random, but I will be including skateboarding in the film and there will be references to it because it is one of my biggest passions. 

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Metro animation (roto in Photoshop, using my own footage)

This was fun to make and I really like the way it looks - the pencil tool I used worked really well and is exactly what I had in mind. The animations in the film will be very simple and it will mostly be just lines. The colour palette will be very limited too - I like using black, grey and dark greens and browns. This animation might seem very random but it’s not - it brings a part of my script to life as I know exactly how I want to use it in the film. 

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Another photo test

I have some videos of me from when I was younger that I would like to somehow use in my film and what you see are just parts of two videos that I absolutely love - I didn’t want to post them because they are in Bulgarian and are a bit long so I just took some screenshots and put them all together to make this stop motion looking animation. I have many ideas and I would like to have stop motion sequences here and there, some video footage of me, some still photos etc. I really like this test and can’t really explain why, it just makes me happy seeing little me happy :) 

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Archive footage stills - pt.2

Some screenshots from the archive videos that I might use

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Archive footage stills - pt.1

Some screenshots from the archive videos that I might use

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Quick stop motion test

I want to use stop motion in the film so this was just a quick test to see how it would look and I really like it, especially the shadows. I want to include some photos and videos of me when I was younger and fortunately I have quite a lot of them! 

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My approach - autoethnography and archive material

The approach I will be using for my final piece is called autoethnography, which essentially means that I will be exploring and looking back on my childhood and my experiences (growing up, Bulgaria, relationship with my parents, trauma, queerness, gender norms etc.) and try to connect all of that to a broader audience and understand wider cultural experiences. Autoethnography is also in a sence a combination of autobiography and ethnography. Even though my film will be quite personal and about my story and my country, the things I have experienced are definitely not unique in a sense that others may have had similar issues and might have gone through situations that resemble mine. I believe that by doing autoethnography, I will be able to reach more people and open up a conversation that diverse audiences can relate to. What I want to do with my film is make people feel their emotions and hopefully reflect on their lived experiences and see themselves in parts of me and my work. The two questions I have asked myself are: How does this affect people? and What do I want to say? I hope to be able to answer them as I go through collecting research, working with my sketchbook, animating and putting ideas together. A quote from an article I recently read that summarises my thoughts on autoethnography very well:

“When researchers write autoethnographies, they seek to produce aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of personal and interpersonal experience. The autoethnographer not only tries to make personal experience meaningful and cultural experience engaging, but also, by producing accessible texts, she or he may be able to reach wider and more diverse mass audiences that traditional research usually disregards, a move that can make personal and social change possible for more people.”

Archive material is the other approach I will be using, which I am quite excited about. I believe that by using archive footage I will manage to better communicate my ideas visually. It will also make my work stronger and different, as it is a bit of an unusual approach. 

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Research: This girl’s life: An autoethnography (article by Saoirse Caitlin O’Shea)

I was honestly so sad after reading this article, literally had tears in my eyes. An article written by a non-binary trans person, asking very important questions about gender, sex, queerness, heteronormativity and more. It is quite personal, especially towards the end, but I personally found it quite beautiful and sad, felt like reading someones diary and not like an academic article. I know I won’t be talking about trans issues in my film and dissertation but it is a good article that looks at some of the themes I want to explore in my film. I also want to talk about it because transgender and transexual people are often put under so much pressure and are excluded from the queer community, which is extremely harmful and hurtful. It is just simply wrong to make their lives so miserable since the reason we have any rights at all as queer people today, is mostly because of black, trans women who fought for freedom, understanding and equal rights. I feel like this article fits well with my ideas and so will share some of it here. :)

“The nomenclature so far preferences both a heterosexual matrix and the common, dominant binary conception where a (binary) transsexual person transitions from one pole to the other. The naturalisation of this matrix views and stigmatises any other gender identity as in some way a failure to conform to that dominant view – there is no ‘outside’ or alternative position and as such non-binary identities are invalidated and erased.”

“By identifying as non-binary I am officially erased in society and risk the progression of my NHS ‘transition’ and surgical reassignment. One is never officially ‘between’ or outside the heterosexual matrix, one is only ever male or female.”

I finally have my NHS gender appointment. I’ve been advised to ‘wear something feminine and apply some make-up’. I go dressed in jeans, pale blue t-shirt, DMs, no make-up and I am not ‘tucked’

...... ‘Are you happy with your body? Does any part of it make you unhappy? 

’I assume the clinic’s psychiatrist wants me to talk about dysphoria.

‘Not really. I’ve had 53 years getting used to it. I don’t particularly like my shoulders, or my nose, or my Adam’s Apple though’. 

She stares at me and I start to worry that I didn’t give the right answer. She wants me to talk about genital dysphoria.

 As a child I tried to auto-castrate myself. I guess that many might regard this as a sign of gender dysphoria but it wasn’t – it was a sign of wanting parental acceptance. As an adult I don’t hate my penis but aesthetically I would rather just not have one. Bluntly, it gets in the way; if I ‘tuck’ it becomes increasingly annoying across the day, requiring extra time to sort out when I go to the toilet both before and after or reminds me painfully of its presence if I sit down without thinking. Not wanting a penis does not make me female just as having one does not make me male. 

But she doesn’t ‘get that’ and despite having told her that I’m non-binary she still lists me as (binary) MtF transsexual.

I do not ‘do’, ‘perform’ or ‘work at’ my sex/gender – all these terms suggest that my sex/gender is unnatural, something that I have to achieve, manage and maintain whilst reinforcing that a cisgender person’s gender is both natural and real. Do we, should we, always write trans as the de-legitimated ‘other’ to cis and can we think ‘gender’ without conflating it as cisgender? Following Prosser, can we instead provide constative narratives of trans and cis folk that highlight what it means to ‘simply be’, and what makes us human rather than focus on categories that separate and make some lives unliveable?

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Research: Autoethnography: an overview - article by Ellis, Adams and Bochner (pt.2)

More on autoethnography and the different forms and approaches:

Autoethnography, as method, attempts to disrupt the binary of science and art. Autoethnographers believe research can be rigorous, theoretical, and analytical and emotional, therapeutic, and inclusive of personal and social phenomena. Autoethnographers also value the need to write and represent research in evocative, aesthetic ways. The questions most important to autoethnographers are: who reads our work, how are they affected by it, and how does it keep a conversation going?

When researchers do autoethnography, they retrospectively and selectively write about epiphanies that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture and/or by possessing a particular cultural identity. 

As Mitch ALLEN says, an autoethnographer must 

"look at experience analytically. Otherwise [you're] telling [your] story—and that's nice —but people do that on Oprah [a U.S.-based television program] every day. Why is your story more valid than anyone else's? What makes your story more valid is that you are a researcher. You have a set of theoretical and methodological tools and a research literature to use. That's your advantage. If you can't frame it around these tools and literature and just frame it as 'my story,' then why or how should I privilege your story over anyone else's I see 25 times a day on TV?"

Autoethnographers must not only use their methodological tools and research literature to analyze experience, but also must consider ways others may experience similar epiphanies; they must use personal experience to illustrate facets of cultural experience, and, in so doing, make characteristics of a culture familiar for insiders and outsiders.

When researchers write autoethnographies, they seek to produce aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of personal and interpersonal experience. The autoethnographer not only tries to make personal experience meaningful and cultural experience engaging, but also, by producing accessible texts, she or he may be able to reach wider and more diverse mass audiences that traditional research usually disregards, a move that can make personal and social change possible for more people.

Forms of and approaches to autoethnography:

The forms of autoethnography differ in how much emphasis is placed on the study of others, the researcher's self and interaction with others, traditional analysis, and the interview context, as well as on power relationships.

Indigenous/native ethnographies

Narrative ethnographies

Reflexive, dyadic interviews

Reflexive ethnographies

Layered accounts

Interactive interviews

Community autoethnographies

Co-constructed narratives

Personal narratives

In using personal experience, autoethnographers not only implicate themselves with their work, but also close, intimate others.

(I think in my case, personal narratives is the approach that best fits me and what I want to create. There are quite a lot of approaches when it comes to doing autoethnography so I will need to have another look at all of them again.)

[mi6021radinamavrodieva]

Research: Autoethnography: an overview - article by Ellis, Adams and Bochner (pt.1)

This was another article I read that I found super helpful and that really made me understand what autoethnography IS and how I can use this approach to make my final film and write my dissertation. There are too many good quotes/thoughts and I have a few pages of them so this will be part 1:

Abstract: Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience. 

A researcher uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to do and write autoethnography. Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product.

Autoethnographers recognize the innumerable ways personal experience influences the research process. Consequently, autoethnography is one of the approaches that acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality, and the researcher's influence on research, rather than hiding from these matters or assuming they don't exist. Furthermore, scholars began recognizing that different kinds of people possess different assumptions about the world—a multitude of ways of speaking, writing, valuing and believing—and that conventional ways of doing and thinking about research were narrow, limiting, and parochial. These differences can stem from race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, class, education, or religion. For the most part, those who advocate and insist on canonical forms of doing and writing research are advocating a White, masculine, heterosexual, middle/upper-classed, Christian, able-bodied perspective.

Autoethnography, on the other hand, expands and opens up a wider lens on the world, eschewing rigid definitions of what constitutes meaningful and useful research; this approach also helps us understand how the kinds of people we claim, or are perceived, to be influence interpretations of what we study, how we study it, and what we say about our topic. 

As a method, autoethnography combines characteristics of autobiography and ethnography.

When writing an autobiography, an author retroactively and selectively writes about past experiences. Usually, the author does not live through these experiences solely to make them part of a published document; rather, these experiences are assembled using hindsight. In writing, the author also may interview others as well as consult with texts like photographs, journals, and recordings to help with recall. Most often, autobiographers write about "epiphanies"—remembered moments perceived to have significantly impacted the trajectory of a person's life, times of existential crises that forced a person to attend to and analyze lived experience, and events after which life does not seem quite the same. While epiphanies are self-claimed phenomena in which one person may consider an experience transformative while another may not, these epiphanies reveal ways a person could negotiate "intense situations" and "effects that linger—recollections, memories, images, feelings—long after a crucial incident is supposedly finished".

When researchers do ethnography, they study a culture's relational practices, common values and beliefs, and shared experiences for the purpose of helping insiders (cultural members) and outsiders (cultural strangers) better understand the culture. Ethnographers do this by becoming participant observers in the culture—that is, by taking field notes of cultural happenings as well as their part in and others' engagement with these happenings.

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Research: Autoethnography article (David Butz and Kathryn Besio)

I read an article that I found in the online library that wasn’t very interesting but had a couple good definitions that I found helpful. 

“The term autoethnography was described by Reed-Danahay as ‘a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context’.”

“Autoethnography may be understood as the practice of doing this identity work self-consciously, or deliberately, in order to understand or represent some worldly phenomenon that exceeds the self; it is ‘a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context’.”

“What distinguishes personal experience narrative from autobiography or memoir is an explicit effort to inform readers’ understanding of some aspect of the social world that exceeds the autoethnographer’s individual experience.”