Don’t say anything

Note: I found this draft post on my dashboard today. It’s from October 3, 2013. I finally decided to publish it.

As part of this project, I’ve been reviewing old video footage. My goal is to finally transcribe and properly document the materials that I have. Today, as I watched a group interview with some relatives from 2004 (I need to ask my dad to identify all of the wonderful women in this video), I was struck by a theme that came up more than once: the importance of remaining silent and not explicitly discussing what was going on. Several of the relatives suggested that it was part of the culture from the “old country” (Finland). You just knew that you weren’t supposed to say anything. One example involved Ines. One of the relatives used to visit the house and play with my Dad when they were kids. Every so often Ines would leave the room to go behind the curtain. She never said where she was going or why. She was taking care of Johanna who was bedridden and dying. But, she never said anything, because you didn’t talk about such things, you just did them.

This interview got me thinking about my own curiosity about Ines’ storytelling in her memoirs. So much is left out of her story. She mentions that her mother-in-law Johanna died in the early 60s, but she doesn’t describe how Johanna got sick or how long she was responsible for taking care of her. Could this be something that you didn’t talk about?

Site Redesign

While I haven’t been posting as much on this blog lately, I’ve been working hard on planning my project. Hopefully soon I can actually start building it. For now, I’m in the process of tweaking my site, both content and design.  I envision this site as the placeholder for a more elaborate site, designed with the help of Room 34, so I’m trying to keep it pretty basic.

Yesterday I decided to add a background image. Why? Partly because I just figured out that you could do that and it seemed much more interesting than the bland blue that I had been using. Initially I wanted to use a close-up on the weathered boards of the barn or the grain shed, but I really liked this photo my mom took of the farm house:

farmhouse

I must admit, I always found the fake red siding that my grandparents put on the farmhouse to be pretty ugly. But looking at it now, it conjures up strong feelings of being at the farm. I love the contrast between the red siding, the white trim and the bright blue sky. The blue is so intense that I can almost smell the fresh air. I miss that air.

Ir/responsible

As I think through what kind of storyteller I want to be and how I want to craft, tell and share my stories, I’m revisiting one of my early inspirations: Trinh T. Minh-ha’s “Grandma’s Story” from Woman Native Other. In the second farm film, The Farm, part 2: The Puotinen Women, I matched four different quotations from this chapter with Puotinen storytellers: the farm, Ines Puotinen, Judy Puotinen and me (Sara Puotinen). This morning I looked over some notes for the film and discovered another quotation:

In this chain and continuum, I am but one link. The story is me, neither me nor mine. It does not really belong to me, and while I feel greatly responsible for it, I also enjoy the irresponsibility of the pleasure in the reproduction. No repetition can ever be identical, but my story carries with it their stories, their history, and our story repeats itself endlessly despite our persistence in denying it.

Trinh T. Minh-ha

I want to play with this idea of being responsible and irresponsible. I feel a responsibility to pass on the stories of past generations, but I feel (in bad and good ways) that my passing on of those stories is irresponsible. On one hand, I worry that I don’t know enough, haven’t experienced enough, am not old enough, to tell the stories. On the other hand, I feel exhilarated and inspired by the process of sifting through the accounts, interviews and photos and crafting them into new stories to share with others. I want to tell these stories. In fact, I need to tell these stories.

In thinking about how to incorporate (and hopefully) maintain the tension between being responsible and irresponsible, I want to feature some clips of my sister Anne and my mom discussing the farm and how they could take responsibility for it when it was “their time.” I wonder, is it my time? What does “my time” mean when the farm is no longer in the family and my mom is dead?

Telling a story

In various discussions about their interactive documentary, Welcome to Pine Point, the Goggles (creative team of Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge) emphasize the importance of linear (as in, beginning, middle, end) storytelling. In an interview with Nieman Storyboard they argue:

The thing for us that we’re happiest with is that we stuck to what linear “narrative” has done for so long: that beginning, middle and end. Because we stuck with that, that’s the thing that worked the best for us. People want to be told stories, they want to be engaged.

When people think of digital interactive media, one of the first things they say is “It’s going to have multiple entry points, and you can go wherever you want to.” And sure, you can deliver certain kinds of information like that, but it’s not super-great for stories, at least in our experience. You can skip ahead, if you want to, you can go four chapters ahead, but you can also do that with a book.

We’re hoping that we’re keeping people engaged and keeping each section as interesting as possible. For us, I think that was the key. We had to break it into chunks, because that’s how it had to go. We wanted people to be engaged, so using media like writing meant that you have to read it to experience it. You could flip through it and kind of experience it, but if you don’t read it, you’re not really getting engaged.

The Goggles

And in their manifesto, they explain:

Sure, in Pine Point you can skip ahead, in the same way you can fast forward a movie or skip to the end of a book, but there are dozens of little things that we employed to keep you moving forward, one spread at a time. The simple Previous and Next buttons, for instance, give some reassurance that there’s no other path, no up or down, or diagonal. The content that does allow you to drill down is contextualized in the page – a pile of photos, a series of videos, with reassuring numbers and controls.

The Goggles

The Goggles believe that a linear story, with a clear path from beginning to middle to end, compels the user, inspiring them to come along on the narrative journey. The Goggles see the role of the storyteller as the tour guide that leads you through the story, pointing out interesting things along the way.

As a user experiencing Pine Point, I must admit that the linear aspect of the narrative was my least favorite part of the experience.  I can appreciate that a clear path might give some users “reassurance” or comfort that they are reading/watching it the “right” way or that their storytelling guide is trustworthy. But, I felt that it restricted my ability to explore and be curious about Pine Point and all of the stories/documents/photos. And I’m not so sure that being reassured that we are reading the story the right way or that we can uncritically trust our storytelling guide should always be the goal. Their model seems to reinforce the idea of a Storyteller who tells a story to a passive/listening audience who sits back and is dazzled and entranced by the storyteller’s tales. Do users have an opportunity to participate in the process?

Additionally, I’m struck by the Goggles limited reading of storytelling as always being linear and working best with a beginning, middle and end. I’m reminded of Ursula K. LeGuin’s wonderful essay, What Makes a Story. In it she writes:

A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end:”  This comes from Aristotle, and it splendidly describes a great many stories from the European narrative tradition, but it doesn’t describe all stories. It’s a recipe for steak, it’s not a recipe for tamales. The three-part division is typically European, and I would say that it’s also typically European in putting emphasis on the end — on where the story goes, what you get to.

Ursula LeGuin

Yes! I like this idea that linear stories are useful and valuable, but they aren’t the only way to tell a “good” (as in compelling, effective, engaging, entertaining, inspiring, interesting, provocative, educational) story. What other story forms can we draw on when working on interactive documentaries?

In her essay, LeGuin wonders about shifting away from storytelling time (especially progression of time: begin here, end here) and towards storytelling space. She imagines the story as a house, with different rooms to explore and windows to look out of, onto imaginary landscapes. I want to think more about the story as a house; it’s a powerful metaphor that seems fitting to use in my stories about the Farm as a home space.

Why this project?

As I think through the nature and purpose of this project (specifically as it relates to interactivity), I’ve been thinking again about why I’m doing it in the first place. I’ve talked about how this project is largely motivated by my efforts to not forget one of my most important home spaces. The process of culling through archival material and re-watching hours of footage enables me to reconnect and to rethink my relationship to the farm and its generations of inhabitants. It also allows me to reflect on my relationship with my current family (my sisters and my dad). But, that’s not the only reason I’m doing this project. When STA and I started working on our farm films over 12 years ago, we shot a lot of footage and gathered a lot of materials. For years, this footage gathered dust in a box, marked “farm stuff.” I didn’t want that to be how it ended up. I wanted to find a way to share the footage with others, especially family members who might not otherwise have access to it. I also wanted to share with those whom I don’t know, but who can connect with the experiences of having and losing a home space.