Boundaries

Still trying to record stories. This needs recording so that I can move on. It also needs revising, but here’s the first draft. Comments welcome.

After 6 days of steady engagement and constant interaction I took the second day of the conference off to write and walk and photograph. In dark jeans, converse all stars, and a dark long sleeved shirt I set out from the hotel with my black Leica to explore. The area around the hotel is a mix of commercial establishments with residential neighborhood. I saw no other women the times I wandered around the alleys across from the hotel. Closer to the souq just a few blocks away I would see local women in abayas and tourists in western dress, but in the area surrounding the hotel it would be very unusual see women among the service and construction workers, laborers and shop owners and employees primarily from the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangledesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal). Men in Qatar as guest workers aren’t allowed to bring female family members with them. My presence may have been conspicuous. I wasn’t conscious of it.

I headed left outside the hotel, away from the souq. I recorded a lot of stray cats, some eating off dishes beside rows of shoes lined up just inside doorways, others scrounging through trash piles or napping in the dust. I peeked into dark hallways to see bikes resting against the wall, towels and varying lengths of cloths hanging up to dry. At one doorway I heard what sounded very much like a nail gun and air compressor. Afraid of getting lost inside the maze of narrow streets I headed back out to the main road, stopping to photograph a pile of generators outside a storefront. I walked in a little closer to record the men standing around outside the shop. I continued down the road past an upholstery shop. I stepped inside and gestured to take a photograph. The man behind the counter gestured back in what I took as an invitation. (On my previous visit to Doha I had photographed the construction sites near VCUQ campus and after taking a photograph close enough to be a portrait, I would then show the recorded image in the preview mode of my digital camera. Often, others nearby would come over to see the tiny image and ask to be photographed. The men would smile or laugh and return to work, or their break.) Another man in the shop motioned for me to photograph him as well. I said what I thought was “thank you” and “goodbye” in Arabic (the few words I tried to learn) and continued on.

I grew bolder as I continued. In the next shop several men sat behind sewing machines. One man, who I guessed to be the owner stood talking with a younger employee cutting strips of red fabric with scissors. I walked in and asked to photograph. The owner spoke to me in English, invited me in, asked where I was from then offered me a cup of tea. I hesitated then accepted his offer, afraid of insulting him --- and also curious. (My hotel reception desk welcomed quests with a complementary bowl of dates and sweet Arabic coffee with cardamom.) He handed a bill to an employee and sent him off with instructions in a language I couldn’t understand. As I photographed one worker behind a Singer sewing machine, I remarked that I had a Singer as well and glanced at the unlabeled machine next to it. The shop owner claimed that machine could sew through rugs and pulled out a piece of leather and demonstrated by stitching together two then four layers. I commented to my host that his English was very good. He disagreed then listed for me the many languages he spoke: English, Arabic, Banglali (explaining he was from Bangledesh), Urdu, and Farsi. He then pointed to each employee and introduced where he was from and what languages he knew. Each spoke at least two and most spoke three or more languages.

I enter into someone else’s space and take a photograph, always aware of an ethical conflict. Especially when I’m in a foreign culture and don’t speak the language. Am I recording for others— or myself—that I was here --- displaying some place or some one very different and exotic? Does it make my experience, and me, remarkable? Is it a way of distancing or connecting? I know this is part of a much larger dilemma of the ethnographic gaze, but on a personal level I am aware of the boldness I assume using my camera as a way to explore and cross barriers.

The tea was sweet, milky and spicy. Grateful for the generosity of their time and friendship, I wanted to give something of myself back and was suddenly inspired to run back to my hotel, get my fiddle and play a tune. I asked if that would be okay, it seemed so and I left promising to return shortly. As I was returning with my fiddle on my back, a woman — obviously a westerner — with grey hair and white slacks approached in my direction. We stopped, greeted each other. Immediately recognizing each other as American. She asked what I was up to with my fiddle and when I told her she looked dismayed and maybe a little shocked. She warned me that I would be committing a “cultural violation”. As “a woman in their shop”, “a woman in pants”, and “a woman paying them so much attention”. She claimed they would be “terribly uncomfortable”. My heart sunk and then I was embarrassed by my naivety. But I wasn’t completely convinced she was right. I was weighing something my friend Halim, originally from Lebanon living in Doha, remarked during my previous visit: that Americans are so afraid of connecting—afraid even to make eye contact— that they treat the locals rudely. I tried to get more information. Was she a trustworthy source? She told me she lived in a gated community with her husband who was “in construction”, and that she had low regard for Doha (a “cow town”, compared with Kuwait where she had lived previously.) I wasn’t sure if she really was an authority on cultural violations or whether she was expressing her own discomfort. The more I spoke with her, the less I was willing to accept her assessment. I declined her offer to join her for a cup of tea and decided to return to the shop as I had promised, feeling the pull to do doing something I had said I was going to do.

I returned to play a tune then offered the fiddle to both the shop owner and the younger man cutting strips of fabric, who I had learned was his son. The son helped his father hold the fiddle correctly under his chin. I left shortly after both had a chance to make some sounds with the violin and bow. I was unsure whether I had done something deeply inappropriate, whether I had gone too far.

I’ve told this story to several friends, including Halim who I met later in the week for lunch, and friends who live there now or have in the past when there was even less traffic from westerners. None seemed to think that what I did was odd or inappropriate. This story is less about my photographing and more about the barriers we cross to engage, connect, and take risks. My son asks me why I speak to strangers even in Richmond. I tell him that we share the same space, and that makes them a friend. Not a friend like the next door neighbor whose comings and goings we are intimately familiar with. But some one who shares our life – our space and place in time. Halim thinks I should bring this back home and take on a project he called, “A Tourist in My Own Town.”

Doha/Mousharaka Charette: Day 2

Picking up where I left on with the post from a few days back: Reflections From The Gondola. On the second day of the charette Barbara, Frank and I met briefly at lunch to sketch out a plan for the afternoon. They had generously encouraged me to take a primary role in the conception and planning. I learned later that this wasn’t true for the other groups. Most of the other workshops were clearly led by the invited speaker, with the VCU faculty more as support than collaborators. With only three hours to finish what we began the previous day at mall, we drafted a loose plan to somehow compile whatever documentation the students brought in: written notes, drawings, photographs. Barbara said she was interested in what patterns might emerge. My interest was in identifying where impressions and interpretations converged, and where they diverged. (A simple framework I learned from Sharon Poggenpohl in grad school two decades ago, although I can’t remember the context or application.)

On the bus ride out to the mall, I had suggested to the students that they begin by jotting down notes about their expectations. I thought this would be necessary for building a frame of reference: to evaluate their impressions, to make a critical assessment. I thought it would provide some direction for drawing conclusions about the experience, and for finding meaning in the place, something we had discussed the previous day in the briefing. This is something I bring from doing documentary work in preparation for fieldwork: carefully addressing assumptions and expectations as a way to be conscious of my reactions and to distinguish preconceptions from fresh perceptions. I thought about this as I began to examine my own responses to the experience: if I went into the place believing I would hate it, would I be able to stay open to what I was experiencing in the moment? If I was able to recognize that this was less a fixed reality and more an expectation or assumption, would that allow me to be open-minded? Hard work, being open minded in a mall.

I digress.
I suggested to Barbara that to begin the session we would ask the students to bring their chairs out from behind the tables, and form a circle. She replied that she often did this as well but always felt a little silly, like something children are asked to do kindergarten. I laughed and agreed. But now as I write this I’m wondering what’s so silly about that? Maybe what’s silly is that we feel adults no longer should be asked to listen and engage fully and personally with the group, and that building a sense of community in the classroom is not among a facilitator/teacher’s highest priorities.

I’m eager to hear Barbara’s impression but I felt this circle time the most successful aspect of the workshop, with students’ radically different experiences (from Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Brazil, and the U.S.) sharing their impressions of a place.

I began taking notes on a white board with the heading S L O W K N O W L E D G E, a primary issue in the presentation Barbara and Frank gave earlier in the day. One student talked about safety, how he felt “safe” from the elements —the harsh Qatar climate (sand storms, for example and the very reason we switched our plans from the outside souq to the mall). Another student responded by saying that rather than feeling safe he experienced confusion. I commented on this “divergence of experience”. Others agreed and gave concrete examples: the acoustics in the food court made it hard to discriminate voices and other sounds. Another student agreed and described the sounds as contradictions. Others nodded their heads. I listed the terms “reverberation” and “distraction”. Someone described it as “sound absorption“. Another student described feeling “irritated” by the lack of silence. I asked if silence was desirable. She nodded. I remarked how some find silence frightening.

Someone mentioned the term “artificiality” and when I asked if this was a positive or negative quality, the answers were mixed. Some equated this with the safety of a controlled environment, others saw this as undesirable. One of the Qatari women had told me the day before that she went to the mall every day. When I asked her how this visit was different, she very articulately reported how she was able to “concentrate” and “focus”. Where she would normally be thinking about purchases, and looking at the mall as a consumer, she transformed into a designer: observing colors and patterns.

The next step was to try to assemble materials on a 60” x 76” (or close to that) canvas consisting of four sheets of white paper taped together. Somehow the process broke down at this point. At this point, it became less of a collaboration and more of a separation of ideas. It was decided that each student or group of students would assemble their images; these would be photographed separately, compiled on one digital file ( in In Design) and then printed out on one surface. The final result looked polished, but I find it disappointing that the designers (Barbara and Frank, and Don and I) took over the charette, working well into the night to complete the digital files while the students were welcome to take off early.

Charettes are fast and intense. It is ironic to try to convey something about slow knowledge—about wisdom and knowledge and observations accumulated over a long period time—through a charette. I’m not sure if we were able to succeed with our intention, but I’m hoping we can do this again. I’m hoping Barbara and I, or I, or Barbara can continue this work. Maybe the work is for us to build up knowledge about this process. Or for there to be a follow up. Or for someone else to take on this project and report back to us and for there to be an accumulation of experiences.

quick update/notes

Didn't have time/space to write last night. Completed the charette, concluded conference, trip to the I.M. Pei Islamic Art Museum (even more extraordinary than you thought). Back to the hotel. Needed time/space to let it disperse, filter, sink in. All of that. I have copious notes and promise to write later about the conclusion of charette. What I thought worked. What didn't.

Took the day off to write, think, explore. Wash off the air from the Villagio with local Doha dust. I'll take a shower shortly.

Notes about today to be written up later.
- images of stuff, junk, dust, upholstery shops, air compressors + generators jumbled outside the generator shop.
- a cup of tea with an upholsterer
- an encounter with an American ex-pat
- the falcon souq

Will write later.

Reflections from the Gondola

The plan was to go to the (new) old souq (second two images): a labyrinth of narrow stone hallways under a traditional woven-bamboo ceiling. Vendors in crowded shops (some not much larger than a small bus) sell cloth, spices, housewares, tools, clothing. The souk was one of the oldest market places in Doha and much of it was torn down and later rebuilt to resemble the original structure. I saw this as an opportunity for them to observe and experience intimacy with each other, with the materials. Where the space is much like a retreat from the city outside and there might be hightened awareness of sound, color, light, and texture. An invitation to sensitivity. I think of what it feels like when you've been on a silent spiritual retreat and the world seems amplified when you reenter. Birds screech, the sun is blindingly brilliant, people shout. All the senses are re-sensitized, retuned to a sharper awareness.

But as we began to gathered in our classroom after lunch, Don and Barbara were concerned about the sand storm raging outside. It came up suddenly while we were at lunch and some were concerned about breathing the sand, especially those with breathing problems. Some argued that the project we proposed, to build slow knowledge about a specific place by carefully isolating the senses and recording our perceptions, could be conducted anywhere. I argued for the souq but eventually it was somehow decided --- I could see it was time to give up my attachment to the souk --- to go instead to the indoor luxury mall, the Villagio. It left me with dread, aversion, a little anxiety, regret, apprehension. I had been excited about the possibility of bringing the students into a quiet, dark, intimate space. The mall was anything but. I thought about the controlled recirculated air, enclosed vaulted caverns of shiny marble surfaces, seductive window displays. My opposition was less a moral issue about conspicuous consumption, more of a sensuous issue. Arguing that designers exist so much in the analytical part of their minds that how could we possibly learn to reconnect with a more visceral, tactile, and sensitive awareness of our environment, from such a sterile, artificial environment.

As much as I entered the mall with a sense of disdain, I was struck by Barbara’s obvious delight and excitement to open up to the space. Explore the faux painted clouds in the sky. The ersatz village shop facades. I complained about the acoustics. Don Crow said he loved them. Rick wandered across the bridge over the canal (over the replicated mini Venice canal complete with gondolas for hire), seemingly lost in a peaceful escape from the hectic conference. On our second pass under the bridge a student waves cheerfully. It was marvelous to see my friends transformed in this space, and so I was forced to confront my own fears and aversions, to reconcile my wish to control the situation and present an environment that was comfortable and soothing for me. I thought about the project I am working on with Sabot pre-school and the way Marty Gravett writes about one of the objectives of the school:
REFLECTION:
thought and the disequilibrium brought on by new ideas and familiar ideas made unfamiliar
are given time and importance.
In the presence of these values deeper understandings develop.

The first image is of the gondolier taping a video of Barbara and me, Barbara photographing the gondolier, me documenting the both of them.


I learned about reflection today. This is just the beginning. Tomorrow the project continues.

Mousharaka

Doha, Qatar February 2009
http://www.mousharaka.com
Mousharaka is translated as collaboration. Yesterday Barbara Sudick + Frank Armstrong, Don Crow and I joined minds as we formulated our workshop for this weekend. BS and FA are invited presenters and set the foundation for this workshop based on their own presentation (tomorrow). The issue explored circles around Fast Knowledge and Slow Knowledge. This is fast knowledge. Slow knowledge evolves over time. What I write now will be slightly more integrated than what I may have written last night after several hours of engagement, questioning, dialogue. “Fast knowledge Frank writes in the brief,“is often acquired quickly and amplified by technology.” I would qualify this as expressly modern technology. He notes that, “Slow knowledge is a primary component of indigenous knowledge (systematic information preserved in oral tradition)” Does this include fiddle styles? weaving techniques? dance? Yes.It is the continuation of a deeply integrated knowledge that goes beyond the sort of mental processes that connect us to our laptop. Like right now. You use a very different part of your brain right now than you do when you’re swinging a hammer (for Jon and Don), or playing a tune, or drawing (which might include everyone else). There is deeply integrated knowledge that we draw upn when we are physically engaged with the making or creating of sound, mark, gesture. I write this as I think about playing music last night. It ground me after a jet-lagged day of connecting, responding, transformation. What happens when we come together for these intense few days (new connections, old connections). It's hard to sustain it, and I am grateful to all who encouraged me to pack my fiddle (and Don for that very nice lightweight case).

This workshop is an effort to engage. To invite the students to more fully engage their sense in the design process. Design can be rigorous, analytical, prescriptive. (as Keven Wooley just said when he sat down to chat) Especially graphic design which is so abstract. Especially as a print designer, we deal with a fixed object. As I sit in this space (I just stood up to take a photo. Image is uploading now as I write.) the light changes, color shifts. We respond to a physical space with our sense in a way that we cannot with implied or abstract space - a page.

That's nothing so new. You always want to ask, “What is new about this? what are we doing that integrates ideas, concepts, experience?“ In keeping with the thems of teh conference we are hoping students will first, com to a different way of knowing the souq (the market which will be the location for our study today). Asking them to concentrate on a sense: sound, smell, texture, sensation. To draw, notate, photograph, record WITH their senses if they can. And then to compile these (which we'll do tomorrow) ideally with a view to building knowledge as a shared activity. (Something I saw ALOT about documentary work).

More later. It's lunch time.

Brief Report

First day in Doha. Arrived last night and could not sleep after Skyping with Don and Henry. Took my fiddle and sat outside the hotel and played tunes for an hour. On a white plastic chair not more than fifteen yards from the sidewalk and the street. Little foot traffic but a few men in dishdashas (the long garment worn by Arab men) of varying colors and styles. Most white, the local color. Of cars. Or dust and sand. More dust on the streets, on the leaves of the date palms, the limestone and stucco buildings. Some stopped to listen. One man held up his phone and recorded the odd circumstance of a woman in pants playing a fiddle outside a hotel after midnight on a Thursday night.

Asleep by 2 am, but awake again at ten minutes before 5 am to the chanting of the first call to prayer of the day. Later, after breakfast, Stephen Vitello and I went out to walk and explore. I recorded/documented images, he recorded/documented sound. Men in robes and head scarves, some wearing sarongs, many in western clothing. Stray cats. A lot of them. No women out, especially in this area of the city of predominantly guest worker housing. I can see from my hotel window into the courtyard and perimeter structure where the men live communally. Men in sarongs and towels washing up, preparing for the day.

After winding through the narrow streets in the nrighborhood across from the hotel we found our way to the souq and sat at a cafe drinking something with green tea and ice, listening to the calls echoing off buildings, a muezzin chorus from loudspeakers mounted on minaretes. Across the way someone is sorting silverware, preparing for the swelling crowds later, after sun down. The souq is closed today, Friday their holy day, but will reopen at 4. Just a few tourists, wait staff at the restaurants, a couple locals in their shops. The image above is at a mosque on the way back to the hotel. Men gathered outside the mosque. Some rushing in even after the prayer had started, dropping shoes, washing feet, and standing beside the others, or tossing down a prayer rug.

Back at the hotel. A another change of shirt. Images are just now being uploaded to Flickr.

We gathered together again and drove out to VCUQ to meet the speakers with whom we will be conducting a charette workshop. I met Barbara Sudek and Frank Armstrong, and Don Crow. We began to strategize about the charette and took the meeting out to dinner.

images and the imagination

My neighbor (a teacher and someone I respect for her political savvy) and I were sharing our experiences of the day, on Inauguration Day. Henry was home from school. Her five year old had kindergarten as usual that day and the little ones watched on TV the ceremony and the speech following. The self-aware five year old confessed to her mom she didn't understand a word of the speech, and her mom questioned the value of her having seen it. I reported to my neighbor that when Obama stood up to take his oath I urged Henry — woozy with the flu, lying down with his head cuddled up in a blanket — to sit up and SEE the event.
I repeated this story to my Documentary Studies class the next day.

There are certain events that define a generation. So much is written about the Vietnam War as one of those. More significant to me is the knowledge of JFK's assassination. I often call this “my first memory”. I would have been just three at the time. I have an image of myself sitting on the stairs leading to the second floor of our house in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I can see the door just in front of me and the banister to my right, and the living room beyond that. The is some discussion of who shot Kennedy. This may be a conflating of several events. Maybe I was sitting on the steps getting ready to go to the Pittsburgh Zoo with the water fountain in the whale's mouth. (Do I really remember being there or is this a memory recreated from photographs?) What is significant to me is that I have an image—a visual picture—that allows me to verify that I WAS THERE. The chronology speaks for itself, so clearly this event happened during my life time and that it was a defining moment for our generation. The loss of a hero. The loss of safety. I could write at length about any number of interpretations. On Tuesday afternoon I am sitting on the guestroom bed where we hide our TV and I am juxtaposing the image of JFK slumped over in the blue convertible next to the image of Barack and Michele Obama out of their armored vehicle walking down Pennsylvania Avenue---("is he really doing this NOW? Am I really watching live coverage?" I am stunned by the message it sends to us: that he is safe in his country and that we are too. More than that, I am very anxious and notice I am holding my breath.

It may be that the girl next door and all the kids in her class listened to Obama's speech with no comprehension of such things as "petty grievances", but they did SEE Obama looking out onto the Mall packed with a crowd that stretched back to the Washington Monument. Living as close as we do to D.C., many of these kids have probably been to the Mall (and they know how long a distance it is even from the obelisk to the dinosaur museum) but never looking as it did that day. And as we know that we are visual before we are verbal, I am confident that they will store some image
that will afford them the privilege of owing this event as their. As belonging to their generation. I am so happy for our children to be part of this.