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Karl Andersson

Anthropologist

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Karl

Week 16: 15-21 April 2019

April 21, 2019 by Karl Leave a Comment

The third and last week of in-house classes started with intense editing of our failed project in the Transcultural Film Workshop. We made a seven minute movie where we reflected on the process. We named the movie FAIL – and it was a success, being much discussed after the viewing Wednesday night. I really enjoyed working so intensely in a group again, something I haven’t done for many years. I was reminded of the most intense days of magazine making in Stockholm. I always prefer to work alone, so it was good to be forced to do some teamwork.

On Thursday we had the first class in the course Poetic Framing in the morning and a guest lecture, Queering the Gaze, in the afternoon.

Thursday night was the grand finale of this semester’s in-house: Barbecue and the screening of our final projects in Digital Anthropology. Great closure! I got many positive comments from my classmates about my film on Japanese shota. The comment that made me most happy came from M, who said that it was very scientific.

Finished Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. What I take with me is the sound of the shutter, rather than the photographer’s eye, as the key to the Photograph, and the idea that the Photograph equals death. I commented on page 14:

It is the death of the captured situation, the captured time, which will never ever exist again, but which has been captured in the Photograph.

This lends sadness to the practice but also a mutual understanding between object and photographer: We die together. We share a moment of micro-death.

I picked up a book from an Amazon haul almost ten years ago: Gay Shame. I had miscalculated my interest back then and also had the wrong approach to academic anthologies (I was still reading cover to cover), so I put it away unread. Now it was a better fit. I began with Kulick’s and Klein’s article on Brazilian travesti sex workers. Loosely connected to my essay for Theory & History. But mainly I read it out of personal interest. And I really like Kulick’s style of writing.

S attended a film festival in Cannes where his film was screened. Unfortunately I couldn’t come, since my own film was screened in Berlin!

Study

Theory & History essay

  • Cervulle, Maxime and Nick Rees-Roberts (2008): Queering the Orientalist porn package: Arab men in French gay pornography. In New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, Volume 6, Number 3, pp. 197–208.

Extra

  • Kulick, Don and Charles Klein (2009): Scandalous Acts: The Politics of Shame Among Brazilian Travesti Prostitutes. In Gay Shame, pp. 312-338.

Other

Book

  • Barthes, Roland (1980): Camera Lucida. 119 p.

Articles

  • The Economist:
    • Why Julian Assange should be extradited
    • Julian Assange’s fate may lie with Sajid Javid
    • Notre Dame
    • Japan’s Self-Defence Forces are beginning to focus on China
    • Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, is determined to raise sales taxes
    • Chaguan: Hope remains for Western solidarity. Look at embassies in Beijing
    • Chinese money is behind some of the Arab world’s biggest projects
    • Raya al-Hassan takes on Lebanon’s warlords—and the patriarchy
    • The right-wing Finns Party does well in Finland’s election
    • Charlemagne: The problem with EU foreign policy
    • In “Machines Like Me”, Ian McEwan asks an age-old question
    • Business this week
    • Is insectageddon imminent?
  • Jason S. Farr, Travis Chi Wing Lau: Twitter Helps Us Build a More Inclusive Academy
  • David Bryant Copeland: Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design

Podcast

  • The Intelligence:
    • India’s enormous election, and more from our daily podcast (21 min)
    • The fire in Notre Dame cathedral, and more from our daily podcast (19 min)
    • Indonesia’s election, and more from our daily podcast (22 min)
    • The [redacted] Mueller report, and more from our daily podcast (21 min)
  • Babbage: How AI powers Amazon (24 min)
  • Actual Fluency Podcast: AFP 151 – Andrew Feinberg: Learning Japanese and Japanese Culture (83 min)

Film

  • Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992, 100 min)
  • Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017, 104 min)

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 49: 3-9 December 2018

December 9, 2018 by Karl Leave a Comment

Miles car rental

The week’s highlight was my presentation on Robert Gardner in Unit 5 of Ethnographic Film. I was a bit nervous but I was well prepared and it went pretty smoothly – both the class and the teacher seemed to like it. It’s a challenge to present in front of the screen, while the whole class is watching in front of their screens.

Presentation on Gardner.
Miles car rental
Cheap rental from Miles.

With so much film viewing on laptops, I decided to finally buy a projector. Then I changed my mind. You have to pay so much to get decent quality, and I know I would get annoyed by the fan. And I had almost forgotten that I have an unused 60-inch plasma in the office. The hardest thing is to transport it, but on Friday we rented a Miles transporter and made the move. The result is fantastic and the rental only cost 11 euro for 8 km, despite we had the car for over an hour due to traffic and carrying.

And then it finally happened: I did not read everything for this week’s Digital Anthropology class. That is of course natural and to be expected – it’s up to us students to choose how thoroughly we participate in this programme. That said, until now I’ve read all mandatory readings and most of the recommended ones too – for every course. But I’ve reached a point where I must be more selective in my readings as my research interests become clearer. That’s a good thing.

Study

Ethnographic Film, Unit 6

  • Module introduction: Ciné-trance.
  • Stoller, Paul (1992): Les Maîtres Fous. In ​The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch, pp. 145-160.
  • Russell, Catherine (1999): Ecstatic Ethnography: Filming Possession Rituals. In Experimental Ethnography, pp.193-237. (Read selectively the chapter introduction and Jean Rouch: Ciné-transe = pp. 193-199 and 218-229.)

And the films:

  • Jean Rouch: Les Maîtres Fous (1955, 29 min)
  • Bill Viola: I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986, 89 min)

Digital Anthropology, Unit 5

  •  Gillespie, Marie; Osseiran, Souad; Cheesman, Marie (2018): Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances. In: Social Media + Society 4, no. 1, pp. 1-12.
  • Video: Exodus Our Journey To Europe Ep. 01 (2016, 59 min)
  • Video: Your phone is now a refugee’s phone

Digital Anthropology, Unit 7

  • Jurgenson, Nathan & Rey, PJ (2013): The Fan Dance: How Privacy Thrives in an Age of Hyper-Publicity. In Lovink, Geert & Rasch, Miriam, eds: Unlike Us Reader. Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives, pp. 61-75.
  • Abidin, Crystal (2018): Chapter 2: Qualities of Internet Celebrity. In Internet Celebrity. Understanding Fame Online, pp. 19-36.

Other

Articles

  • The Economist: Indigenous peoples across the world no longer seem doomed to extinction
  • The Economist: How to save Ethiopia’s democratic revolution
  • The Economist: The promise and peril of Ethiopia’s democratic revolution
  • The Economist: Brazil’s classrooms become a battleground in a culture war
  • The Economist: The Central European University is moving to Vienna
  • The Economist: Satellites may connect the entire world to the internet
  • Explain that stuff: Satellites
  • Sankaku Complex: Saint Seiya Goes Forward With Female Saints In “Saintia Shou”

Film, video & games

  • Draxtor Despres: Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me (2018, 75 min)
  • The Nerdwriter: Why Are There So Few Smartphones In Popular Movies?
  • Mr Robot S1E4-5 (2015, 98 min, rewatched)
  • PS3: 街スベリ (2010)
  • Wii U: 太鼓の達人 Wii Uば~じょん! (2013)

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 45: 5-11 November 2018

November 11, 2018 by Karl Leave a Comment

So it has begun for real and we’re flooded with readings. Had to take a break from my Japanese studies and other obligations and focus entirely on Digital Anthropology, which seems very promising and excites me a lot!

In addition, this week was a classless reading unit on Interviewing for Qualitative Methods. I had read Bernard’s texts on Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing as well as Structured Interviewing – both very good and inspiring – in week 43, and now continued with two texts on sensitive questions.

We also had our first session of Ethnographic Film, which was about Robert Flaherty and Nanook of the North. I had read all mandatory and recommended readings for this unit (plus the one we got during class, see below), which I probably won’t manage for all the upcoming units, considering how the classes are aggregating and my focus lingers toward the classes on Digital Anthropology and Qualitative Methods.

Study

Qualitative Methods

  • Unit 8: Interviewing. Module introduction.
  • Gunaratnam, Y. (2003): Threatening topics and difference: Encounters in psycho-social space. Chapter 7 in Researching race and ethnicity. Methods, knowledge and power, pp. 157-177.
  • Lee, Raymond E. (1993): Asking sensitive questions: Interviewing. Chapter 6 in Doing research on sensitive topics, pp. 97-118. (Really good overview of pros and cons of various interview techniques, surveys vs deep interviews, etc.)
  • Online QDA: What is Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA)? (extra)

Ethnographic Film, Unit 1

  • MacDougall, David (1978): Ethnographic Film: Failure and Promise. P. 405-425 in Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 7 (1978).
  • Video: Cronofotografía – Félix Regnault

Digital Anthropology

  • Boellstorff, Tom (2008): Chapter 1: The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry and Chapter 2: History. In Coming of Age in Second Life. An Anthropologist explores the Virtually Human, pp. 3-59. (A very geeky approach to background and terminology – I liked it!)
  • Hine, Christine (2015). Chapter 1: Introduction and Chapter 2: The E3 Internet: Embedded, Embodied, Everyday Internet. In Ethnography for the Internet: Embodied, Embedded and Everyday, pp. 1-54. (A bit redundant in style, but with important points for the ethnographer.)
  • Video: Christine Hine on Online Research Methods (extra)
  • Pink, Sarah et al (2016): Chapter 1 (Introduction – What is Digital Ethnography – Digital Ethnography across Disciplines – Principles for a Digital Ethnography). In Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices, pp. 22-53.
  • Video: The coming transhuman era: Jason Sosa at TEDxGrandRapids (It’s a Ted talk and I didn’t see how it fit in to the syllabus.)

Japanese

  • Memrise: 43,800
    • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, still level 16 → 645 of 2136 kanji learned.
  • Conversation: Two morning sessions with K (Wednesday and Thursday).

Other

Articles

  • The Economist: Japan pampers its pets like nowhere else
  • The Economist: The collapse of an American retail giant
  • The Economist: Angela Merkel will step down as CDU party leader in December
  • The Economist: The legalisation of gay marriage meets resistance in Taiwan
  • Wired: The Brief History—and Uncertain Future—of Foldable Phones

Film and video

  • Langfocus: How I Make a Langfocus Video!
  • Quinn Benet: HALLUCINATING in a HOSPITAL: STORYTIME
  • Marques Brownlee: Let’s Talk About the Foldable Smartphone!

Podcasts & radio

  • Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast 1: Inaugural Episode

Work

It was time for another podcast episode.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Week 40: 1-7 October 2018

October 7, 2018 by Karl Leave a Comment

The first week of the program was extremely intense despite Wednesday was a holiday. Modes of representation on Monday and Tuesday; Qualitative methods on Thursday and Friday. An assignment on Monday night, and the graduation exhibition of Generation 9 on Friday, followed by drinks at Krass Böser Wolf.

It feels like being at a very concentrated conference. And that feels great – I devour every minute of the program. One more week of intense, mandatory inhouse classes coming up.

Study

Modes of representation

Videos we watched in class:

  • Jorge Furtado: Ilha Das Flores, 1989
  • Frederick Wiseman: Titicut Follies, 1967
  • Johan van der Keuken: Herman Slobbe / Blind Kind II, 1966
  • Renzo Martens: Episode I, 2002
  • John Smith: Hotel Diaries: Museum Piece, 2004

Not to mention our assignments, here are my three minutes:

Anthropology and Photography

  • Lucie Ryzova, 2014: Nostalgia for the Modern: Archive Fever in Egypt in the Age of Post-Photography, in Costanza Caraffa and Tiziana Serena (eds.): Photographic Archives and the Idea of Nation, pp. 301-318.

Japanese

  • Intermediate Japanese. Review of Chapter 5.
  • Memrise: 47,500
    • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, level 13 (half) → 500 of 2136 kanji learned

Other

Otaku papers

  • Patrick W. Galbraith, 2011: Lolicon: The Reality of ‘Virtual Child Pornography’ in Japan. In Image & Narrative, Vol 12, No 1, pp. 83-114.

Articles

  • The Economist: The real victims of campus activism are the students (book review of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.)
  • The Economist: Justice Brett Kavanaugh
  • The Economist: High hopes for Hakeem Jeffries
  • The Economist: Flu’s success owes much to its genetic mutability

Video

  • John Smith – The Girl Chewing Gum 1976

Exhibition

  • Malleable Borders, Shifting Identities: 2018 Graduation Exhibition of the Freie Universität MA Visual and Media Anthropology program.

Work

I managed to cram in a podcast episode on Saturday:

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 38: 17-23 September 2018

September 23, 2018 by Karl Leave a Comment

Study

Ethnographic Film, Unit 1 continued: Robert Flaherty

  • Banks, Markus 1992 ‘Which films are the ethnographic films?’ in Film as Ethnography.
  • Balikci, Asen 1975 ‘Reconstructing Cultures on Film’ in Principles of Visual Anthropology.
    • Related video: Luc Sala with Prof. Asen Balikci discuss visual anthropology, 2000
    • Related video: A month in the life of Ephtim D (Asen Balikci, same link from 18:26)
  • Ruby, Jay 2000 ‘The Aggie Must Come First: Robert Flaherty’s place in Ethnographic Film History’ in Picturing Culture.

Japanese

  • Intermediate Japanese. Review of Chapter 1.
  • Memrise: 132,155
    • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, level 8-10 → 400 of 2136 kanji learned

Other

Book

  • Adam Grant: Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2017, 336 p)

Otaku papers

  • Anna Madill, 2018: Erotic Manga: Boys’ Love, Shonen-Ai, Yaoi and (MxM) Shotacon. P. 130-140 in C. Smith, F. Attwood, & B. McNair (Eds), Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality.
  • Saitō Tamaki, 2007: Otaku Sexuality (introduction by Kotani Mari). P. 222-249 in Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., and Takayuki Tatsumi ed., Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams. 👊

Articles

  • Wired: How Wikipedia Portrayed Humanity in a Single Photo
  • Wired: Tinder Wants to Make Emoji for Interracial Couples
  • Wired: Ready Player One Is a Virtually Empty Good Time
  • The Economist: A manifesto for renewing liberalism
  • The Economist: An exceptionally underhanded smear lands Andrew Cuomo in hot water
  • The Economist: America’s government is putting foreign cyber-spies in the dock
  • The Economist: Japan’s prime minister is more of a survivor than a reformer
  • The Economist: Japan’s prime minister has a lot to do in his last years in office
  • The Economist: Black Lives Matter is becoming slightly more conventional
  • The Economist: Africa’s high birth rate is keeping the continent poor
  • The Economist: How to identify anonymous prose
  • 歴史館: Japansk och svensk feminism – skilda världar

Video

  • Jaron Lanier interview on how social media ruins your life
  • Sarah Pink: What is Sensory Ethnography
  • Uncontacted Amazon Tribe: First ever aerial footage (with Carlos Morales from August 2018)
  • Yaya the Wise Man
  • Akihabara Geeks – Full Documentary (2005)
  • Lovisa Solvik: Mitt övergrepp.
  • John Fish: How I Balance Everything at Harvard
  • Kaiman Wong: My Travel Video Kit Essentials

Podcasts

  • The Economist asks: Francis Fukuyama
  • Anthrotalking: Inge Daniels on amateur photographic practices in contemporary Japan
  • Anthrotalking: Paul Boyce on queer anthropology and same-sex sexualities in West Bengal
  • Anthrotalking: First day in the field
  • Anthropod: Michael Fisch on Tokyo Commuter Train Suicides 👍

NP14 – Friday conference at Volksbühne

  • Lennart Mühlenmeier: Wie man in 69 Jahren einen Überwachungsstaat aufbaut
  • Jens Kubieziel: “Schatz, wir haben Polizei in der Wohnung” – Hausdurchsuchung bei den Zwiebelfreunden
  • Abraham Taherivand: Das freie Internet ist nicht tot. Wie können wir gemeinsam dafür kämpfen?
  • Hans Block: Herausforderung Content Moderation (Follow-Up von THE CLEANERS)
  • Aram Bartholl: Your shopping cart is empty
  • Erich Möchel: Netzpolitik in der Ära Cyber 4.0
  • Jillian C. York: Offline Repression is Replicated Online
  • Alina Darmstadt & Oliver Saal: Workshop: Hate Speech – Ausschalten oder Aushalten?
  • Frederike Kaltheuner & Ailidh Callander: Time to hold the (invisible) data industry to account
  • Max Schrems: Fight the power: Datenschutz gegenüber Plattformen durchsetzen

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Bike tour to John Henry Mackay’s grave

August 13, 2010 by Karl 3 Comments

John Henry Mackay (1864 – 1933) was a German anarchist and homosexual (with a Scottish father who died when Mackay was still a baby – hence the name).

Under the pen name Sagitta, Mackay published his autobiographical novel Fenny Skaller – A Life of the Nameless Love. He also planned a series of activist writings on the “nameless love,” to be published twice a year with a circulation of 1,000 copies, and sold by subscription only. In 1908, the police seized all his writings. A court ruled them “obscene” and destroyed them.

Hubert Kennedy has written an excellent biography called Anarchist of Love – the Secret Life of John Henry Mackay, and translated several of Mackay’s works into English. Many of them are available as free pdf downloads on his site. Thank you, Hubert! I encourage everyone to take this opportunity to get to know one of the early homosexual activists better.

I like visiting the graves of authors who have meant something to me. I figured Mackay must be buried somewhere in Berlin, and according to this detailed description by jay_h, Mackay was buried at a forest cemetery called Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof, next to or part of the Südwestkirchhof, just south of Berlin.

I decided to follow Jay’s directions in my pilgrimage to Mackay’s grave. The bike tour would be about 60 km and my weather widget looked like this:

But it didn’t rain at the moment, so I thought I better get going – it was already 2 pm. The sky was very dark, the air humid – I was prepared for rain and packed a rain jacket, but I never needed to use it.

I took the eastern way to the cemetery, and the western way back. The line on the map is not exact, since it is only possible to save auto routes, and sometimes I used short cuts where cars weren’t allowed. So don’t worry, I didn’t bike on the Autobahn on my way back as the map suggests:

google_map_john_henry_mackay_grave_bike_tour

I kept a pretty high pace, averaging over 25 kph/15 mph:

  • Total time: 14:00 – 18:00 = 4 hours
  • Biking time: 2 hours, 22 minutes
  • Distance: 60,4 km (37,5 miles)
  • Average speed: 25,5 kph (15,8 mph)
  • Max speed: 42,4 kph (26,3 mph)

One hour into the trip, I stopped at a Bäckerei to have a belegtes Brötchen and a coffee. Love those German bakeries!

I found the cemetery, but would have picked the wrong entrance if it wasn’t for Jay’s directions – when you enter Bahnhofstraße from Potsdamer Allee you must pass the first entrance on the left (which goes to Südwestkirchhof) and continue for another 100 meter or so, where you’ll find a sign that says Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof:

Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof, Stahnsdorf, Berlin, Germany.

And again, I wouldn’t have found the grave if I didn’t know, from Jay’s story, that it was in the section E III. A map showed the location of that section (I was the only visitor in this beautiful forest cemetery), and clear signs marked the way:

Feld E III, where John Henry Mackay is buried.

Once there, it was easy to find Mackay’s grave. Here it is:

The grave of John Henry Mackay at Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof, Berlin.

The grave wasn’t as well-kept as on Jay’s photo. I cleaned it from old leaves, but all in all found it pretty beautiful in the middle of all the lush. This is where an anarchist and Kämpfer like Mackay should be buried. What would he do on a regular cemetery with cut grass, paved ways and fancy metal fences? Forced to lie between the righteous bourgeois people who most surely despised him – for several reasons. It would be totally out of place for an “anarchist of love” like Mackay. This is where he belongs, in the lush and overgrown nature.

Next to Mackay’s grave is the grave of a Hans Henck. According to Jay’s report, Henck was a man who took care of Mackay’s grave till his own death, and his wish was to be buried close to Mackay. Now he lies next to him:

The graves of John Henry Mackay and Hans Henck at Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof, Berlin.

I wonder what kind of relationship they had, if they even knew each other. I have been able to find no information at all on this. Henck died in 1996, that’s 63 years after Mackay’s death in 1933, so hypothetically, they could have been friends.

On my way back to Friedrichshain, the sky was even darker, but still no rain. I chose the bike path next to the legendary Avus highway. Perfect road conditions. At one point I was overtook by another cyclist. That happens very rarely. I tried to hang on for about a minute while we were biking at 39 kph, but then I just couldn’t compete with him anymore. I didn’t lose sight of him though, and finally managed to bike up to him when he had stopped at the red light at Messedamm. I complimented him on his speed and asked if he was a Profi. No, just commuting every day to and from work, he replied.

On Kaiserdamm I found another biker who was as fast as me, but not as fast as the first guy. We took turns drafting each other for several quarters until he took a right turn at Großer Stern, where I joined the cars for a smoother passing. But be damned, somewhere in Tiergarten he biked up to me again, and we enjoyed drafting each other again all the way to Brandenburger Tor, where he turned right and I zig-zagged my way through the tourists under the gate.

I came home at about 6 pm. 20 minutes laters, the first drops of rain started to fall. A few minutes later it was pouring down! What a great timing. Now let it fall for many days while my bike rests in the dry basement.

Some additional photos:

Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof, Berlin.

This silent owl also resided in the E III field.

I like pine trees.

I know it almost looks sunny, but this is to show how the rain was hanging in the air when I got home. This is Berghain by the way, the notorious Berlin club.

Filed Under: Okategoriserade

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Unreal Boys - a film about shotacon

Unreal Boys is my graduation film. It’s a documentary about three young men in Tokyo who like the Japanese comic genre shotacon. Read more.

Tiling short film

Tiling is a short film that I made as part of a semester paper. Read more and watch it here.

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