Study diary

A pretty inefficient week, but I did finish the methodology section and started diving into the findings, which of course are the real meat of the thesis.

I participated in a film screening with S on Thursday.

And we enjoyed another sunny day at Sommerbad Kreuzberg on Tuesday, which was also the day for another Editing Forum, the class that I like so much – since I learn so much.

All the Manben videos that I watched over the last few weeks have been deleted, so I’m happy that I watched them so fervently! I found the original Tezuka Osamu documentary that the Manben series was based on. We also started watching the fourth season of Boku no Hero Academia.

But what really gripped me this week was Anders Wahlgren’s film Staden i mitt hjärta from 1992, about the destruction of the Klara quarters in central Stockholm in the 1950s through 1970s. I’ve known about this project as long as I can remember, I think every Swede has, but I always thought it was slum that was torn down. Not huge stone palaces and the like! It’s quite unfathomable how such a project could be realised so swiftly and without much protest, and also without proper documentation and museal preservation of what was being destroyed. But it also somehow fits, a bit too well, into the story of a country that always wants to be special or, let’s spell it out, superior.

Anime

• 2019: Boku no Hero Academia S4, E1–5

Video

• Osamu Tezuka documentary (1985? The precursor for the Manben series! 45 min)
• Staden i mitt hjärta (Anders Wahlgren, 1992, 59 min)
• Flotten (Marcus Lindeen, 2018, 98 min – brilliant!)
• World’s Busiest Station: Shinjuku Station Tokyo (made by a production company in Berlin apparently, 49 min)
• ANN News: スウェーデン“収束”の理由は・・・現地医師に聞く(2020年8月27日)

Articles

• Global Bar Magazine/David Isaksson: Är det rätt att säga icke-vita? (Tobias Hübinette interview) (non-https link)
• Expressen Kultur/Karin Olsson: Den skrikande tårtan känns så länge sedan

Got the reply from my supervisor on Monday. The film is now finished and we move on to finish the written thesis, which I might rework for a different purpose as well when it’s finished – very exciting. I also communicated a bit with participants in my film.

But mostly I read up on the philosophical roots of phenomenology. This methodology is so hard to grasp, which is sort of the point, I guess. I reread some papers from Qualitative Methods, most notably Moustaka and Desjarlais & Throop, as well as the introduction to Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology (as recommended by S), but it wasn’t until I started reading David Cerbone’s Understanding Phenomenology that things really started to make sense to me. I’m now halfway through reworking the methodology part of my thesis. It’s messy, so messy, and I like it very much.

We took a break from anime and watched the whole first season of Babylon Berlin – what a fantastic series, in so many ways!

Article

• Pedestrian Observations/Alon Levy: Construction Costs in the Arab World
• Berliner Zeitung: Autor Jeremias Thiel: „Ich will weg von zu Hause, weg von meinen Eltern“
• Vassa eggen/Olle Lidbom: CNN fyller 40 år

TV

• Babylon Berlin, S1 E1–8 = end

Last week with the film? I hope so. I spent it adjusting audio levels and grading the colours, although I ended up reverting all the grading. Learning … But the film is there now and I sent it to my supervisor today. Let’s hope he likes it. Yesterday I signed up on Filmfreeway.

My main protagonist got back to me with a long and positive response about the film. I also got a very good response from a couple of Japanese creators whose work is shown in the film. I will continue next week to correspond with other people who are involved.

On Tuesday I participated in Curating ethnographic exhibitions, unit 3, although I was ill prepared after having read only about half of one of the two mandatory texts.

Next I’ll start focusing on the written essay.

We finished Boku no Hero Academia season 3!

Japanese

• Flashcards Deluxe: Ca 20 min per day
• Anki: 2–3 hours per day
• Mornings: JapaNews24 ～日本のニュースを24時間配信
• NHK Manben documentaries:
  • 花沢健吾
  • 藤田和日郎
  • 浅野いにお – most inspiring!

Anime

• 2018: Boku no Hero Academia S3, E17–25 (end)

Article

• Harper’s Magazine: A Letter on Justice and Open Debate
• Spiked/Andrew Doyle: We need to be braver

Video

• Al Jazeera: Alain de Botton and Ayishat Akanbi | Studio B: Unscripted

S watched the film on Tuesday and gave his approval. We went on to finetune the edit on Wednesday, starting at 15 sharp (after Anki, that is) and continuing past midnight. Last edits on Friday, as planned. We finished late, but there it was – the fine cut! Only audio adjustments and colour grading now remain. I’m really happy with the results! On Saturday I sent off the film to my participants and one of them already replied quite formally that he approved of his participation.

I watched a live webinar on animation in Clip Studio Paint on Thursday. I always get these emails about webinars from CSP and finally there was a good fit! Filed under inspiration.

Today we biked 45 kilometers through the city in 36-38 degrees heat to soak ourselves in Krumme Lanke, which was packed with people, but had a very nice atmosphere. Haven’t been there before.

Japanese

• Flashcards Deluxe: Ca 20 min per day
• Anki: 2–3 hours per day
• Mornings: JapaNews24 ～日本のニュースを24時間配信
• NHK Manben documentaries:
  • 萩尾望都
  • 池上遼一

Anime

• 2018: Boku no Hero Academia S3, E9–16

Book chapter

• Tim Ingold: Anthropology: Why It Matters (2018)
  • 1: On Taking Others Seriously (probably the best text on anthropology I’ve ever read!)

Webinar

• Graphixly: Making an Animated Short Film in Clip Studio Paint with Manuel López

Article

• Gay & Lesbian Review & The Guide/Bill Andriette: Castrating the Church (2002)

Video

• France24: Japan’s modern-day hermits: The world of hikikomori (journalism – such a contrast to anthropology)

Another week that passed so quickly that I feel I didn’t really do anything.

Except finishing the final cut! As in the cut, not the colour grading or sound level adjustments. I didn’t like how the editing started to linger, which can happen when there is no deadline. So S said today that Friday next week was my deadline. Good! Last fixes coming up!

I also seem to remember being immersed in various animations. Creating them, that is. Actually I started watching Evangelion 1.0 twice but ended up returning to Clip Studio Paint.

We discussed another rough cut in the Editing Forum on Tuesday, the only class I’m taking.

Japanese

• Flashcards Deluxe: 22 min per day
• Anki: Probably 2–3 hours per day
• 1 page in The Syotaroh
• Mornings: JapaNews24 ～日本のニュースを24時間配信
• NHK Manben documentaries:
  • 東村アキコ
  • 高橋ツトム (amazing!)
  • 斎藤隆夫

Anime

• 2018: Boku no Hero Academia S3, E6–8

Book chapter

• Angela Duckworth: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (2016)
  • Chapter 1: Showing Up

This week I attended my first academic conference: EASA2020: New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe. Which was organised in Lisbon but took place online.

• On Monday I attended the network meeting for Enqa (after first checking in with Vaneasa where not much was going on).
• Tuesday was the keynote by Marilyn Strathern.
• On Wednesday the conference started for real and I listened to the panel Languages of entanglement: mapping the ethnographic modes and media, convened by Melissa Nolas and Christos Varvantakis:
  • Alexa Färber: Detangling the different media mobilities in multimodal research
  • Sanderien Verstappen: How to make anthropology accessible for smartphone viewers?: A manifesto for ultrashort and low-resolution films
  • Harshadha Balasubramanian: An Invitation to Feel Colour and Draw Sound: Proposing Cross-modality as a Participatory Method in Multimodal Fieldwork
  • Saadia Mirza: Sensing Landscape as a Media Object
  • Vanessa Wijngaarden: In dialogue with research collaborators and the public: Reflexive audio-visual ethnography and dilemmas of production and dissemination
  • Alexandra D’Onofrio: From multimodal research to imagining the future of publishing a multimodal monograph
  • Mark Westmoreland: Multimodality: Shifting Paradigms
• Followed by a useful Combined Academic Press/Duke Press Meet the Editors session, with Ken Wissoker and Gisela Fosado.
• But it was Thursday’s lab Drawing as Anthropology-Making, led by Letizia Bonanno and José Sherwood, that was the real meat of the conference for me. Such an inspiring double session, which will influence my practice.
• On Friday I rounded off with the first couple of talks in the panel Despite differences? Identity politics and solidarities in/of feminist and queer projects, convened by Anika Keinz and Monika Baer:
  • Ahmad Al-Kurdi: “From concert halls to the streets”: (re)framing intersectionality in Lebanese LGBT organizing
  • Alexandria Petit-Thorne: “Queer Solidarity Smashes Borders”: queer organizing against the deportation of migrants in the United Kingdom

I did have some editing sessions, after discussing a new version with S. I also talked to a lawyer about my film. On Monday I had my first restaurant dinner since breaking the quarantine, with A on his birthday. I’m keeping up Anki in the mornings, or usually until 15 or so.

This weekend I’ve discovered a childhood dream of mine: Animation. As in making them. Both yesterday and today I was immersed for hours on end while creating my first two animations. It’s nothing short of magic to see the character come to life by moving. I think I sat from after lunch until 21 today. Yesterday maybe from 22 to 3.30. I upgraded Clip Studio Paint from Pro to Ex to be able to animate more than 24 frames (one second, that is, or three seconds for me since I use anime’s classic framerate of eight frames per second). I basically draw one drawing per frame, or at least the moving part of it. I’m sure there are various tricks such as tweening and the like, but I like doing it the classic way, at least in the beginning (plus I don’t really know the programme that well and just wanted to start). The result is a very analogue feeling, where some lines move slightly despite they “shouldn’t”, and small ink blobs appear on certain frames – just as if it was done on film! I was frankly completely blown away by my first animation. And this experience is also super relevant for my research, as it’s about creating a reality.

Japanese

• Flashcards Deluxe: 29 min per day
• Anki: Probably 2–3 hours per day
• Every morning: JapaNews24 ～日本のニュースを24時間配信

Anime

• 2017: Boku no Hero Academia S2, E24–25
• 2018: Boku no Hero Academia S3, E1–5