Karl Andersson

Anthropologist

Week 34: 17-23 August 2020

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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

TV

  • Babylon Berlin, S1 E1–8 = end

Week 33: 10-16 August 2020

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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

Anime

Article

Video

Week 32: 3-9 August 2020

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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

Anime

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

Article

Video

Week 31: 27 July – 2 August 2020

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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

Anime

Book chapter

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

Week 30: 20-26 July 2020

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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

Anime

Week 29: 13-19 July 2020

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After some discussion we decided to end our self-imposed quarantine. Thus: Pad thai and beer at the Wasserturm in Prenzi on Monday, and my first visit ever to Sommerbad Kreuzberg on Tuesday. Too salty vegan burger from Kiiro on the terrace at night.

I edited some of the days. On Friday I half-heartedly participated in a Zoom seminar on visual representation. But basically I just wanted to edit.

I tried a new working technique on Saturday: From 15 to 18 I did 6 Pomodoro blocks à 25 minutes, each one followed by a 5 minute break. Then food break for half an hour followed by 2 hours of non-stop editing 18-30-20.30, because by then I was already in it. I HAD A GREAT TIME! The Pomodoro sessions were a great way to force myself to get there, instead of spending the day procrastinating and miserably getting to it at 20, 21 or 22. Now I was done in the studio at 20.30, backed and packed up for 15 minutes and biked home. After tea and Wataru I kept working for four and a half hour until 2.

The mornings were for Anki.

Japanese

  • Flashcards Deluxe: 31 min per day
  • Anki: Ca 90 min per day

Anime

EASA2020 Lisboa film

  • Nous Sommes Ensemble (We are Together) (Ascanio Varroni 2019 | 33’ | Cameroon / Norway)

Seminar

Articles