Journal article
Putting the Ghost Back In: Making Rich Meaning in Video Work
Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, Vol.33
2019
Abstract
When Derrida exhorted us to learn to speak to ghosts, his rich notion of hauntology was taken up by post-colonial scholars (Cameron; Coddington) to discuss the hauntings in many colonial landscapes. New Zealand is arguably such a place. Some of my birth kin are Māori, a fact I learnt only in adulthood, as I am adopted. In 2017, I took a video camera to Riverton/Aparima, where my Ngāi Tahu ancestors lived and died. I went looking for ghosts, for a connection. I was seeking Hirschs postmemory. Postmemory is not living memory but an intensely imagined past. Adoption scholars (Brookfield, Brown and Reavey; Homans) also use postmemory. However, unlike Berry and her striking experience of Dresden, this land did not speak to me. Despite this, I filmed the properties that my great-great-grandfather John Arnett bequeathed to his children in 1895. Back in Australia, I was forced to intervene in the placid nature of these images to try to put the ghost in. In this article, I outline my working methodology of autoethnography, and discuss how hauntology and postmemory are powerful tools that have changed how I create.
Details
- Title
- Putting the Ghost Back In: Making Rich Meaning in Video Work
- Authors
- Christine Rogers (Author) - RMIT University
- Publication details
- Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, Vol.33
- Publisher
- Swinburne University of Technology
- Date published
- 2019
- ISSN
- 1447-4905
- Copyright note
- (c) 2019 Christine Rogers. Originally published by Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99996898202621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
22 Record Views