Avoiding the (tourist) gaze: pursuit of the ‘authentic’ in the Tbilisi edgelands

Abstract

The making of Micro-district II, a digital film made by the author in the edgelands of Tbilisi, Georgia, is used as a vehicle for exploring the tourist gaze and the observer’s paradox amongst ethnographic filmmaking methods and documentary modes of observation. The observer’s paradox describes how the receiver of the gaze may become influenced through the processes of being observed, altering the quality of observing ‘naturalistic’ events. The tourist gaze is a similarly two-way process where the pursuit of the authentic is negotiated or constructed according to the type of gaze encountered. Whilst this article is more about the observation of urban landscapes, architecture and street ephemera, than human subjects, the mode of observation and the gaze play a vital role in the author’s personalised accounts of ways of ‘avoiding the gaze’ and getting to what is perceived as filming an ‘authentic’ experience of the ex-soviet micro-districts of Tbilisi. Through a process of autoethnography the author examines ways of avoiding the tourist gaze including navigating the streets, filmmaking techniques and by experimenting with documentary styles of realism. Drawing on the field notes of the author/filmmaker, the problematic quest for the ‘authentic’ and ‘naturalistic’ experience of the tourist are discussed, in terms of the complex elements which determine the constructive gaze, with a conclusion that suggests the impossibility of avoiding the tourist gaze.

摘要

作者在格鲁吉亚第比利斯的边缘地带制作了数码电影《微型区II》, 藉此探索游客的凝视和观察者在人种学电影制作方法和纪实观察模式之间的悖论。观察者悖论描述了凝视的接收者如何通过被观察的过程而受到影响, 改变观察“自然主义”事件的质量。游客的凝视也是一个类似的双向过程, 在这个过程中, 对真实性的追求是根据所遇到的凝视类型来协商或构建的。虽然这篇文章更多的是对城市景观、建筑和街道的观察, 而不是对人类的观察。观察方式和凝视在作者的个人描述中扮演着至关重要的角色, “避免凝视”, 并获得被认为是拍摄第比利斯前苏联微型地区的“真实”体验。通过一个自我体民族志的过程, 作者研究了避免游客凝视的方法, 包括漫步街道, 电影制作技术和通过实验现实主义风格进行拍摄。根据作者即电影制作人的实地记录, 讨论了探索游客的“真实”和“自然主义”体验的不确定性, 根据决定建设性凝视的复杂元素, 得出的结论表明, 避免游客的凝视是不可能的。

Keywords:

• Tourist gaze
• observer’s paradox
• ethnographic video
• constructive gaze
• the creative ethnography network

关键词:

• 游客凝视
• 观察者悖论
• 民族志视频
• 建设性凝视
• 创造性民族志网络

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term “deep topography” is connected with modern adherents of psychogeography, such as the British writers Will Self and Iain Sinclair, who have been influenced by the urban drifts and verbal ramblings of Nick Papadimitriou in the film The London Perambulator (Rodgers, 2011).

2 Micro-district II is currently doing a round of documentary film festivals and a draft version is available for viewing at https://youtu.be/i4C1AnYtaik

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emit Snake-Beings

Emit Snake-Beings is an educator, researcher and practitioner in the field of DiY (Do-it-Yourself) digital creative technologies and media ethnography. His interest is in combining digital media with the practical, hands-on and material focused approaches of critical maker culture. Emit’s own practice as research circulates between interactive media, film, video, soundscape and location sound recording.