Affective radicality: prisons, Palestine, and interactive documentary

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes two recent interactive documentary projects: Sharon Daniel’s Public Secrets (2006), an exploration of the prison industrial complex through the testimonies of female inmates in California, and Zohar Kfir’s Points of View (2014) which “maps” Palestinian video advocacy projects made for and/or disseminated by B’Tselem, a human rights organization working in the occupied territories. I argue that the interactive documentary form, as deployed by Daniel and Kfir, draws on the legacies of radical documentary practice, but offers new possibilities for engagement and intervention. The interactive documentary form functions as a structuring device for a wealth of affectively powerful witnesses, testimonies, and varied forms of evidence. This essay explores how interactive documentaries allow viewers/users a multi-faceted affective encounter with a range of subjects and evidence. This form, in concert with a radical political stance, I argue, is a locus for the representation of and viewer/user critical engagement with broad systemic problems, renders visible hidden structures of violence and power, and engenders an “affective radicality” that moves viewers/users into larger networks of political discourse, militant activism, and practices of resistance.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• interactive documentary
• Palestine
• prison
• radicality

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Jennifer Black, Amanda Caleb, Domi Olivieri, George Shea, Melanie Shepherd, Margot Wielgus, Glenn Willis, Marta Zarzycka, and the two anonymous reviewers for a wealth of insightful feedback on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. http://zzee.net/wordpress/ (artist site); http://points-of-view.net/ (project site).

http://www.sharondaniel.net/ (artist site); www.publicsecret.net (project site).

2. It has variously been dubbed, “database documentary,” “participatory documentary,” “web documentary,” “interactive documentary,” “i-docs,” “cross-media documentaries,” and “docuwebs.”

3. See Bhaskar Sarkar and Janet Walker’s (2010) recent edited collection Documentary Testimonies: Global Archive of Suffering.

4. See http://www.jnow.org/. California has seen the largest expansion of prisons and mass incarceration in the United States in the past 70 years. See Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s (2007) Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.

5. Because she partnered with Justice Now, Daniel was able to have the group designate her as such an advocate and allowed her access, though she must still abide by what she terms “Kafkaesque regulations” as well as invasive search procedures and surveillance of her conversations.

6. Daniel appropriates the term “public secrets” from Michael Taussig. See Michael Taussig (1999).

7. Daniel prefers the term “database documentary” to describe her work.

8. “B'Tselem in Hebrew literally means ‘in the image of,’ and is also used as a synonym for human dignity. The word is taken from Genesis 1:27 ‘And God created humans in his image. In the image of God did He create him.’ It is in this spirit that the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘All human beings are born equal in dignity and rights.’” See http://www.btselem.org/about_btselem

9. The project uses custom coded versions of the applications Python, HTML 5, and WebGL.