(NOT) ENTERING EVERY ROOM - Exploring autosociobiographies via liminal crossing points of social class and the emotion shame
(2023)
author(s): Barbara Wolfram, Christina Wintersteiger
published in: Research Catalogue
(Not) Entering Every Room, conducted 2020/21 at Film Academy Vienna/ mdw - University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna, set out to use the emotion shame as a focus to reveal and explore unconscious liminal crossing points in our biographies and perceptions of social class, building on our previous research on cinematic (auto)sociobiographies (2020).
We are shaped, guided and scarred by our socialization and the society surrounding us. Each individual history brings with it a different knowledge repertoire about what belonging or not-belonging, „normal“ or „abnormal“ means. Spoerhase (Politik der Form 2017) describes the exploration and disclosure of one’s own biography in relation to social context & class, to one’s body, time & place of birth as “auto-sociobiographical”. He refers to the literary works of Annie Ernaux or Didier Eribon where individual life stories evoke a collective memory of a certain time and place, revealing liminal experiences of social class. One emotion that was mentioned more often than any other in these literary works, was shame.
To explore our own histories of experiences and the attached knowledge repertoire, we used the methodology of collective (auto)sociobiographical exploration via a multi-layered artistic approach. Body work (Chechov, Shdanoff), writing improvisations and group explorations via zoom were used to probe the methodology of (auto)sociobiographical exploration in the light of shame and social class.
Research on cinematic (auto)sociobiographies is still very new. We aim at contributing a method of exploration to the field of cinematic form and content production informed by artistic research methods.
TOWARDS A SCENOGRAPHY OF THE SELF
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Cezara-Maria Gurau
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Wednesday, 21st of February 2024
23:23
52 degrees, 5 minutes, 51 seconds North;
5 degrees, 6 minutes, 19 seconds East.
The night has settled.
The sky is clear.
The city is quiet.
Mind flows through fingers.
I am here. And, now, you are here as well, but on the other side.
And while we are far away from each other, I hope distance will bring us closer.
And as you continue to read, I welcome you in the in-between.
What is the last dream you had that you can remember? Is there a dream you can never forget?
For 3 years, I had a recurring dream.
There was a house with the entrance on the back. A spiral staircase would lead to a massive old wooden door. Sometimes, it would open by itself. Other times, specific people would welcome me inside. Only on certain occasions I would open it myself. Once the way would be revealed, before me, there was always a very long, red corridor.
Transitioning is always about taking the time and observing the movement; afterward, it is about noticing how you become it, how it transforms you.
When I would least expect it, there was the door to the other side. From there, I could travel anywhere.
After a while something changed. I was left only with its memory.
For the second time, in the past 5 years, I decided to move away from the familiar, and root elsewhere. Little did I know back then, how much the spaces that we are in shape us. They offer a glimpse into ourselves.
During the time I was beginning again, I would frequently close my eyes, and after a while, an endless underground tunnel would appear behind my eyelids.
In the far distance, a light.
Try as I might to reach it, it turned out to be impossible. The path would curve every time, forming a spiral.
"Maybe you should stay more in the liminal", said Henny Dörr during a research presentation.
And I did.
Once the metaphor of this space was consciously and subconsciously embodied, I came closer to understanding the grounds of this (re)search:
encountering spaces, facing oneself, and meeting the other.