easa

Dear List Members

Online conversation, working group Visual Anthropology (German Anthropological Association): Sorayut Aiemueayut will present for our working group Visual Anthropology series (8th of May, Monday, 5:30 7 pm) his film "Sounding Heritage in Chiang Khan" and his related research:

Sounding Heritage: Collaborative Methodology and the Visual Sovereignty of the Mekong River

We'll be happy seeing you and debating with Sorayut and you! Please join on Zoom! Feel free to circulate this invite, too.

Please find below to this e-mail the abstract for Sorayut Aiemueayut's presentation.

Zoom link: 08.05. // Monday, 5:30 7 pm (Berlin time)

https://wwu.zoom.us/j/64405352244?pwd=NDgxeUhkNng1VnBkQU5PQVhMUGVNQT09 Meeting-ID: 644 0535 2244 Kenncode: 327512

Save the date for our session in June: Next presentation: 19th of June Marcela Andrade 8 (Federal University of Rio de Janeir) "The Searching of the Voice": notes about sonic manifestations in the Cuban Abakua Society.

Best, Thomas // Cathrine

Thomas John | Doctoral Researcher Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology Freie Universitt Berlin & Associate Lecturer, Dept. of Social and Cultural Anthropology WWU Mnster https://www.uni-muenster.de/Ethnologie/en/personal/lehrbeauftragte/thomasjohn .html https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/ethnologie/personen/doktorand_innen/john.html

• Co-speaker working group Visual Anthropology (DGSKA / German Anthropological Association)

Sounding Heritage: Collaborative Methodology and the Visual Sovereignty of the Mekong River

Sounding Heritage in Chiang Khan

SORAYUT AIEMUEAYUT

Abstract

In the landscape of mass media, visual representation has long been a modality for creating "authenticity' of places, nature, and people. Moreover, mass media also has become an apparatus that plays a central role in idealizing images to propose to the user to further dwell into the pleasantness to turn people being passive actors unable to take critical responsibility for their actions.

This presentation reflects on the ethnographic film "Sounding Heritage in Chiang Khan," which aimed to challenge the mass media's constructed image of the Mekong River and disturb the "picturesque culture" on the Thai - Lao border. The main ideas show how people articulate the ways of self-representation that come into play in media production. Using a collaborative methodology, I sought to understand how the community and individuals critique the given authentic world and how they have the right to create a space for visual sovereignty in the meaning of self-definition and self-determination. With these approaches, I can conclude that an ethnographic film can be a "contested knowledge in the making" to enhance the meaning of active life.

Keywords: collaborative film, visual sovereignty, visual ethnography, Mekong River

Sorayut Aiemueayut

Sorayut is a lecturer in Visual Culture at the Department of Media, Arts, and Design, Chiang Mai University. He is also a doctoral researcher in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. Sorayut was a Lisa Maskell Fellowship (2016 - 2018) and Harvard Yenching Institute visiting scholar (2019 - 2020). His interests include Anthropology of Arts, Sensory Politics, AudioVisual Ethnography, and Phenomenology, focused on South and Southeast Asia. He is trained as an anthropologist and has conducted fieldwork in the Mekong River basin, Deep south of Thailand, and the Malay peninsula. Sorayut received his B.A. and M.A. in Anthropology from Chiang Mai University and Thammasat University with training as a photographer through fieldwork practices.

Vaneasa mailing list Vaneasa@lists.easaonline.org http://lists.easaonline.org/listinfo.cgi/vaneasa-easaonline.org