'A rich ethnographic study, Shimmering Screens examines the productive, and sometimes problematic, conjunctions of technology, culture, and imagination in contemporary Yolngu life. Jennifer Deger offers a new perspective to ongoing debates regarding “media imperialism.” Reconsidering assumptions about the links between representation, power, and “the gaze,” she proposes the possibility of a more mutual relationship between subject, image, and viewer. ' (Source: Publisher's website)
This work contains:
Introduction
1 Culture and Complicities: An Indigenous Media Research Project
2 (In)Visible Difference: Framing Questions of Culture, Media, and Technology
3 Tuning In: Mediated Imaginaries and Problems of Deafness and Forgetting
4 On the “Mimetic Faculty” and the Refractions of Culture
5 Taking Pictures: Media Technologies and a Yolngu Politics of Presencing
6 Flowers and Photographs: Death, Memory, and Techno Mimetics
7 Technology, Techne, and Yolngu Videomaking
8 Shimmering Verisimilitudes: Making Video, Managing Images, Manifesting Truths
9 Worlding a Yolngu World: Radiant Visions and the Flash of Recognition
Conclusion
'The title of this book refers to the shimmering effect produced in the distinctive art forms of the Aboriginal clans (Yolngu) of north-eastern Arnhem Land in Australia. In bark and rock painting, for example, fine cross-hatching designs create a unique pulsating sensation of light and movement, which has, for some time now, attracted intense interest from both anthropologists and the international art world. This critical ethnography of the place of media in the Yolngu community in Gapuwiyak explores how media technologies such as video are being adopted as a new means of producing this shimmering effect and examines the significance of this effect in Yolgnu culture and identity. The aim of the book’s in-depth analysis of this new media practice is to guide non-Aboriginal readers towards an understanding and appreciation of Indigenous media in Yolngu terms.' (Introduction)
'Shimmering Screens is a study of the impact of Western technology in (and not necessarily on) a remote Aboriginal community, a memoir of how fieldwork changes the anthropologist, and a meditation on the ways in which Yolngu and balanda (white Australians) can interpenetrate each other’s worlds. Deger, a research fellow in anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney, has written a brilliant book that analyses the ways in which one man, Bangana Wunungmurra, took up the challenge of making video in the Arnhem Land community of Gapuwiyak to reinvigorate Yolngu rom (Law) and pursue a personal redemption.' (Introduction)
'Shimmering Screens is a study of the impact of Western technology in (and not necessarily on) a remote Aboriginal community, a memoir of how fieldwork changes the anthropologist, and a meditation on the ways in which Yolngu and balanda (white Australians) can interpenetrate each other’s worlds. Deger, a research fellow in anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney, has written a brilliant book that analyses the ways in which one man, Bangana Wunungmurra, took up the challenge of making video in the Arnhem Land community of Gapuwiyak to reinvigorate Yolngu rom (Law) and pursue a personal redemption.' (Introduction)
'The title of this book refers to the shimmering effect produced in the distinctive art forms of the Aboriginal clans (Yolngu) of north-eastern Arnhem Land in Australia. In bark and rock painting, for example, fine cross-hatching designs create a unique pulsating sensation of light and movement, which has, for some time now, attracted intense interest from both anthropologists and the international art world. This critical ethnography of the place of media in the Yolngu community in Gapuwiyak explores how media technologies such as video are being adopted as a new means of producing this shimmering effect and examines the significance of this effect in Yolgnu culture and identity. The aim of the book’s in-depth analysis of this new media practice is to guide non-Aboriginal readers towards an understanding and appreciation of Indigenous media in Yolngu terms.' (Introduction)
