Sync Event : The Ethnographic Allegory of Unsere Afrikareise

Abstract:

The thesis aims at a critical reflexion on experimental ethnography with a special focus on the role of sound. A reassessment of its predominant discourse, as conceptualized by Cathrine Russell, is paired with a conceptual approach to film sound and audio-vision. By reactivating experimental filmmaker Peter Kubelka’s concept sync event and its aesthetic realisation in Unsere Afrikareise (Our Trip to Africa, Peter Kubelka, 1966) the thesis provide a themed reflection on the materiality of film as audiovisual relation. Sync event is a concept focused on the separation and meeting of image and sound to create new meanings, or metaphors. By reintroducing the concept and discussing its implication in relation to Michel Chion’s audio-vision, the thesis theorizes the audiovisual relation in ethnographic/documentary film more broadly. Through examples from the Russian avant-garde and Surrealism the sync event is connected to a historical genealogy of audiovisual experiments. With James Clifford’s notion ethnographic allegory Unsere Afrikareise becomes a case in point of experimental ethnography at work. The sync event is comprehended as an ethnographic allegory with the audience at its focal point; a colonial critique performed in the active process of audio-viewing film.