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Practices of Making as Forms of Knowledge: Creative Practice Research as a Mode of Documentary Making in Northeast India

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Screen Production Research

Abstract

Research-based creative practice documentaries pursue unexplored lines of inquiry and sensory trajectories. This chapter discusses two creative practice documentary projects that I have developed in the Northeast Indian state of Assam. My discussion takes up how the historical contexts of where I work inform the directions of my practice. My interest in documenting Assamese cultural practices as containers of living knowledges constitutes a counterpoint to dominant modes of representing the region that are identified with the ‘counter-insurgent gaze’ (Baruah 2005). The chapter raises my processes for developing Kamakha: Through Prayerful Eyes (2012) and When Women Weave (work-in-progress) to illustrate how documentary aesthetics construct meanings and discourses. I specifically discuss the influence of observational cinema and my approach to social aesthetics devised through haptic audio-visuality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Shahani’s Bhavanatarana (Immanence, 1991) and The Bamboo Flute (2000).

  2. 2.

    Kamakha: Through Prayerful Eyes, 2012, directed by Aparna Sharma, distributed by Berkeley Media, http://www.berkeleymedia.com/product/kamakha_through_prayerful_eyes/.

  3. 3.

    Controversial acts such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA, 1958) and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA, 1987) are enforced in many parts of Northeast India.

  4. 4.

    For a detailed discussion on how the counter-insurgent gaze informs mainstream Indian media, see Sharma (2015), ‘An Arrested Eye: Trauma and Becoming in Desire Machine Collective’s Documentary Installations’, in Aparna Sharma, Documentary Films in India: Critical Aesthetics at Work (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 107–133.

  5. 5.

    It is held that Shiva’s first wife, Sati, immolated herself on hearing the false news of her husband’s death. When Shiva learned of the immolation, he descended from his celestial abode, enraged, to retrieve Sati’s charred body from earth. As he carried her remains back to heaven, fifty-one parts of Sati’s body fell across fifty-one spots in India, each becoming a sacred pilgrimage site. According to this narrative, Sati’s female organs fell where the Kamakhya shrine now stands (Shastri 1991, pp. 164–177).

  6. 6.

    Phookan, N. (2007), Selected Poems of Nilmani Phookan, translated from Assamese by Krishnadulal Barua (Guwahati, India: Sahitya Akademi).

  7. 7.

    Kamakha includes two other artists: a local carpenter who makes wooden models of the Kamakhya Temple, using left-over wood from his workshop, and a female musician who dedicates her singing to Goddess Kamakhya.

  8. 8.

    The governments of India and the state of Assam have initiated a few programmes to support and promote Assamese weaving. A common critique of these programmes is that they encourage semi-industrial modes of production that do not integrate traditional methods of weaving.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Aparna Sharma

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  1. Aparna Sharma
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Correspondence to Aparna Sharma .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Craig Batty

  2. School of Creative Industries, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

    Susan Kerrigan

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Sharma, A. (2018). Practices of Making as Forms of Knowledge: Creative Practice Research as a Mode of Documentary Making in Northeast India. In: Batty, C., Kerrigan, S. (eds) Screen Production Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62837-0_10

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