Where It’s At! Pt. 1 – Dub War and the New York Scene

In our previous project 'Brothers-In-Paint' we found it paramount to visit many contexts where the social practices of paintball culture take place. This allowed us to not take the site as the location of the culture, but rather the practices as the culture itself, not defined, but co-existing with the spatiotemporal 'places' of activity and agency. Thus we visited 6 countries in attempts to gain more insight and a translocal appreciation of the social practices.

Now, having just finished CCT5, it was time shift gears and further our 'Pushing the Scene' dubstep project by similarly getting into and filming in many contexts, scattered by proximity, yet connected via various intertwined social practices. It was time to discover and experience the New York scene! The highlight of this little hop across the pond was to be the 5 year anniversary of the 'Dub War' night - the club that started the scene in New York half a decade ago. This was big!

Risto had made smoothly scheduled arrangements for us to meet the central figures of the New York scene, and for him to simultaneously play a set or two in various locales. Firstly, we met up with DaveQ and headed out to Brooklyn to be a part of a SubFM radio show. Risto (Desto) ended up hitting the decks also alongside such pioneers as DaveQ - thanks Dave for taking such great care of us!

Finding the studio can sometimes be somewhat puzzling.

DaveQ on SubFM.

The AIM screen during the SubFM show, over which the DJs were in

constant interaction with the listeners.

Desto's turn on the decks.

SubFM getting lively.

Later Risto was scheduled to play a set at a record store right under the Brooklyn Bridge. The place, Halcyon, was a vinyl enthusiasts playground and had a great soundsystem (especially considering it is a record store and not a club venue). Later Risto played at a venue called the White Rabbit. Too bad not so many people made it over. Fortunately, the interesting experience in Halcyon more than made up for this.

The Halcyon storefront.

Vinyl. Lotsa.

Inside the store. Desto at it again.

And again in business. Now at the White Rabbit.

Pt. 2.

The main event for us, the Dub War 5 year anniversary, was truly a night to remember. We began by navigating through the masses of dubstep lovers making their pilgrimage. The place was packed like sardines in a crushed tin box already at ten when the party was only picking up. In terms of filming, we got amounts of intense contextual footage, and Risto did an admirable bit of legwork in order to grab such pioneers as Joe Nice and Alex Incyde, and the dubstep Internet forum creator Seckle for little back-and-forth with us in interesting back rooms and corridors while the party was booming. Even Skream popped into one of our interview sessions right behind the DJ booth - where we actually got quite a bit of action also. Thanks again to the New York scene for giving us such a warm welcome!

And we're in!

Incyde.

Joe Nice.

Desto, always listening.

Skream jumps in.

During our walkabouts through Broadway we had additional time to think about our up-and-coming editing process. As Risto has become an increasingly central figure in our work, we went further in our preliminary ideas about the arc of drama in what is to become the final product. Our first project, Brothers-in-Paint, was very much a conservative article-like showcase of how to, for the lack of better terms, create a videography that resembled an article in video format. How it exactly came out so, we do not know, but I do still remember our original ethos of really exemplifying how a theoretical perspective could be depicted on video. In retrospect, we might have overdid it a tad bit. Now, while we wish to still make a theoretical case, we will attempt to incorporate a much more entertaining approach, with Risto's autoethnographic commentary hopefully bringing about a more interesting, theatrical, and continuous story line.

But to match Risto's insighful autoethnographic story, we need contextually founded footage in situ. And certainly, as experimentality goes, we have found one of the most demanding contexts equipment-wise. Dubstep is certainly loud and noisy, taking an evident toll in terms of video and audio quality. Fortunately, again, we have Risto to work his producer magic on the audio, and we do expect decent outcomes. Moreover, the lack of video footage quality is more than compensated for by the graininess of the context presenting itself right in-your-face with all its loudness. As Rob Kozinets has pointed out before, social practices are bright, noisy and messy. Without completely slipping into the rabbit hole at this point, it can be noted that it is this loudness and messiness we are aiming to represent. An interesting comment by Lisa Marks seems to bubble up here too, as she was known to have said that what the film represents is often dull, but nevertheless the impurities and the scratches on the film material itself are perpetually fascinating. I would agree, and that is why we are not afraid of grainy material, when such outcomes go on to represent the murkiness of the many contexts we were introduced to in our underground travels. Because we dare to profess love for the loudness and embrace the grittyness of some of the video material as our equipment are maxed out, we gain more confidence in our perspective - the contextual representation of social practices in close proximity.

In order to accomplish this, I believe strongly that the video ethnographer must do as little of obstruction as possible, and therefore all we shoot is uncompromisingly in situ. This means, that even with the implications for video quality, we will not use additional lights and we will not be sticking lapel microphones around peoples’ necks. In our adventures in the dubstep scene this has not been purely an question of preference either, as the promoters of many club venues will not permit lighting for video works. An important concern arises from this preferred modus operendi, however. Equipment truly matters. Indeed, there must be something seriously wrong with our heads, as we are conducting video work in probably one of the most hostile environments. It is dark (often and often very much so) and it is loud (have you felt the subbass causing tremors in your spine and jiggling the clothes on you). To pull this silly feat off, we are no longer going in with equipment more at home in capturing the kids making sandcastles on a sunny Mediterranean beach, where the food was delicious and the wine was just right. While still nowhere near a professional outfit, we are now donning a decent videocam and a back-up video DSLR with lenses specifically chosen to lure in all possible trickles of light in the illlit places we happen to enter. See the post before this one for a more technical perspective (and gripe) into the contents our gear bag.

Yet again, what would we be, if we were hauling lighting and microphones into sweat drenched rooms packed to the rim with euphoric music followers being blazed by the club lights and battered with subbass that you can feel in your spine? That’s right, a distraction, an obstruction. Worse than that, we could become what I as an ethnographer fear the most, a odd academic peculiarities flailing about a context that will never again give us a pass. No, to get close to that sweat, that pounding, that energy, we must and will continue to go in light. What you see is what you get. And what you get is noisy and bright.

We'll leave you with a couple more memories. Soon to come, our continued adventures in London.

Project: Pushing the Scene (vol. 1) - dubstep and cultural practice of authentication

This would be our new videographic project (which we started scetching out late 2009), and I got to say, I am quite happy to push the paintball-related video clips off my editing table for now. Seeing the same material over and over again, from the conferences to my doing-the-Edward-Scissorhands on the editing table – well, its stating to finally become just a bit stale… So, on to new and better things it is, then, and what will such things entail?

For us, an exploration of the consumer community partaking into the growing ‘dubstep’ electronic scene is the answer. We needed an interesting and a highly audiovisual cultural phenomenon, and a great deal of access. Dubstep gave us all of the above.

Coming this far, we have come to understand the role of access and autoethnographic accounts when going after an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon and rich material for its representation. This time we did not have to search far and wide. Our initial impulse came from the ‘Illicit Pleasure’ JCR article (Goulding, Shankar, Elliott & Canniford 2009), even though what we consequently set out to go after is quite different, except for taking an interest in consumption cultures revolving around electronic music. As it happened, I used share a student flat with Risto Roman (going by the alias Desto), and at the time we got together to experiment with music production. I might even post up some of our work dating back to the days of yore, but I’ll need to summon some more courage before you’ll see that happening. With all the other things on my plate, my musical ambitions (or dabblings) had become comprehensively afterburnered. Meanwhile, Desto had gone on to establish himself as an internationally known dubstep producer and DJ.

In this project, he would thus be the autoethnographic member, Joonas would look at the phenomenon from a somewhat less acculturated perspective and I would initially be the fence-sitter with some experience in producing (and obviously partying out to) electronic music, albeit not so much specifically related to the dubstep genre.

Before we entered into the contexts where dubstep happens, we held (quite) thorough conversations about the curiosities of dubstep culture with Risto. Additionally, he provided us with a wealth of internet resources in the form of forums (e.g. Step Ahead), blogs (e.g. Blackdown) and insider documentaries (e.g. Dubfiles) all revolving around dubstep. At that point Risto had already set up interview sessions with renowned DJ/producers as they came over to Finland to strut their stuff at dubstep parties. At present, we have already conducted some interesting filming with a couple of DJ/producers of international fame in interesting backstage settings and the like.

This time, in order to not spend as long pondering on what the hell we are actually doing, we decided to focus on uncovering the perspectives of cultural agents, specifically the DJ/producers, who, through their actions, shape and reproduce the culture. At this early stage we are primarily interested in (still hanging on to the practice theory as a foundation),

• The practices that drive the evolution of the dubstep culture

• Agency and authentication in dubstep culture

• The marginal/mainstream tension regarding this genre of electronic music

Next we are looking forward to visiting some of the most interesting international settings where dubstep has a central role. This would, at the very least, entail two trips to UK (Croydon and Bristol) and a hop over the pond to the states (New York). We will keep you all updated about our progress (and all unplanned slapstick-like outcomes during the process) on this same bat channel, so please keep reading this blog in the future as well.

While this project is still at quite an early stage (we are going after a rich ethnographic immersion, not a few quick & dirty interviews), we have already submitted some early scribblings to the CCT 2010 conference. Hopefully we get accepted, and I hope to see all you guys there!

References:

Dubfiles – Dubstep Documentary. Directed by G. McCann and G. Jugdeese. Dubfiles 2008.

Goulding, C., Shankar, A., Elliott, R., Canniford, R. 2009. The Marketplace Management of Illicit Pleasure. Journal of Consumer Research. 35, 5, 759-771.

Project: Brothers in Paint (vol. 3) – Final thoughts and the EACR 2010 submission

After the great experience in ACR, there was still one more round of editing to do regarding the ‘Brothers in Paint’ project. After winning the ‘Juror’s Prize’ we were asked by Rob Kozinets to send the same video to the EACR 2010 conference in London. We still felt quite unsatisfied with many aspects of our film, and so we decided to give the material one more extensive treatment. The film was still excessively long, too much of what was said in the interviews was muddied by background noise (all our material was captured in situ, and with paintball that obviously entails people frantically shooting each other in the background) and the overall soundtrack was in need of a professional touch.

After seeing our videos ad nauseum in presentations and the editing table, slicing off more material was not as painful as it had been before ACR. The final cut for EACR thus became close to 35 minutes in length. Still not particularly short as far as videographies in ACR go, but getting closer to what can possibly be viewed without the need to pitch up a tent. To tackle the background noise, we added subtitles to everything. Finally, the artist responsible for the background music, Desto, took the whole video soundtrack (speaks and everything) for a final mix down. On the whole, the outcome for me is satisfactory, granted I would like to redo the whole thing from scratch now – the outcome would be quite different (then again, when is this not the case?). Yes, the outcome is still very much just descriptive in nature and the theoretical point needs further sharpening, but overall, I guess it can defend its place.

Obviously, we were again guilty of the classic mistake of thinking, “It’s a matter of a few touch-ups and a little cutting, I’ll have it done in a couple of days.” Well, it took over two weeks, as ideas seemed to pop up as we went along. Even the subtitling alone took almost a full week. Add the typical blue screen here and there, and my laptop came close to a tragic accidental ‘falling to the ceiling’ more than once. Video editing, folks, is some orders of magnitude more unpredictable and demanding than journal writing, believe it or not. Perhaps one day I’ll get this point to such a degree that I’ll actually have my calendar planned properly. I’m not holding my breath though.

We, as self-appointed anarchists, are always looking to question existing structures. Therefore we wanted to become the worlds first to openly showcase our material to everyone. Videography, for me, can be a powerful tool for popularizing science and to be more popular, it has to be public. Therefore, here is our EACR 2010 submission in its entirety. Please enjoy!

More than two years have passed since the first time Joonas crashed into my office with but a glimmer of an idea. Now the first project is complete, and were quickly branching out towards new endeavors. Our work using videographic methodology is certainly not over. Actually, its only really getting started.

Finally, here are some practical takeaways learned along the way.

• A diverse research team peppered with an autoethnographic angle works great – it’s all about access. Traditional ethnography is difficult in and of itself, now you have the added desensitizing and obstructing thingie called a camcorder. Plan for this, ensure a welcoming access (for each member of your research team)!

• Doing all filming in situ is the way to really bring out the effect of the video – even if it means background noise and a somewhat shaky shot. It’s the entire context you are going after, not just a talking head, which leads us to…

• …always asking, whatever you do, “Why video? What does it (in every particular instance you are shooting) add to traditional textual representation?”

• Even when facing adversities, never ever give up! Instead, do your best to anticipate and remedy hardships before they happen. They will. Don’t let them stop you!