Presentation by Katja Frimberger, Creative Arts (CA) Hub

1. What I’ve done so far:
read, meet, discuss, make a film.
Katja Frimberger, RA at the
Creative Hub.

2. When I speak to you
…
[a poem about research
encounters. Please. 3 lines. 15
words max.]

3. “The importance of value-free research in the
modern research ethic”. (Appadurai 2000:11)
When I speak to you
Coldly and impersonally
Using the driest words
Without looking at you
(I seemingly fail to recognise you
In your particular nature and difficulty)
I speak to you merely
Like reality itself
(Sober, not to be bribed by your particular nature
Tired of your difficulty)
Which in my view you seem not to recognise.
(Brecht, 1976: 140)

4. Research bribed by particularity
• Appadurai (2000): The ethics of new knowledge: how
not to eliminate private sources of confidence in
research/research as practice of the imagination
• Atkinson (2003): unpredictability and uncertainty as
crucial aspects of research/transgressive forms of
validity (also Ahmed, 2000/Butler, 2005)
• Levin & Greenwood (2001): context-bound,
collaborative and co-generative research that is
measured according to the ethical impact of the
research’s instruments’ discursive structures.
• Nicholson (2011): Nowhere is an empty space –
responsibility for my own speaking position
• Bal (2005): Migratory aesthetic. What makes an
aesthetic is the sentient encounter with subjects involved

5. Lost in Space (17min.)
2005 | 17mins | Colour
Directed by Mieke Bal & Shahram Entekhabi
Genre: Documentary
Multi-lingual with English subtitles
“When asked in English what he missed most about
being away from home, an Iranian long-term asylum
seeker burst into his native Farsi and said that, of all the
things he sorely missed, the primary thing was his
language. This remark triggered the aesthetic of this
experimental film.”
http://www.miekebal.org/artworks/films/lost-in-space/

6. We are producing a short film for the launch of the 3 year
research project, "Researching Multilingually at the
Borders of Language, the Body, Law and the State.“
We would like to invite you to come and contribute to the
video in a short informal interview.
The film aims to put us in the mood for the exciting
possibilities of multilingual research as well as
celebrating the richness of our languages, our personal
connections to the languages we speak and the human
connections we make through language.
Would you like to contribute to the film?
This would involve a short interview to camera in a relaxed
atmosphere. We will be asking you to chat briefly about
a language that is close to your heart, how it makes you
who you are and to talk to us in that language.

7. Lessons from the launch film
• Finding the right tone and language to
speak about language
• Order to interviewer: Find something
people are passionate about/care about
• Homesickness: when your voice breaks
and you become poetic
• The aesthetic of language – sound &
rhythm (and ‘tuning in’) and editing
narrative

9. Research imagination: Facing the
insufficiencies of the self
“Facing the insufficiencies of the self in ways
that create openness to others is, for
Bhaba, a political act that relies on a
combination of imagination, narrative and
performativity”. (Nicholson, 2011: 156)

10. • Ethics form (it is difficult to argue on paper that
unpredictability is essential part of one’s
research ethics)
• Fab 4 - Case study conversations: analysis of
our speaking positions/pedagogy (treasured
opportunities)
• Visiting 16+ ESOL class as classroom assistant
(I learn about Big Sean)
• Welcoming languages event