Multimodal Explorations: Digital (Co-)Curations In And Between Iran And Italy - Shireen Walton

Описание: Shireen Walton: Multimodal Explorations: Digital (Co-)Curations In And Between Iran And Italy

In this paper I reflect upon the multimodal explorations developed as part of two ethnographic research projects, in Iran and Italy respectively, over the last decade. The former involved digitally co-curating an online digital photographic exhibition as part of a transnational study of popular digital photography in Iran (2012-2015), while the latter involved multimodal methods to explore the place of smartphones and the experiences of ageing, health, and migration in the daily lives of older adults in an inner-city Milan neighbourhood (2017-2020) as part of the ERC-funded, collaborative, Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA) project.

After providing an overview of both projects, I seek to reflect on the potentials and challenges of engaging with online digital co-curation in both studies, in discrete geographical settings, and distinct social, political and technological moments. I draw on the notion of the ‘contact zone’ (Clifford 1997) as it relates to the digital exhibition as a collaborative and participatory digital and visual method (Gubrium and Harper 2013), and as a methodology of mobility in/for transnational research (Walton 2017). Subsequently, based on our collaborative work in the ASSA project, I think through how contemporary multimodal methodologies, such as working with smartphones and social media as site and method of research, can engender immersive forms of ethnographic research and storytelling, including the production of images, drawings, comics, and videos (Walton and Haapio-Kirk forthcoming, 2022). The paper overall hopes to engage with the workshop theme of multimodal digital curation as representation, everyday practice, and research possibility.