About

About the project

In relation to many recent literary works that move around the format of literary autosociobiography (A. Ernaux, 2017; D. Eribon, 2016; J.D. Vance, 2017) – an autobiography written in regard to and contextualised within the frame of social class and larger historical developments – Confronting Realities asks from an art practical and theoretical point of view how the format of cinematic autosociobiographies can be explored, described and produced, especially focusing on the fundamentally collaborative character of filmmaking. The projects’ main objective is the art practical and theoretical exploration, description and production of cinematic autosociobiographies.

The project is designed on four levels: Level (1) of Autosociobiographical Exploration that will create three exploration groups over the course of two months embedded in half year cycles – the “Laboratory of cinematic autosociobiographies” (LAFA). LAFA tries to probe, explore and search, to make accessible and to contextualize one’s biography from an art-based perspective. Level (2) of Cinematic Forms and Techniques intends to develop and create narratives and cinematic techniques of cinematic (auto)sociobiographies and translating them into cinematic formats. Level (3) of Interdisciplinary and Theoretical Contextualization wishes to build a strong foundation and interconnection between art-based, theoretical and interdisciplinary research about sociobiographies, cinematic forms and collaborative strategies of art production. Level (4) of Reflection and Evaluation intends to build a reflective framework around the project. During all these stages the “Digital Archive of Cinematic Autosociobiographies” (DAFA), a website-based representation and documentation platform, will ensure an ongoing dissemination and documentation of the project.

Cinematic (Auto)sociobiographies

In times of a worldwide shift to the right marked by a rise in nationalism and populism, the question of social classes and its cultural, economic and political changes has once again become topical.

In this context, a series of books in which the authors develop new forms of autobiography have been widely read and discussed, books in which the authors tell the story of their social origins and relate these to larger social and historical developments: examples include Retour à Reims by Didier Éribon (Éribon 2016), En Finir avec Eddy Bellegueule by Édouard Louis (Louis 2019), Les Années by Annie Ernaux (Ernaux 2017), Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance (Vance 2017) or, just recently, Ein Mann seiner Klasse by Christian Baron (Baron 2020). In referring to works such as these, literary criticism makes use of a newly coined generic term: “autosociobiography” (cf. Spoerhase 2017).

Unlike experimental autofictions and conventional autobiographies, autosociobiographies are characterized by the special way in which the individual’s personal story is combined with a sociopolitical or even an explicitly sociological perspective. What is individual and personal is placed in a general context, one that is also historical and political; questions of social origins, class, milieu and habitus acquire central importance. Autosociobiographies, as defined by the French sociologist Chantal Jaquet, are accounts that “endeavour to consider an individual’s life or destiny as a social product in relation to his or her milieu, not as an emergence of a self that is cut off from all exterior determination” (Jaquet 2018, 15).

New lines of tension and conflict as well as hegemonic processes and the associated dynamics of social descent and ascent, combined with psychological and psycho-physical changes in the individual, the cultural logic of lifestyle and the resulting polarization effects, are part of current research (to name a few: Christophe Guilluy, David Goodhart, Ariel R. Hochschild or Andreas Reckwitz). In connection to these perspectives, the project Confronting Realities: Working on Cinematic Autosociobiographies poses the question: What possible cinematic forms and techniques can be found for grappling with questions of social origins, class relations and class antagonisms? The aim is to investigate, indeed to explore a new cinematic format as a tool to address class relations, questioning the mechanisms of social segregation and exclusion. The ultimate goal is to explore cinematic autosociobiographies as a means of producing and reflecting a specific art-based knowledge dealing with privileges, class-related discourses and its multidimensional inscriptions into the individual.

What possible cinematic forms and techniques can be found for grappling with questions of social origins, class relations and class antagonisms?

There are a whole range of questions that are sparked off by the autosociobiographical narratives of Éribon and others – and precisely this is the starting point for Confronting Realities. The project’s basic hypothesis is that cinema as an art form has the ability to capture aspects and dynamics that cannot be captured in literature let alone in academic research. Film is a multidimensional medium, reflecting on the body, its movement and its rootedness in and connection to the world. As a mass medium (cf. Luhmann 2017) that is able to record a specific time in history that is mutually perceived as reality, film is perfectly suited to explore and reflect the discourses of the individual interacting with the world and vice versa (cf. Waugh 2011). Furthermore, filmmaking is a fundamentally collaborative endeavour.  Unlike the individual authorship of literary texts, every film production invariably and necessarily involves many people. Confronting Realities sets out to prove how diverse autosociobiographical narratives can be, to expand the material basis involved, to create a plurality of perspectives and stories and to make it possible for these to be seen and heard by a wider public.

Artistic Research

The cornerstone of our methodology is the artistic process of filmmaking as well as the collaborative exploration of individual autosociobiographies as an art-based instrument of knowledge creation.

The findings of the artistic process are theoretically recontextualized with regard to perspectives of film studies and cultural studies in order to sharpen the contours of the new format and to make it possible to describe and analyse its poetic and aesthetic character as well as the manifestations of political, social, economic and cultural realities on the individual. Pursuing this aim requires, indispensably, an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach, an “indisciplinary practice” (Rancière 2006) that is open and able to draw on and interrelate insights from various contexts of knowledge.

Confronting Realities is distinctly conceived as an art-based research project that seeks to explore and devise a new format, a project in which the artistic process as well as artistic production and practice are seen as fundamental means of gaining knowledge (cf. Bippus 2009 and Badura 2015). It thus sets out to probe questions of social class and origins by means of, in the process of and with the help of practical artistic work (cf. Borgdorff 2006), in other words, through the experimental artistic production of cinematic autosociobiographies. Accordingly, the project views filmmaking as an epistemic practice (cf. Engell 2010, Pantenburg 2006) that both generates knowledge and holds out the promise of providing more insight on the repercussions of the current political and social state of affairs as well as class-related discourses on the individual.

Team

The project is hosted by The Institute for Film and Television – Film Academy Vienna / mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and is financed by the FWF (FWF PEEK, AR 628).

Project Proposal by Barbara Wolfram, Nina Kusturica, Elena Meilicke, Christina Wintersteiger-Wilplinger and Claudia Walkensteiner-Preschl.