^{Jurnal Footage will publish articles about the video "Tepian Sungai Ciujung" in three parts, written by Akbar Yumni. This is the first part of the articles.}

 

"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers"

- Mahatma Gandhi

 

From a close-up, a camera takes a shot of laundering hands. Then it switches to eye-level wide shot. From there it catches several housewives doing their laundry before a backdrop of public latrines by a riverbank. Some other shots capture the legs of a bathing man. In another shot, a housewife is captured washing a duck for cooking while complaining over her troubles with cooking at home. All scenes appear linear, with visuals accompanied by dialogues just about anything from someone’s getting plunged into river to something as serious as issues of condemnation of their current residence.

^{(we're sorry for the incovenience, the video of "Tepian Sungai Ciujung" temporarily unavailable because there some problem of our system)}

One interesting fact from the excerpt of this documentary entitled Tepian Sungai Ciujung¹ (The Banks of River Ciujung, 2009) is its ability to capture each situation as if without any intervention from the camera, achieving maximum authenticity in its process of representation through video medium. All conversations among residents while doing their daily activities flow in such linearity and casualness that it assumes a recording medium with integrative ability with the object it’s portraying in living the slum life by the riverbank.

The approach supposing the absence of camera intervention in Tepian Sungai Ciujung is essentially a representational process taken with consideration of two things, i.e. medium ideology and integration beyond the camera (through the recording subject). It distinguishes its apprehension of camera functionality from the approach of ‘variety video’ or even ‘hidden camera’. ‘Variety video’ and ‘hidden camera’ approach is more inclined to record ‘originality’ rather than ‘authenticity’, with the intention to capture ‘reality’ than ‘representation’. Further elaboration on ‘originality’ and ‘authenticity’, as well as ‘reality’ and ‘representation’, will be presented in the second part of this article.

The ability of the camera as well as the recording subject to integrate with the subject being represented implicates the development of visual language authenticity, which will be articulated in the level of awareness of the situation and in recorded subjects as well as in its ethical relation. The higher its level of integration, the shorter is the distance between the object to the concurring representational process being taken. As a matter of fact, the presence of a camera and integration behind the camera become two identical things since medium will implicate its integrative ability, and vice versa, the camera’s integrative ability should also assume the presence of the medium.

 

Medium Ideology: Mechanism of Use and Integration with Society

Medium ideology is the visual possibilities created by the presence of medium by way of its existence. Every technological device assumes the presence of its own disciplinary system as articulated in its mechanism of use that affects the recording execution and the level of integration the medium is capable of in capturing an occurrence as well as the human behavior within. Without contrasting celluloid cameras from digital cameras², the definition of camera medium—based on the level of disciplinary system of its usage—will affect the execution of recording process, which will eventually implicate to the possibilities of visual language given.

Camera shot³ of laundering housewives in Tepian Sungai Ciujung has a close intensity to its subject. It may well be ascertained that the continuity of dialogues and visuals in some shots, such as the one capturing those laundering hands, assume a familiar recording mechanism thus able to spontaneously capture visual possibilities. The familiarity of video medium opens widely to visual subjectivity in constructing a representation process of a phenomenon or a societal entity. Visual representation process of Tepian Sungai Ciujung can be regarded as a non-intervening method to the Ciujung community’s daily routine and activities. A completely different event might take place if one chooses to use a recording medium of high disciplinary system. It might lead to unnatural recording and affect its image subjectivity. Moreover, medium of high disciplinary system requires certain artistic needs in its recording process. This may cause artistically manipulated visual objectivity in order to adjust to the disciplinary use of the medium. More often than not, sophisticated medium affects the visual vision being recorded and, even more, sets control over occurrences and human beings involved to fulfill a certain vision inherent in the medium mechanism of use.

Medium integration with occurrence and the society involved as medium ideology is how a recording medium is able to instrumentally integrate with its surroundings. The camcorder⁴ used in making Tepian Sungai Ciujung has such integrative ability with the laundering subjects recorded in the video that the presence of the camera can be considered non-intervening. The key lies on the ability of the camera to integrate with the subject it’s recording. It is definitive that visual language affected by the level of the integration process with society will result in different possibilities, based on how the presence of the camera is perceived by the subject.

As an additional note on the relation between human subject and recording medium, based on the Indonesian sociology especially of a society in suburban area such as the ones inhabiting the riverbanks of Ciujung, they are generally of a different stereotype when faced to a camera. Big-size camera may be associated with certain institution such as, for instance, a television production or a film-making production house. Such stereotypical community has, of course, their own level of awareness to the presence of a recording medium. When a camera is perceived as a part of an ‘institution’, this will bring about their awareness of being recorded. This distance between the community and the medium will eventually limit the kind of visual language allowed while recording process is underway. On this note, it is then understandable if representativeness is correlated to such matters pertaining to instrumentality in the integration process.

It is clear that video instrumentality, i.e. its size, affects the possibilities of visual language that one able to create. The camcorder used in Tepian Sungai Ciujung has its effect on the visual vision of the video. This visual vision is influenced by the liquidity of camcorder; its compact size makes it easier to integrate with its surrounding subject. In that way, the visual vision in the recording process opens up to a bigger subjectivity in representation. More essentially in the camera’s integrative ability is the authenticity to capture native ways of thinking.

We are familiar with the term ‘medium is the message’ coined by McLuhan pertaining to communication. Within the context of a video, we can assume that ‘medium is the representation’.  Every medium will eventually assume an ideology rooted from its nature of existence. Hence the independence of a visual language is—basically—more or less affected by the instrument of recording, as opposed to Hegelian visual language with no pertinence to instrumentality.

 

Integration beyond the Camera: Native-to-Native Approach

There are quite a number of perspectives in assuming integration beyond the camera. It might even be a matter of human-to-human approach; of narrating and being narrated, of representing and being represented. Integration beyond the camera is how far a recording subject is able to integrate with the society he/she is recording, which will impinge upon the subject’s awareness to the presence of a recording medium. It may well be ethnographic, the relationship between the one representing and the one being represented, or between the one visualizing and the visualized.

The honest portrayal captured in Tepian Sungai Ciujung is a result of what is maintained beyond the camera. The involvement of the recorder to its subject is the key to allow such visual possibility in reaching authentic native ways of thinking. Tepian Sungai Ciujung is a video from a workshop with participants within the communities of Rangkasbitung-Lebak. The ability of the camera to capture authenticity in recording the residents’ candid conversation while washing their laundry by the riverbank is determined by the ability of the man behind the camera—who was intimate to Ciujung riverbank residents. The ability to integrate has become an important key to achieve such in-depth representation to nativity. The approach made in this videowork, we may say, is native-to-native thus integrative issues with Ciujung residents no longer remain as a methodological problem.

More importantly is the man behind the camera, to ethically bridge the recording subject and the recorded subject. In this context, it is not the medium that is existentially able to approach the subject in egalitarian manner. What is more significant is the human integration to subject entity in order to minimize its level of awareness upon recording process.

To represent society and the phenomenon within is not apart from the ideology of the working man behind the camera as an entity. I do not intend to present an endless debate on how ideology affects representational process in this article. Regardless of the ideology, what is more essential and ethical is a base of man-to-man relationship that will determine the chances one has to capture authentic native ways of thinking. Visual history as depicted in documentaries on Indonesian native people, or even any native people, is of questionable authenticity since it is a part of colonial history, or institutional history of man, or even a history of domination over man.

In Tepian Sungai Ciujung, man-to-man ethical roles are tackled by engaging local residents to represent a societal entity through a video workshop. An attempt to reach deep into native thinking is authentically undertaken by involving native residents to minimize the distance of awareness over the concurring events. Even without engaging native residents, integration with the subject will still be necessary to ethically bridge the recording process with nativity. Video as an idiom to visual democratization will not have its essence if the base material of social relation is yet to be fulfilled, unless if video use is a form of craftsmanship creative freedom.

Jean Rouch, a documenter on the subject of nativity, stated that camera is no longer a mirror to natives but has turned into a medium that provokes natives to express themselves (as in testimony). Rouch’s is an enthusiastic approach to capture nativity resulted from the relationship between the man behind the camera and the subject he’s representing through his documentary. It is this man-to-man relationship that affects the chances of native authenticity. The implications, of course, will differ whether the testimony is born out of egalitarian man-to-man relationship or born out of institutional description of man. Both situations are eligible testimonies. But the issue lies in how the man behind the camera views his recorded subject, or in a more applicable sense is also the intended language that is about to be visualized in the recording. All of the above is innate to man-to-man relationship. Eventually, it is a nature of the screen to detach itself from reality, which is why cinema and video are more morally responsible to the history of human life compared to other art works.

 

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1 Tepian Sungai Ciujung is a collaboration of Forum Saidjah Rangkasbitung and Forum Lenteng Jakarta, produced as a result to akumassa workshop held throughout November-December 2008.

² Instrumentally, certain digital cameras are differentiated based on its applicability and user-friendliness.

³ The digital camera used in documenting Tepian Sungai Ciujung is an applicative one and frequently used by common people.

⁴ Video camera with the size of approximately 10 x 5 cm. In principal, a camcorder is inherently familiar, user-friendly and easy to carry.

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