This strategy encompasses two activities that are closely related and often morph into each other: narrating an image and narrating seeing an image. This overlap is not coincidental but has to do with the inevitable jointness of the image as object and meaning with the process of seeing as making meaning.
The core idea of the strategy is based on a common exercise in cultural mediation in which a group is asked to freely state associations, impressions and observations of, for example, an artwork. The exercise can have an ice breaker function and stress the knowledge present in the room, i.e. emphasising the participants' active role in the process of knowledge production instead of valuing primarily the expert knowledge coming from the mediator or teacher. In theatre exercises, the same principle of the exercise – narrating out loud what one sees and all associations, thoughts, feelings, etc. that emerge while doing so – can become an exercise to explore an object. Foregrounded here is how the different meaning potentials, usability of the object and its materiality give rise to certain action, character, scene or story.
As part of the performative-archival practice, I propose narrating (seeing) an image not as a pretext for discussion or ice breaker, but already as a moment of meaning making, as both analysis and creation. I have deployed the strategy narrating (seeing) an image in my video essays, and it resulted in two exercises that I promoted during the workshop PerformArquivo.
The first one is called “I am seeing”. The group was seated, looking at the projected image and invited to narrate what they were noticing in the image, what associations, thoughts and emotions arose while looking at it. These different responses are supposed to be stated out loud, each phrase beginning with “I am seeing…”. There is no predetermined order of speaking; thus, the group had to find its own rhythm. I stressed that silences are nothing to be afraid of and that the basic structure of “I am seeing” can be bent occasionally, but should be returned to recursively. We engaged in the exercise ca. 15 minutes for each picture. The exercise enables a collective dialogue in which the attention of different meaning potentials shifts subtly, and conflictual interpretations of the image emerge as coexisting, rather than mutually exclusive.
The second exercise I called “Telling an image”. Every participant picked one picture that attracted their attention and engaged in a short study period of the image. If the group is still relatively new to visual analysis, I would suggest picking one question that drives the participants analysis. Deriving from this self-study, each person chose only one or several fragments of the image through which they wished to invoke their reading of the image (or the guiding question, if you would decide to work with one). By placing a semi-transparent paper sheet on the picture and tracing the fragments or their outlines, they created a visual aid for their “image story”.
Once their stories and fragments were done, each participant found a partner and they told each other their stories. In the workshop PerformArquivo, I proposed that the participants would sit back-to-back while listening to each other, so that, in consequence, they would not see the image of their partner before hearing their story based on the fragments. Only after both participants shared their stories would they turn around, show each other their respective pictures and chosen fragments. They then engaged in a conversation on how the dispositive of choosing and talking with just a small section of the image affected the way they spoke about it and how the experience of entering the image through someone else's narrations informed their own relation and interpretation of the image.
In both cases, the group was already familiarised with the questions of the visual discourse analysis, which informed but did not determine the contributions in the sense that other, yet related questions came up next to the previously shared ones.
According to the purpose of the exercises in the given context, it can become more analytically focused or function as a base for creation. For example, recording the conversation that is crafted during “I am seeing” and later editing it in a video essay with the respective image and/or other images may be an interesting way of pushing a particular question further. Or, if the group is experienced with performative arts, the play with timings or bringing different emotions and intonations to the dialogue, for example, can extend the performative level of the exercise.
“Telling an image” can follow the visual discourse analysis very closely or allow even for fictionalising with a detail of the image.
In the publication about the PerformArquivo workshop (see resources below), I explored how “I am seeing” could possibly be translated into a printed worksheet exercise, making use of a semi-transparent paper.