Conference 1998

Authorship in the Face of Electronic Media

The development of electronic media, of the electronic highway called Internet, of CD-rom performances and multimedia, of very sophisticated methods and techniques of editing images, raises various important questions with regard to the future of Visual Anthropology in general and specially of Ethnographic Film. There is no question that the new media open up new possibilities which meet long standing demands. In the past there was a debate on the topic of "Indigenous Filmmaking" acknowledging the importance of indigenous contributions and activities in the intercultural context. The Internet makes global communication easy and much more egalitarian and efficient than e.g. film, video, photography or print media. But a critical debate on how to cope with all the possibilities of manipulation is urgently needed. In postmodern times the question of authorship has often been discussed, the problem acknowledged but never really solved. Electronic media can be of help here. But electronic media can make the whole subject even more complicated.