Chapter 7: Creating Accessible, Pedagogical Art as Research Take 2
Abstract
This autoethnography traces the creation of a performance ethnographic film created from open-ended interviews with elders experiencing memory loss. Performance Studies and Video Production professors in a Communication Studies Department struggle over how to ethically and carefully create a performance production based on a recurrent theme across narratives while navigating the expectations of Performance Studies scholars, film critics, and undergraduate student performers and producers. Faculty, students and audience members’ conversations: 1) surface the tensions surrounding embodying the Other and performance ethnography as applied learning pedagogy for social justice 2) reveal human beings’ shared knowledge and understanding of our inevitable mortality and 3) offer hope for a world that resists the stigma of aging and illness.