In Transit/ion (Co-created with Angelina Aluel Kuol): Source of Creative Understanding

Abstract

For Asante our “battle is intense, the struggle we wage for status power is serious and we cannot communicate as equals when our economic position is that of servants” (Asante 2007:49). Asante’s words resonate throughout this research as it moves between ethnography and arts-based research: what is the core nature of collaborative arts research project, and what is the essential basis of this researcher’s relationship with her co-participants? Is power immutable, or are our status positions fluid and changing all the time? Is it possible for projects like Cross-Marked (and ethnocinema in general) to be such an interchange, a source of creative understanding for all co-participants, while remaining powerless to address their sometimes dire material conditions? In this chapter, the author cannot escape the recognition that communication difficulties were informed by material conditions as well as by culture or other barriers. In this chapter which traces the making of Angelina’s film, the difficulty presented itself as a continual conflict around the logistics of their meetings, public transportation and the geographical isolation of Angelina’s poorly-linked suburban family home.

Intercultural communication as a harmonious endeavour seeks to create the sharing of power. In the exchange, the interchange, we find the source of creative understanding. (Asante 2007:50)