The method of collaboration

Whatever we were taught, given to read, been answered and generally discussed about the actual physical research, might have only prepared me to enjoy throwing myself into it as someone confident enough to pretend I know stuff about it. To then only realize that the real deal is where I am left to my own devices that are just very partially a theoretical preparation.

I chose consciously to do a research that involves people I wouldn't have known before. Anna was an exception, and I am grateful for her help forever after.

But if anything, I just wanted to use this time I am granted here in university to kind of 'uncomfortabilise' myself.

Doing the research online, messaging, all the faceless/screenful preparations were nothing new to me. But going to London to meet Pierina in her boat, or traveling to Ash to meet Steph and all her family was definitely felt deep inside me. An excitement meshes with a little bit of overthinking, a forceful shutting up of my mind and just looking at it all as an adventure. You can't take life too seriously when you go study children play for your bachelor's, right?

I excluded any positioning of myself quite completely from the final cut of the film, rendering the full focus on the people I was with, only a scene where you can see mine and Anna's feet chilling in the background might whisper an idea of the ethnographer behind the camera.

And yet, as much as neither home education, nor cultural and local context are not related to me under any profound circumstance, that as an idea was completely personal - to go deal with something as unfamiliar as it can be. Just because why not. To me, this time counted for the possibility to find familiar within the strange, rather than vice versa. And that's why I call it a collaboration. The research idea and technical parts are done by me, but every filming I did, every appointment I had, was also a learning and growing experience only because my research participants allowed me into this. I might have studied them, but simultaneously they experienced being studied, because they wanted to, and had their own reasons to allow my research to share what is important to them. They are my means to build my project, while I am theirs to introduce their lifestyle into wider public in search of understanding and acceptance.

But if anything,