Costelloe-KuehnMemo30

MEMO30: Describing Events, To Make an Analytic Point
This memo should include a 200-400-word description of an event that you have or will (it can be fabricated) observe during your research, leveraging the description for analytic insight. Again, make the description speak to a social theoretical question or point. For an example, see my 2008 AAA conference paper, “'From “Better Living Through Chemistry to “Essential2Life,” which leverages a description of an exposure science conference that I attended as a participant-observer. Also see the description of the student protests in Paul Manning’s “Rose Colored Glasses? Student Protest and Cartoon Chaos in Postsocialist Georgia”, linked to at [].

Catapult arts caravan fits better here than "practice?"

What's an "event" anyway? i.e. Bhopal as "event?"

Tempted to fabricate an event, as practice for the imagination.

(semi-fabricated:) By the time Monu spoke the first words of his opening remarks, the communal room of the JATAN Trust headquarters was packed tight with guests. Given the wide range of expertise, knowledge, identities, and subjectivities that went into the three projects (a local sculptor contributed clay animal figures - literally dreampt up - to be used as figures in an animated folk-tale; a musician busking for change at the Pipariya train station provided the soundtrack for a slide show of market life; and sound professionals-in-training recorded traditional folk music performed by local women) the crowd at the release event appeared to be surprisingly homogenous. The women had all disappeared. While the volunteers working on the project were young (perhaps an average of 25 years old), none of the visitors were under 50. All wore white. Why this disparity between the project's production and reception?

Fueled by beedis, chai, and a passion for the work, the Caravan volunteers had spent a week editing video late into the night. I missed the planning and "production" phase of the project and arriaved just in time for editing and post-production. But in reality, these phases bled into each other. New footage for the animated folk-story was frequently being shot and supplmental images for the market slide show were uploaded into the computers each night. New ideas swirled around the participants continually. After some dramatic interruptions in the project (including a violent car crash that took the key organizer out of the action), much of the motivation for the group seemed to come from a shared dedication to a future point of crystalization: the release event. The Catapult Arts Caravan arrived on July 15th and set up shop at the JATAN Trust headquarters about a mile from the Pipariya train station. About ten volunteers with diverse expertise - journalists, students in science-communication, environmental activists, etc. - made up the "core" of the Caravan. But the Caravan, and its range of expertise, greatly exceeded this "core." In the first stage of action, volunteers with the Caravan interviewed dozens of people living in and around Pipariya: shop-owners, farmers, musicians, sculptors...