Docs and Nonlinear Modes of Encounter

As well as evoking spatiotemporal imaginaries, i-Docs also use their interfaces to engage a nonlinear mode of encounter. Different from engineering sensitivity to nonlinear imaginaries operative in the contemporary condition, this entails engaging

a mode of encounter that is attuned with ontological convictions about the nonlinearity of space-time. Media theorists have argued that i-Docs must be thought of as more than ‘the extension of linear documentary into digital media’ but ‘”something else”’ entirely (Gaudenzi, 2013, p. 12). A vital aspect of this “something else” that i-Docs offer is a nonlinear mode of encounter that hangs on multiplicity, contingency and the ability ‘to change and evolve’ (Gaudenzi, 2013, p. 13; Dinmore,

2014; Favero, 2013). It has been argued that, as a film form typified by modularity, variability (Gaudenzi, 2013), complexity and choice (Nash, 2012) i-Docs foster sensitivity to the open ended, unpredictable and multiple possible trajectories of the world and, specifically, the space-times of the subjects they depict. This nonlinear mode of encounter recognized in i-Docs is associated, as in the nonlinear geographical imagination, with a progressive politics premised on openness and multiplicity. Interactive features including user-generated content are used to destabilize representations of socio-political and environmental issues such as the Arab Spring (18 Days in Egypt, 2015), urban shrinkage (Hollow, 2014) or energy futures (Journey to the end of Coal , 2008) and, allegedly, offer alternative pathways for action (Favero, 2013).

It has been argued that interfaces of creative media, ‘like maps, compasses, and other instruments’ are key ‘ways in which geographical knowledge is constructed’ (Ash, 2014, 130) and in i-Docs, the nonlinear interfaces construct nonlinear modes of encounter through which their subjects are brought into view. Here, I will again discuss examples of commercial i-Docs to draw out how, in practice, they produce this nonlinear perception. Specifically, I will explore how sensitivity is engineered towards four key features of nonlinear space-time; multiplicity, openness, dynamism and entrainment.

Sensitivity to multiplicity is perhaps one of the most commonly engineered ways of seeing in i-Docs (Harris, 2016). Usually, this is achieved by basing an i-Doc around a plurality of stories or characters. For example the i-Doc Des Breves De Trottoirs follows the lives of various characters on the streets of Paris and Gaza Sderot is

based around the experiences of people living either side of the Gaza border. In these i-Docs, space-time is made up of multiple trajectories that cannot be reconciled within one sequence; fostering sensitivity to the multiplicity of perspectives. In other i-Docs, this sensitivity to multiplicity extends to a more radical acknowledgement that there are manifold potential narratives that could be included in the i-Doc but which are not currently accessible through it. For example, the i-Doc 18 Days in Egypt documents Egypt’s Arab Spring by allowing users to upload their own material from that period. The site is always evolving as new clips from amateur film makers are added, so it is clear that the totality of clips currently available does not equal the totality of possible perspectives. In i-Docs like 18 Days in Egypt, multiplicity is given a particular political weighting; used to undermine dominant narratives of the uprising and, furthermore, to insist that no one narrative can be comprehensive.

Another key feature of the nonlinear way of seeing common to i-Docs is sensitivity to the openness of space-time. This attuning to openness is enabled through the multiple pathways i-Docs offer to users. Crucially, the multiple routes through material allow for more than just several orderings of the same information, they enable qualitatively new ideas to be produced. For example, the i-Doc Gaza Sderot offers four different ways to sort its clips of people’s experiences of the Gaza conflict. It has four screen views; faces – which allows you to follow certain characters, map – which shows the places each clip was filmed in, topics – which groups clips by

themes and time - which organises the clips by the date they were made.

What a given clip reveals is effected by the screen view through which it is arrived at. For example, to watch a clip in ‘face’ view is to approach it as a personal story, whereas to access the same clip through the ‘topic’ view is to take it as exemplary of a wider concern. The pathways users take through the i-Doc have their own productive capacities; activating qualities another route might not reveal. Again, this attention to openness is politically significant. Rebecca Coleman has described how the interactive potentials of dieting websites evoke the potentials of the body itself (Coleman, 2010). In the same vein, the sensitivity Gaza Sderot constructs towards multiple potential narrativizations of its footage arguably generates hope for the conflict itself; suggesting that new possibilities are found by retelling stories.

As well as engaging an imagination of temporal openness, Gaza Sderot generates a politicized approach to space as dynamic and processual or, as Massey conceptualizes it, ‘a simultaneity of stories so far’ (Massey, 2005, p. 9). In Gaza

Sderot’s map view clips are labelled with captions such as ‘ambulance drivers HQ’,

‘polling place’ or ‘Ahmed Quaffah’s Party’. Clicking on a clip makes it start to play; transforming the static terrain into a dynamic spatiotemporal fabric.

Figure Seven: Gaza Sderot: Maps

Furthermore, rather than displaying ‘objective’ place names, the colloquial naming of clips refer to how spaces are used by people. This nomenclature suggests that

space-time is not a pre-given container that actions occur within, but created through the multiple, embodied practices of Gaza and Sderot’s inhabitants. In a documentary about conflicts over territory, this conceptualisation of space-time as immanently and dynamically produced through the actions of its inhabitants takes on a significant political weight; constituting a refusal to accept fixed and pre-given definitions of space.

Yet the nonlinear mode of encounter in i-Docs, as well as focusing attention on openness and dynamism, also draws attention to the forces which fix and constrain action (Harris, 2016). As we have already seen, the i-Doc Insomnia forces users to adhere to a particular temporal scale and in so doing draws attention to the restrictive temporalities of insomnia. This can be understood as sensitivity to ‘entrainment’. Nonlinear conceptions of space-time are attentive to how assemblages are held in place through the entrainment of trajectories with one another’s cycles. In Gaza

Sderot, the entraining force of the conflict over the multiple trajectories of its

characters is evoked by a line down the middle of the screen separating Gaza from Sderot. In all four screen views the line stubbornly delineates territory. In the map, face and topic views it has no interactive capacities, suggesting an unquestionable geographical division that entrains all trajectories within its structure. The line indicates the paramount influence of the conflict in structuring the lived presents of the characters. Nash writes of Gaza Sderot that ‘the interface serves as a metaphor for the geographical space, its proximity and arbitrary division’ (Nash, 2012, p. 205).The line is essential to this metaphor; it shows how conflict can take hold over life; pulling trajectories into uneasy proximity and restructuring space-time around its quasi-gravitational centre. This is reiterated by how the i-Doc discourages you from following the narrative of any individual. If you are watching a clip about any one character it ends with options to see more clips about that character but also gives you a competing option to watch something happening across the border. In this way, the i-Doc denies the characters the primacy of their own narratives; demonstrating the burden of being entrained within the conflict’s geography.

These are just some of the ways that i-Docs produce a nonlinear mode of encounter. What is clear in these examples is that this is a politicized mode of encounter that refuses conceptualisations of the world as fixed or singular, instead highlighting its always contingent, processual and ongoing production. As such, the nonlinear ways of seeing that i-Docs produce resonate with the politics of nonlinear geographical thinking. If creative methods can enable different kinds of thinking to take place (Hawkins, 2015) then i-Docs, celebrated by media theorists for their sensitivity to openness and contingency, can help Geographers to engage the nonlinear mode of encounter that contemporary ontological convictions necessitate. The nonlinear organisation of i-Docs as method can thereby extend creative Geographical engagements with thinking space-time nonlinearly (DeSilvey, 2007; Massey, 2008; O'Callaghan, 2012; Gallagher, 2015) and, in particular can add two key things to existing endeavours. Firstly, as will be explored in more detail in the next section, creating an i-Doc fosters attention to the nonlinearity of objects or sites of Geographical study. In my own work, for example, it enables a focus on turbulence in precarious urban assemblages as well as ways in which that turbulence is stabilised and the assemblage entrained. Secondly, as the next section of this part of the chapter goes on to explore, i-Docs are designed to be interacted with and thus beg consideration of agency within the world understood as nonlinear.