Non-place. Other space ( Lai 2009)

If I read Non-place. Other space as a visual ethnography, we may need to rethink several things in the making of (visual) ethnography:

1. the "field": ethnography contains fieldwork. The field of this video is two cities, Hong Kong and Macau. The classic ethnographic text may use thick description to describe the field and to let audiences understand and even step in the field through the writing. In the video, we do not see these cities' landmarks (except the high skyscraper shot of Hong Kong). In fact, there are few long shots for audiences to recognize the location. The motif images repeatedly appear in the first part of the video are flowing water, floating chicken corpse, female mannequin with red cheongsam and black lace stockings, two staggering words "no. 10" in Chinese, etc. If the landscape and the objects are the Other Lai represents, these images do not describe what these places really are but "take[s] us into the center of the experiences being described" (Geertz 1973: 18). The sense of instability, the horror, and the suffocation haunter audiences until the last part of the video, with men and women doing (house) work in their "work" place.
2. the "Other": Rather than represent the Other, Lai clearly tells us that representation of the Other is always self representation. Lai self consciously does not position herself as an outsider but she actively invites us, the audiences, to join her journey to explore the cityscapes. One of her poem in Non-place: "The domain of the enigmatic is where I play my daily routine. Here and now fogged by undifferentiated hues. Blow and blow and off I go. Come go with me yes or no? (27 October 2002)".
3. the "story": what means by a story? Non-place provides no mainstream ethnographic situated story (such as how the central character, the Other, lives her life in a particular context). If there is a central character, it is Lai, who selects video shots and words from her visual and written diaries respectively, making sense of and describing her experience of city space (HK & Macau) and other spaces (various art galleries which construct temporary sense of place and community). The story also provides no typical story, without an action-oriented or cause-and-effect plot development and resolution. It also provides audiences no clues how Lai, if she is the protagonist, organizes her life in different spaces and contexts. It is not a realist tale showing audiences a transparent world; the video tells from a feminist standpoint stressing reflexivity and emotion. In Denzin's words, Lai creates her "own situated, inscribed version of the realities" (Denzin 1994: 505).

References

Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. New York: Basic Books.
Denzin, N. K. 1994. The art and politics of interpretation. Handbook of qualitative research, edited by N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, 500-515. Thousand Oaks: Sage.