‘What action did you see me do?’: proposing a methodology of choreographed visual montage when re-turning to interview research data

Abstract

Abstract

This paper offers a creative methodology for co-creating and analysing data when conducting research with children, families and practitioners in the early years. Instead of relying heavily on either adult observation or language when, for example, interviewing children, we propose the method of choreographed visual montage. We show the novelty and practical applicability of our posthumanist experimentation with visual and digital research methods through an example from an international research project on digital play and well-being in South Africa. In much detail, we explore the response of “seven-year-old” Dan to our question about how he feels when playing digital games. He answers ‘What action did you see me do?’ and enacts how he "looks" when playing. Affected by this performance and inspired by Erin Manning’s notion of the minor gesture and Karin Barad’s agential realism.], we describe how our creative methodology works and why it matters while staying closely with this example. Listening care-fully to his words, but also going beyond words, the method does justice to the complexity of reality and the relational encounters in-between family members, researchers and the more-than-human – an entanglement that is not only discursive (as in multimodal analysis), but, according to Barad, material and discursive.