Autoethnography
The autoethnography was made in 2015 in the preliminary thesis research course of Pratt Grad ComD. The brief was to conduct an ethnographic research project of any shape or form that dealt with our thesis research topic, mine being Metamodern Cultural Theory. Since the thesis topic was about contemporary culture at large, I felt it difficult to pinpoint a subset of culture for the research. I also was somewhat weary about the effectiveness of ethnographic research findings in general.
What I had read about autoethnography, however, wasn’t much better. Previous case studies had used personal diaries and performance to generate findings. The results ended up leaning towards more of a poetic release rather than a gathering of qualitative evidence.
Throughout the one-month duration of the experiment I remained consistently uncertain about my attempts. Keeping a diary, recorded video footage, and charts and diagrams of my habits, I ended up, in an act of catharsis, recording a video of how strange the entire process was for me. It wasn’t until after this exercise that I understood the unique benefits this type of research offers.