As I am waiting for my summer experience to start, I have been planning and going-over the next three months. It’s been hard to imagine who is going to be involved with the experience, and what impact I can make on another person. To prepare for the making of my documentary and hands on research in Alaska (and the summer abroad in Germany next month) I have been practicing interaction. Typing that makes me sound like a psychopath like the guy from Nightcrawler or something, but what I’m trying to say is that I’ve learned that you can get a lot of knowledge and content when you put a camera in front of someone and ask a question. I have practiced documenting my family and friends these past few weeks, and every time it has felt as if they have been wanting to say those words and answer that question for years. For instance, when I asked my mom about when she first visited Alaska, I got a lengthy, colorful anecdote for the feeling of the year… the smell and taste of the air from twenty years ago… decades-long hidden emotions… and even revelations of past culture. I asked her about how long the plane was, simple as that, and 30 seconds later she reflects on how her flights were empty… as 9/11 was only weeks prior to their flight.
What I’m trying to say is that I know impact will come from interaction and asking people questions. I know there won’t be any “direct” stakeholders in my experience as it feels self-driven, but I know I need to try my best to make people feel like they’re directly involved, only from that success can I feel that any of what I’m doing is impactful. The people I talk to are the people who will directly be involved in what I’m trying to do, and the people who help me get there will be indirect to the process, but impactful just the same. This includes the leading professor of the study abroad program in Germany, the people who will help me get to the harder places to get to in Alaska (I.e. Native consent to visit villages if they permit it), and the people I meet on the way that help guide me through foreign lands.
The stake overall is on ethics. It’s up to me to be ethical in the making of my documentary, and my study of German. In Alaska, I need to make sure I’m not some white kid with a camera. Or just some guy shooting for a 5-minute vlog. That’s my biggest concern, and I know from the past that I have to be aware of my privilege and be open to portraying myself without it. Even just being a student at FSU is a privilege, and so I have to go into these places as a student of the world not just FSU. That also sounds extremely naïve, I know, but when I’ve removed myself from the speaker to the asker, I feel that privilege and naivety go away. I think that a perspective that could go missing from my proposed experience is the truly average and honest perspective. I want to make sure that I get the absolute average, random people in interviews. I’m not experienced in asking, so why should my interviews require people experienced in talking? I want to hear all voices, not just those convenient for data. Whatever that perspective is, I know that it is out there, and I want to find it by talking to everyone – big and small.
To accompany this blog post, we were given a video to watch on the different types of activistic roles. I can only truly see myself as the first two: (maybe) the “helper” and the “advocate”. I want to make change by writing, and by creating, and I feel I’ve too shy to throw a brick in a window or even politely call a politician. I want to advocate by showing. For this documentary I want to show the world through my own lens, honest and average lens. I want to show how America has created our 50th state, and how it is politically shaped by the environment consequences and culture in Alaska. I want to write and learn about the world from a different language, in my first experience in Germany. I want to advocate others by making them reveal a certain truth and showing it; help people by giving them an opportunity to speak their mind. Over a hundred million people speak German, and over seven-hundred thousand people live in Alaska, and I want this experience’s rich and cultured and unique perspective on the world and the portrayal of the current state of it to come from one of those many people, not my own. Answers stemming from not my own perspectives, just my own…but average… questions.
Picture is my dog Lucky, who I will miss when I’m gone, he describes my confidence towards this exploration #GoldenHour
– Raymond Vickers
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