Payada, empathy and social commitment: a filming experience in an Argentinian prison

Abstract

The use of video as a research tool has been growing in the last decades. Many of the topics currently debated about its usage are common to diverse disciplines and represent the development of long time discussions: dualities like objective/subjective, fiction/non-fiction, art/science or reflections around the representation of reality, dialogic editing, ethics, etc., are constantly engaged. These debates involve epistemological issues that make it difficult to reach a wide consensus. Therefore, they are interpreted in different ways, depending on many variables: specific dialogic relationships, field of studies, methodological and theoretical frames, personal sensibility, etc. In the following chapter I present some reflections about my research with payadores rioplatenses, specifically the audiovisual documentation of a performance that took place in Dolores’ penitentiary, in the Province of Buenos Aires. In doing so, I will address some of the main topics currently debated in the discipline, with particular focus on the relationship between the performers and the public, the ethical implications of filming in a prison and the audiovisual representation of human experience.