Ethnography Results, Week 3

By Evin Schuchardt, Jeremy Nelissen, Ryan Kerbow and Wesley Konderla


Goal:
Our goal was to go out on a Sunday night to Revolution in order to observe a new environment: Poetry Slam.  We see that different nights have the potential to attract different types of people, and in order to get the full scope of the culture at Revolution, it is important to see all these interactions.

Setting:
We arrived around 9:30PM to find a packed parking lot.  We approached the venue not knowing what to expect.  As we walked closer we heard the microphone and concluded that the slam was going down outside, which in fact it was.  The wind was stiff, but that did not stop patrons from coming to watch the Sunday night poetry.

Layout: 
There were about 50 to 60 people huddled outside in the chairs as well as standing (as all the chairs were taken) listening to people recite poetry.  Inside were about 8 people who were not a part of the listening of poetry.

People:
The outside crowd was very affirming of the poets that went on it seemed regardless of how good the recitation was.  Many people knew each other as many were greeting friends as they entered the venue.  It seemed like most people came in groups of 2 to 4.

The type of dress that people had there were a bit more diverse than we were expecting.  I would say it was split about half and half between 'trendy' dress and regular 'Northgate apparel' (clothes that one would where while going to Northgate).

We also saw both the musicians that were there last time (not playing, of course) as well as the bartender.

Poetry:
There was an MC who occasionally recited some poetry as well as a DJ who would coordinate intro music as well as interlude music.  Most poems were recited via open mic, locals who came and either recited memorized poems or read poems.  Some were personally written and others were written by others.  Featured were two brothers from Austin who seemed to carry a little bit of weight in the poetry world as one was on the nationally fourth-placed team based in Austin.  They seemed to go on in the middle of the night and would also perform at the end of the night.

I picked up on a few themes I saw in many of the poems recited by all performers.  All poems seemed to be artfully spoken by the performer in an attempt to stir the audiences emotions in some way, usually to relate to them in some deep way or move them to think a certain way.  I would say that at least half of the poems recited by locals were about death and suicide.  Many seem to come out of emotional distress.  I posit that this is an attempt to express deep struggles within self, a way of reaching out to other people in a meaningful way without having to get personally involved in the reaching out.  By this I mean that no resolution is saught nor wanted, the performer simply wants their problems to be known by others but not worked out by others.  This could be in an attempt to simply relate with others and give witness that there are people struggling with the same things you are.

Side Note (Bathrooms):
I went into the bathroom to notice first of all that it was difficult to identify which bathroom was which due to the labeling of the bathroom.  This seemed to be due to uniqueness and wanting to be fassionable to regulars.  This was a bit deterring to outsiders (myself).  When I was in the bathroom washing my hands I found that the hot and cold knobs were reversed from normal convention!  The one on the left was the cold water and the one on the right was hot water.