RIASSUNTO Il saggio espone i risultati di una ricerca esplorativa condotta per comprendere se la produzione di un videodiario sia un metodo adatto per la conduzione di una ricerca autoetnografica. Nello specifico, la ricerca ha monitorato, tramite metodo qualitativo, la pratiche di autorappresentazione di quattro soggetti (due uomini e due donne) nel processo di produzione di un videodiario, realizzato per lo più tramite dispositivi audiovisivi portatili. Dal punto di vista metodologico, le diverse fasi della ricerca hanno richiesto l’uso di un approccio multidisciplinare, che integrasse la prospettiva etnografico-visuale con la teoria del film e dei media audiovisivi, così come una ripresa di alcuni concetti inerenti alla riflessione filosofica sull’autorappresentazione. Una pratica di produzione diaristica condotta con dispositivi audiovisivi portatili in che cosa si differenzia rispetto a precedenti forme di auto-narrazione prodotte con altri dispositivi mediali? In quale modo prende forma l’impulso al radicamento nel momento in cui la scrittura del sé è realizzata tramite immagini? Spinto da nuove possibilità di immediatezza, oggettività e autenticità, garantite dall’uso delle nuove tecnologie digitali, l’autore del videodiario sembra aver lasciato definitivamente sullo sfondo la scrittura diaristica come esercizio di introspezione e di rielaborazione del passato. In questo senso, il videodiario è stato apprezzato da tutti i soggetti coinvolti perché ha consentito la possibilità di cogliere l’istante nell’attimo concreto della sua realizzazione, come frammento significativo nel perimetro spazio-temporale in cui si dispiega. SUMMARY The essay aims to illustrate the results of an exploratory research conducted to understand if the production of a video-diary is a suitable method for an autoethnographic research. In particular, the inquiry has monitored, with a qualitative method, the self-representation practices of four subjects (2 men and 2 women) during the creation of a video-diary, mainly made through hand-held audiovisual devices. From a methodological point of view, the different steps of the research need to adopt a trans-disciplinary approach, integrating a visual-ethnographic perspective with the theory of film and audiovisual media, as well as a philosophical account on self-representation. How is a diary practice conducted through a hand-held audiovisual device different from previous forms of self-narration with other media? Can we talk about forms of socio-cultural grounding that emerge from processes of self-writing through images? Pushed by the new rising drives of immediacy, objectivity, and authenticity, thanks to the digital technologies, the author of a video-diary seems to have definitely left on the background the diary writing as a tool of introspective exercise and reworking of the past. In this sense, the video-diary has been fully appreciated for the chance granted of shooting a moment in its realization, as something that signifies inside the space and temporal perimeter in which is happening.

RÉSUMÉ Ces dernières années il y a eu une tendance de plus en plus diffusée à participer à des visites et des excursions organisées par les tour-operators pour explorer certaines zones dévastées par la guerre (Sarajevo, Auschwitz) ou par des catastrophes naturelles et nucléaires (New Orleans et Chernobyl). Ce phénomène est lié à une réelle nécrophilie de la trace, qui pousse le touriste-voyeur, habitué aux images des médias de plus en plus sanglantes et violentes, à activer un premier contact avec les tragédies du passé, à sympathiser fatalement à la fois avec victimes et bourreaux, tous les deux protagonistes de ces événements. En travaillant sur des productions hétérogènes (l’oeuvre vidéo-artistique War Tourist de Emmanuel Licha et quelques vidéos amateuriel postées sur YouTube), cet essai permettra d’identifier la signification de ces représentations, capables non seulement de traduire en images l’expérience d’un voyage à la frontière entre commémoration et profanation, mais aussi d’établir un équilibre précaire entre proximité et distance, dans l’appropriation des signes d’une réalité marquée par une irréductible différence avec l’univers rassurant des touristes. SUMMARY In recent years there has been an increasing tendency to participate in tours, guided and organized by tour operators, to explore some areas devastated by war (Sarajevo, Auschwitz) or by natural and nuclear disasters (New Orleans and Chernobyl). This phenomenon is intertwined with real trace necrophilia, pushing the tourist-voyeur, now accustomed to increasingly bloody and violent media images, to enable on one side a first contact with the tragedies of the past, on the other to fatally empathize with both victims and perpetrators, protagonists of those events. Working on diverse productions (the video-artistic work War Tourist by Emmanuel Licha and some homemade videos posted on YouTube), this essay will identify the meaning of such representations, which not only translate into images the experience of a trip to the border between commemoration and desecration, but also establish a precarious balance between proximity and distance in the appropriation of the signs of reality, marked by an irreducible difference with the reassuring universe of tourists

From the end of the Twenties, the motion picture company Pathé-Baby begins to distribute its own products in Italy. Despite the difficulty to supply an exact description of the diffusion of Pathé-Baby’s appliances in Italy, this essay aims at going through the kind of offer, the forms of promotion and the conversational level reached by the amateur practice and, eventually, the figures and institutions that, until the mid-Thirties, constantly used, though not in a widespread way, motion-picture cameras, projectors and their attachments manufactured by Pathé-Baby.