The camera as mediator in the construction of the conscience of the social and subjective space.

The camera can also be used as a way of intervention to the social practices, as a trigger of interpersonal exchange processes being constructed by the groups and bargained each moment.The researcher, although conducting the process of intervention, at this space, finds himself also as the individual that experiments with the group the discoveries being triggered. In this case the camera is used as a tool that provokes a group discussion, making the collective experience of seeing and being seen the fundamental theme of the own investigation. With this approach, the videotaping is used by us as a means to reach another vision of our place in the world, our desires and intentions, including the aware of conscience of ourselves caused by the impact of our own image and the image of the other on us, whenever approached through this mediation technique.

Introducing the video camera during the Pastoral group weekly meetings, we knew that this intervention would bring about a determined way of seeing and being seen among people and that this look mediated by the camera lenses, would allow a totally peculiar understanding of himself and of the other, awakening a subjective conscience and bringing about new questionings in that specific group. What might those questions be? How would the group face them? What would this tecnical device- the camera- be capable of triggering in that context? What subjective questions people involved would be able to express? In what way can the production of knowledge, in a specific communitarian work context bring new reorganizations between the subjective experience and the social life embarrassment? These are some questions, among others, which we will try to discuss through the preliminary analyses of this intervention-research.