On multiple literacies and language learning : video production and embodied subjectivities

![CDATA[The dialogue below reflects on the cutting-edge research on video literacies being undertaken in several universities in the Tokyo metropolitan area in Japan and looks to link this up with equally progressive work being done in the Australian context (Cole, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014; Cole and Moyle (2010); Masny and Cole, 2012; Pullen and Cole, 2010; Cole and Bradley, 2014, 2015). It is the theoretical counterpart to the findings of the recent colloquium held by Joff P.N. Bradley et al at the National University of Singapore. Philosophically and in terms of educational pedagogy, the dialogue and discussion extends, undergirds and contextualises the development of affective, multimodal and engaged literacies and pedagogies through student-created and student-led video production (Pullen & Cole, 2010; Cole & Bradley, 2014). Bradley and Cole's recent joint and singular work considers what it means to present an embodied subjectivity (Bangou & Fleming, 2014) through multimodal, multiple literacies in the foreign language classroom (Masny, 2013; Cole 2013). The dialogue discusses one of the core focuses of the colloquium and considers the view that experimental and creative methodologies - that is to say, processes which encourage points of breakdown and breakthrough in education - are vital in sustaining critical and transformative pedagogies in the Japanese university setting. Without them, it is argued, students are left to spin endlessly on their own axes. So the University's traditional remit remains true - to nurture Bildung or self-cultivation, which is to say creation, image or shape, the overall purpose of which is to engender personal and cultural maturation - but it has to grasp also how students are utilizing and manipulating different technologies and media. Embracing and combining some of the tenets of the multiliteracies and Multiple Literacies Theory, student-led video projects, it is argued, is a way to short-circuit the obsession with the world of work, in order to return students to themselves as a site of self-cultivation - to "record and represent oneself" as Cole says in the interview below.]]