Paper short abstract:

In 2010/11, 70 ethnographic film documents from the Gilbert islands, shot in 1964, were digitised and returned to Kiribati, the country of their origin. The paper describes the repatriation of the silent old films and the teaching of a workshop on ethnographic filmmaking as well as methodological issues relating to the films' use in contemporary filmmaking, results of reception research and an attempt at post-synchronisation of two dance films.

Paper long abstract:

In 1964, the German ethnographer Gerd Koch spent almost one year in the Gilbert Islands, now the Micronesian state of Kiribati. Apart from other methods of data-collection, Koch also made some 70 short ethnographic 16mm-films, published by IWF Göttingen, Germany. They were never returned to Kiribati, until in 2010 and 2011 Wolfgang Kempf and Rolf Husmann repatriated digital copies of the silent films. Part of their "Kiribati Project" was also research among contemporary I-Kiribati about the films' content and the teaching of a workshop in ethnographic filmmaking, in which the old material was successfully combined with newly shot film footage. Finally there was also an attempt at post-synchronising two of the old dance films using archived sound material from Koch. This paper outlines the visual methodologies adopted in the "Kiribati Project", looks at the relevance of the old films for contemporary Kiribati culture, and discusses the potential of repatriating old films as Intangible Cultural Heritage to the countries of their origin.

Paper short abstract:

Transnational Migration inevitably challenges realist representations of space and time. This paper explores how video installations might express its micro- and macrolevel dimensions: The grounded reality of migrants` individual ´lifeworld` and the complexities of the ´global system`.

Paper long abstract:

Migration is, without exaggeration, one of the urgent topics of our time. Its representation however poses theoretical, epistemological and methodological challenges. How can we produce knowledge about migration that transcends the hierarchical discourses of those who govern it? How can we explore the compex social realities and relationships it produces? The aim of my paper is to discuss migration as a visual topic that reveals the limits of conventional representation. Global processes like transnationalism and migration happen at more than one place and involve different temporal and spatial scales. For their subjects, they convey an overall feeling of dislocation and asynchronism. How do we engage with the increasing interrelations of peoples, places, political and economic entities within a vast global system? How do we represent the invisible processes that connect them?

Multi-screen video installations can articulate these complex relations by expanding the modernist techniques of montage and juxtaposition into space. I will discuss examples from artists like Ursula Biemann and Multiplicity, as well as a two-screen installation I produced as part of my PhD-project. This work focusses on the border regime separating the French island of Mayotte from its African sister island Anjouan, both geographically part of the Comoros islands. It renders visible the lifeworlds on both islands on two opposing screens. It explores this postcolonial space by giving the spectator access to multiple perspectives.

Paper short abstract:

In our everyday lives, we mobilise images of places in order to move along in the city and to make decisions. To gain understanding about how an image of a neighbourhood comes into being and how it performs citizens' lives,I use a methodological dispositive based on photo-walk and photo-elicitation.

Paper long abstract:

In our everyday lives, we mobilise images of places - or mental geographies of places we like or dislike - in order to move along in the city and to make decisions (e.g. about where to live, where to walk at night and so on). In this paper, the notion of image refers to a set of features (e.g. visual, emotional, socio-demographic, or functional) and meanings that one can associate with a place (or in this case with a neighbourhood), when it is about identifying its reputation, namely its symbolic value. In order to gain understanding about how an image of a neighbourhood comes into being, particularly when it is negotiated within a group, and how it performs citizens' lives, I use a qualitative methodological dispositive based on photo-walk and photo-elicitation. Therefore, in this research with families living in different neighbourhoods of the city of Geneva, I aimed at tackling the following questions: how do families characterize or qualify the neighbourhoods in which they live? What features or criteria do families use to identify their own neighbourhood with regard to the others? How does their everyday practice of this place play a role in the way they assemble and negotiate an image? What kind of pictures do they want to communicate (to the researcher) through the visual material? And what kind of image do they want to communicate during the interviews?

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore how young urbanites in Dakar (Senegal) are using and appropriating facebook to create visual narratives of the self and to situate themselves within and through their networks.

Paper long abstract:

For young urbanites in Dakar facebook has become one of the most important reasons to go online and connect to family and friends within and without of Senegal. Uploading photographs and commenting on each other's images is one of the most important means for users to stay connected within the social network site. In this paper I intend to explore how young Senegalese are using and appropriating facebook to create visual narratives of the self and to situate themselves within and through their networks. What are the discourses that are touched upon in these visual narratives? How are these practices continuities of older forms of visualities and what new possibilities are offered through the new "medium" facebook? In demonstrating culturally and socially situated examples of users I intend to focus on new tendencies of media engagements and (mass-) mediated appearances.

Paper short abstract:

This paper applies the skilled visions approach to collective strategies of self-representation, focusing on the apprenticeship of stereotypes as a naturalization of social classification, experimenting with non-linear platforms for multimedia editing and providing a broad review of visual resources and arguments currently spanning the web.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss the idea of applying the skilled visions approach to collective strategies of self-representation, by combining visual archive research with ethnographic sources in a project about looking.

The goal is to develop a critical analysis of belonging, focusing on the visual apprenticeship of stereotypes as a naturalization of social classification.

The thesis is that there is a complex and tacit competence at play in the mutual exercise of recognition, and that such "skilled vision" feeds on comparison by context and on cultural training rather than on a replicable repertoire of classificatory schemes. In other words, the business of "sorting faces" depends on where we draw the implicit boundaries of the groups we are identifying. Our own capacity for recognizing and ascribing membership of a certain group is a skill that is largely contextual, socially inculcated and publicly performed.

The paper aims at connecting my previous work on Skilled Visions with a work-in-progress agenda, experimenting with on-line non linear platforms for multimedia editing and providing a broad review of visual resources and arguments currently spanning the web and the critique of visual culture.

The ethnographic flesh of the project is an observation of Boston, home to one of the most renowned and diverse communities of researchers in the world, but also the "youngest" US city and the result of intertwined histories of migration. Challenged suburbs and gentrified "ethnic" quarters such as the Italian North End compose an urban caleydoscope of visual formations.

Paper short abstract:

Can one have safari tourism without photography or autovideography? Israeli safari tourists take far more photographs during a safari journey in East Africa than at any other destiny. This paper will explore the use of visual technology which serves tourists' individual and social needs.

Paper long abstract:

Tourism is visual and nostalgic: Today it is almost impossible to consider tourism without the involvement of photography and video recording for posterity. It is also impossible to study anthropology of tourism without relating to these central practices of tourism. Safari tourism has a unique stance in the practice of photography. Israeli safari tourists, for instance, take far more photographs during a safari journey in East Africa than at any other destination. A common academic view sees "shooting a picture" not only as a documentation and memorialization but as a symbolic restoration of "hunting" as well. What influences the tourists' way of thinking about images? What is the place of "National Geographic films" in the technological 'arms race' among safari tourists? Does the hunt after the "best image" of a wild animal influence the way tourists think about the wild 'other' or about themselves? This paper will explore the use of visual technology which serves tourists as an opportunity for reflexivity, as a possibility to gain of control over uncertainty and as ways to capture an exciting rare moment. Through visual anthropology, I will attempt to present different aspects of the power of new visual practices during safari tourism.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is devoted to the reassessment of the photographic analysis proposed by Mead and Bateson in their famous Balinese project. Presented reflections evolved after the attempt to conduct analogous analysis of the data collected with digital equipment among modern hunters of Eastern Siberia.

Paper long abstract:

In 1942 the world anthropological community got one of the most outstanding results of anthropological fieldwork - the book presented by well known anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead about Balinese character (Bateson & Mead 1942). This book became one of the classical handbooks for visual anthropologists. Despite the fine reputation of the book, the attempts to conduct analogous studies were few and mostly focused on Balinese materials. In this paper I would like to present the results of photographic analysis conducted according to the Mead-Bateson methodology but applied to the data collected among the Evenki of East Siberia. The latter is relatively poor studied community of modern hunters that live in ultimate environments of taiga. Evenki's activities are coordinated not through strict rules, orders or other verbal forms of communication, but on skills and experiences of collaborative enactments. This research project was devoted to the study of Evenki everyday life with a special focus on the role of non-verbal information in social interaction and emotional aspects.

In my presentation I plan to describe what measures helped to adjust the Mead-Bateson analysis to modern technological conditions and how these changes have affected the general methodological premises of the project. The change in the distribution of new digital technologies also affected the process of data collection, as anthropologist is no more an exclusive expert in video equipments in the field, which changes his position compared to that of Mead and Bateson.