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- Convenors:
-
Christos Varvantakis
(Athens Ethnographic Film Festival)
Melissa Nolas (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
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- Chair:
-
Olivia Casagrande
(University of Sheffield)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We invite contributions that address practices of commoning in multimodal ethnographic research. We especially welcome submissions from collaborative and networked multimodal ethnographic projects within and beyond the academy.
Long Abstract:
The inaugural panel of the EASA multimodal ethnography network aims to provide a collegial space for dialogue and reflection between ethnographers who experiment across modalities and media in their research practice. The panel constitutes a space for the growing international and interdisciplinary network of multimodal ethnographers, within and beyond the academy, to address issues pertinent to the nurturing of this rapidly expanding circuit of practice including but not limited to the role of the following in multimedia and multimodal anthropological compositions: the role of production, collaboration, curation and re-presentation; the appreciation, re-view and feedback of audio-visual compositions; the sites of knowledge and power; the collaborative, transformative, and unfolding temporalities of pre- and post-production; the live event and its afterlife; the role of audiences, publics, and other collectivities.
In particular, for this inaugural meeting and in line with the conference theme, we would invite contributions that address meanings and practices of commoning in multimodal ethnographic research. Multimodal ethnography is not a one stop shop practice (although, sometimes practiced as such). It involves, if not requires collaborations, commoning and public creations. How might thinking about multimodal ethnography take us beyond inherited notions of the 'auteur' in ethnographic practice? How might interlocutors and research participants be involved in the production and interpretations of our multimodal artifacts? How might multimodal ethnographic practice enable us to imagine different futures both for the discipline but also for the topics we research? What sort of audiences and publics do multimodal ethnographies produce within and beyond the academy?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses “urban heat maps”, which link practices of experiencing and monitoring heat as well as exposure, affectedness, activism, and intervention towards heat, as a multimodal mode of doing anthropology, and how such maps can be mobilized as commons, as well as living repositories.
Paper long abstract:
Collins, Durrington and Gill (2017) invited to a “Multimodal Anthropology” as a project that links different media, agents, and types of knowledge in modes of collaborative and public anthropology. This contribution presents “urban heat maps”, which bring together practices of experiencing, monitoring, and mapping heat as well as exposure, affectedness, activism, and intervention towards heat as such a multimodal and collaborative mode of doing anthropology. The paper is based on the ERC-project “Urban Vibrations: How Physical Waves come to matter in Contemporary Urbanism”, which addresses the questions how human and nonhuman urban dwellers are exposed to heat, noise and 5G, how (multispecies) bodies learn to be affected, and to which activistic practices and interventions into urban spaces being affected can lead. Heat, noise and 5G are invisible and indeterminate phenomena in their ontologies as well as in their effects. Their multiplicity and twistiness but also the multiple and complex responses on these environmental, anthropogenic and electromagnetic waves - such as monitoring, mapping, scaling, policing and policy-making by multiple and various agents - argue for a multimodal research approach. This paper discusses the collaborative development of “urban heat maps” between various exposed bodies, research partners, (para-)ethnographers and scientists as a form of by all of these agents in-situ developed “fieldwork device” (Estalella & S. Criado 2018), and it thinks about how these collaborative, multimodal “urban heat maps” can be mobilized as commons, and open and living repositories.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will discuss the process of co-creation of a ‘participatory image’ in text. Can a classic text be conceived in a multimodal way even without using multimodal technology? What does it mean collaborating in such process and what does it mean to create a 'participatory image'?
Paper long abstract:
This paper will be based on the encounter between an artist, Letizia Gianella, and two anthropologists, Arnaud Dubois and Giulia Battaglia, interested respectively in curatorial practices/material culture and in visual/media/art anthropology. It will be based on an interview between these three individuals to discuss the work of the artist, which occurs at multiples levels – the participatory practice in school with children, the personal work done in the ‘atelier’, the installation of an exhibition. The challenge of this paper will be to reflect on questions of participation and collaboration in Giannella’s artwork but also in the encounter between the three of us and our ‘multimodal’ attempt to write a paper about it.
Playing around the concept of ‘trait’ or ‘fragment’ and the image that this can create, we will discuss the process of this project in which we seek to co-create a ‘participatory image’ in text. In other words, can a classic text be conceived in a multimodal way even without using multimodal technology? What does it mean collaborating in such process and what does it mean to create a 'participatory image' ?
Paper short abstract:
The paper looks at the challenges of creating a multimodal book. SensoRhythms is a collaborative and multimodal website that depicts various aspects of the São Paulo's vibrant independent electronic music scene by showcasing an ethnographic film series paired with experimental ways of writing.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims at describing the multimodal character and experimental collaborations that stay at the basis of the website www.senorhythms.com. The website is a result of a postdoctoral research at the University of São Paulo (USP) about the DIY electronic music scene of São Paulo and focuses on the embodiment of experiences in local music participation. By creatively engaging with digital, audiovisual and multimodal methods, the website takes film as a pivoting element in the construction of the web content while engaging with other medias and experimenting with multiple ways of anthropological writing. The film series feature collaborations with artists, performers, scenographers, producers, filmmakers, photographers or anthropologists, and engage in co-authored filmmaking and multimodal dialogues. Each page exhibits a short film in an episodic-like structure that is accompanied by various types of media languages and multimodal interactions, displayed in a format that mix medias while debating key anthropological questions that derive from the research and collaborative exchanges. SensoRhythms.com is built in the form of an online, multimodal book that feature a chapter arrangement capable of incorporating film, photography, text and online conversations, links and further digital explorations. In this way, the anthropological inquiry considers the complex media ecologies that the DIY electronic music scene is displaying. Moreover, the website is meant to appeal to a greater audience by moving beyond a strict academic pattern of writing or the restricted field of ethnographic filmmaking.
Paper short abstract:
Without overstressing the spider/web symbolism, we will present our multimodal website and highlight (or “trouble”) various processes of decision-making involved that range from structuring, curating, editing, and layering data to graphic design choices.
Paper long abstract:
Are spiders good to think with?
At the latest since the dissemination of Donna Haraway’s concept of “tentacular thinking” (Haraway 2016) and the publication of Feral Atlas (Tsing et. al. 2020) it has become apparent that human exceptionalism and the mono-perspectivism that often accompanies it, have become inadequate knowledge practices. The tentacular are nets and networks and tentacularity is about entanglements and layerings - we therefore argue that spiders ARE good to think with.
Our presentation is based on many years of audio-visual research on the Southern Italian spider possession cult “tarantism.” In addition to leveraging the (multimodal) archive, writing about the phenomenon and producing an essayistic documentary film, we have also created a website that we are continuously extending. To create an intermedia perspective we combine texts, sounds, still and moving images in formats such as ›scollytelling‹, soundscapes or an extensive timeline that reconstructs the history of medialization of the phenomenon in the second half of the 20th century.
Without overstressing the spider/web symbolism, in our presentation we will present the multimodal website and guide an interested audience through its features. In doing so, we will highlight (or “trouble”) various processes of decision-making involved that range from structuring, curating, editing, and layering data to graphic design choices.