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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how collaborative film and exhibition making can contribute not only to communicating anthropological knowledge otherwise, but can fundamentally transform the ways in which we conduct anthropological research. It argues for multimodal translations across knowledge formations.

Paper long abstract:

In my anthropological research, I follow Trin T. Minh-ha (1992) in seeking to speak not about or for, but nearby my research partners. I do not pretend to write an all-encompassing account of the lives of people I encounter, but rather seek to set up research environments in which my research partners can equally contribute their research questions, agendas and methodologies. Being aware of my powerful disposition as white woman working in Western academia and museums and with initial research interests in mind, I set out to understand and, ideally, meet the needs and interests of my research partners. This has ended, for example, in a collaborative film project on the history and cultural heritage of African cosmopolitanism, transatlantic trade and cultural exchange in the Niger Delta, today’s Nigeria, and in a collaborative exhibition project on confronting the colonial pasts of collections from Namibia at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin and on envisioning creative futures with them. In both cases, my research partners brought to bear a variety of forms of knowledge, ranging from curatorial and artistic skills to oral histories and embodied and performative knowledge. Such a multitude of forms of knowledge needs translation not only amongst themselves, but also with possible audiences. This paper discusses the challenges and benefits of collaboratively doing research on topics such as colonial contact and its legacies and designing creative ways of translating the research and its findings to a wider public. It argues for doing anthropology as a form of multimodal translation.