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Paper short abstract

Moving beyond binaries such as researcher/subject and expert/non-expert, the research argues that multimodal, embodied fieldwork can function as a practice of beyondness by creating transdisciplinary spaces where difference is not resolved but held in tension.

Paper long abstract

This contribution draws from Embodied Echoes, a multimodal and embodied research project that conceives fieldwork as a collaborative artistic endeavour rather than a bounded site of data collection. Researcher and interlocutors are engaged in the same research question, co-producing knowledge through shared experimentation. Situated at the intersection of visual anthropology, contemporary dance, and immersive media, the project unfolds through long-term collaborations with Afro-Brazilian dancers and choreographers whose artistic and personal trajectories are shaped by transatlantic movement.

The collaboration began during fieldwork in Senegal, where shared engagement with movement, memory, and diasporic histories opened an initial space of encounter. A year later, we met again in Brazil to continue the research through immersive experimentation with virtual reality as an embodied method. VR became not a representational tool, but a space for exploring the interlocutors’ inner world lives—their sensory memories, affective states, and embodied reflections on the journey of return to West Africa, and its impact on their ongoing processes of self-making and world-making as Afro-Brazilian artists.

Moving beyond binaries such as researcher/subject and expert/non-expert, the research argues that multimodal, embodied fieldwork can function as a practice of beyondness by creating transdisciplinary spaces where difference is not resolved but held in tension. By centring transatlantic movement and collaborative experimentation, Embodied Echoes proposes multimodality as a way of imagining otherwise through sustained, embodied encounters across bodies, technologies, and histories.