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Short abstract:

This paper explores a process of collaborative "remixing" of two independent multimodal ethnographic projects. It draws out the main principles such a process of ethnographic co-creation are based upon and the affordances it provides in terms of generative theorizing.

Long abstract:

Both multimodal and collaborative forms of ethnography have become increasingly central to the discipline of anthropology. This paper explores how the process of “remixing” two initially unconnected multimodal ethnographic projects evoked new forms of generative theorizing. The two projects in question were first the project “Unstories” (Giordano & Pierotti 2020), which is a theatrical performance project centred around the issues of migration in the Mediterranean. The second project was drawn from my own long-term ethnographic relationship with Roma people in Sliven, Bulgaria. Both projects devised separately a multimodal ethnographic object that the other partner in turn freely “remixed” into a new ethnographic object. I offered a photo collage titled “The sorrows of suspense” highlighting the extended liminality of post-communist existence with its suspended promises of western democracy and the market economy. The two parties then came together to present and discuss their original objects, the remixes and what the process and series of objects afforded in terms of new theoretical and methodological ideas. Although the fieldsites and field knowledges were very different, the remixing connection and remaking of the original objects, as well as the separate and joint reflections on the process, provided us with forms of multimodal theorizing that were quite unexpected in its creative and conceptual generativity. The paper draws out these affordances and explores why the remixing process was not only an AI-like recombination of existing elements, but a truly synergetic process of co-creation that enabled new forms of theorizing.