Presentation short abstract

This multimodal presentation explores how both people and olive trees in Tunisia shape visual, historical, and ecological ways of knowing. I examine how multispecies specificities appear—and are co-created—through guided and spontaneous acts of seeing.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation explores how visual practices—being shown, guided, staged, and surprised—shape anthropological multispecies understandings of Tunisian olive trees beyond their value in yield.

I present two audiovisual vignettes in which the olive tree appears in photographs, one on purpose, the other less so, considering how these portrayed olive trees are co-producers of relational, historical, and ecological knowledge. As I am in the process of making my own ethnographic-botanical illustration, I wonder how these portrayals can guide my own film-making practice about a highly-productive olive tree in Tunisia.

The first story is a guided encounter with olive trees by a Tunisian photographer who has been traveling for a decade now across the country to look for his ‘treasures’, millennial olive trees. By showing me his photographic collection he dives into the long, resilient life of trees that exceed Eurocentric narratives of agricultural progress. Here, the photograph becomes a companion to multispecies pedagogy: a way of seeing-with trees as historical subjects rather than static resources.

The second story shows a moment in which an olive tree appeared as an aesthetic backdrop in a photo-album of family life in Southern Tunisia. It reoriented my attention toward the material pressures shaping these relations—particularly water scarcity across southern Tunisia. Multispecies textures become visible through affective and situated acts of noticing.

As I am in the process of making my own ethnographic-botanical illustration on a highly-productive olive tree in Tunisia, I end with asking how these portrayals can guide my own film-making practice and anthropological research.