Short Abstract:

This panel presents a selection of student works from the Visual Anthropology program at the University of Amsterdam that invites a rethinking of ethnographic reflexivity by putting the relationship between research partners at the centre of their inquiry.

Long Abstract:

'Radical' is often referred to as something new or different with a great effect. To be radical can also mean to favour extreme political or social change. For this panel, we have selected student films that invite us to rethink ethnographic reflexivity by putting their relationships with their (human and beyond-human) research partners at the centre of their inquiry. Exploring the ethnographic encounter, radical reflexivity not merely acknowledges but embodies our partial, situated perspective with the effect of regenerating and extending the self of the filmmaking ethnographer. Borrowing Strathearn's notion of "partial connections" (2004), we emphasise that sharing time and space across worlds of experience doesn't depend on identical notions or consensus over meaning but rather creates new worlds and possibilities. In times of multiple planetary urgencies, we dedicate this curated programme to the various mobilisations of the 'I' in ethnography which suggests that some answers may be found (from) within.

In Drawing Across Lines of Colour, Joost leads his viewers into the racial compartments of a still heavily divided post-apartheid society. Performing the role of the trickster-anthropologist, he crosses boundaries and obstructs the closure of categories. Yet reflexivity forces him to acknowledge that - unlike the mythical figure of the trickster - the anthropologist cannot speak from nowhere. Vera toured with an all-male punk rock band, figuring she would learn more about men's 'clumsy' ways of doing emotions. She did, albeit not in the way she expected. Lyrical Bodies is a merciless candid reflection on a filmmaker who kept asking the wrong questions.