Short Abstract:

This panel presents a selection of student works from the Visual Anthropology program at the University of Amsterdam that inspire 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 Entanglements of Smoke and Pixels, Suzanne brings us to the charred landscapes of burned forests in Oregon and oscillates between filmed encounters with ravaged landscapes (and the people who live there) and explorations of these landscapes on Google Maps. The film contemplates digital memoryscapes in a narrative on loss and recovery. The Lindisfarne Causeway project was driven by Sammy's attempt to let the road that connects Holy Island to the British Mainland 'speak for itself'. Boredom and humming signal the beauty of a project that is as urgent as it is impossible.