Paper short abstract:

Can a classic text be conceived as an image? If yes, how would it look like? To what will resemble? What does it mean collaborating in such process? In other words, how can we co-create a 'participatory image in text’? This presentation will focus on a twofold way of doing multimodal anthropology

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will focus on a twofold way of doing multimodal anthropology: a contribution to a multimodal book-edition and its research team (set up by the C.rital I.cono E.thnography L.ab in Brussel cf. https://cielab.ch/), and a collaboration with an anthropologist/curator (Arnaud Dubois) and an artist (Letizia Giannella) who together co-created an exhibition called “Cosmographies : expérience du territoire” in September 2021 in Paris.

I got involved almost simultaneously in these two separates but connected collaborative practices which I placed immediately together. They both had the common wish to work around the concept of creating a participatory image. Along with Arnaud Dubois and Letizia Giannella we then experimented the potential to create a participatory image in text which in turn I presented to the CIEL team.

Can a classic text be conceived as an image? If yes, how would it look like? To what will resemble? What does it mean collaborating in such process? In other words, how can we co-create a 'participatory image in text’? These questions led Arnaud Dubois, Letizia Giannella and myself to write an experimental chapter where words and images, personal narratives and academic discourse had been treated at the same level and with the same value. The text had been discussed in its in-progress stage with the collaborative CIEL team contributing to an ulterior level of collaboration and multimodality. Although this process has not created an answer or a mathematic formula to answer our questions about the participatory image in text, this experience opens up possibilities to think and re-think multimodality and anthropology of today and tomorrow. In this paper, I will discuss the complexities and possibilities of this double multimodal collaboration.