Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the making of an experimental video essay might mobilize a speculative mode of anthropological inquiry through the body, thereby opening up the (re)interpretive potentiality afforded by multimodal scholarship.

Paper long abstract:

Despite recent attention to the embodied nature of doing multimodal ethnography, less attention has been given to how the anthropologist’s own body engages in processes of comprehending, interpreting, and critiquing multimodal materials. Reflecting upon a video essay project supported by a multimodal methods course titled Ethnographic Portraiture at the University of Oxford, this paper explores how experimental filmmaking might mobilize a speculative mode of anthropological inquiry (e.g., Willerslev 2011, Ingold 2017) through the body, thereby opening up the (re)interpretive potentiality afforded by multimodal scholarship.

The video essay project under discussion is an analysis of multimodal materials (i.e., video diaries and photo essays) on dancing improvisationally with cameras during COVID-19 lockdowns, as mediated by a sensory anthropological approach. Using her own body to perceptually engage with these multimodal materials, the author attempts to ‘imaginatively empathize with’ (Pink 2011) and creatively speculate upon dancer-videographers’ self-isolation experiences.

The making of a video essay not only documents this reinterpretation process, but also activates a mode of inquiry that extends the speculative potentials inherent in the lived body. By dancing improvisationally with cameras while being recorded by them, the author attunes to and ‘reembod[ies]’ (Kapferer 2013) multilayered sensory experiences evoked by multimodal materials to generate expanded yet nuanced understandings. The speculative scenes emerging from this process enable experimentation with ‘unrealized possibilities’ (Parisi 2012) and analysis of lived realities in an open-ended and critical way. Thus, experimental filmmaking interweaves experiencing with sense-making, observation with imagination, and actuality with potentiality, opening up (re)interpretive possibilities in multimodal anthropology.