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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents experiments in XR in an Afghan-Danish film collective, asking: How might we craft and circulate anthropological knowledge in an algorithmic age drawing on multimodal registers and articulating with actors within film-, gaming-, and digital archives?

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology, born alongside colonialism and around the same time as photography, has grappled with its vices and the crisis of representation since the inception of the discipline. Practitioners of visual anthropology have been reckoning with this earlier than the mainstream of the discipline, due to its reach beyond the academe which afforded more immediate feedback from different audiences and publics, including from the communities and people portrayed. A new set of vices with regards to representation emerges in an algorithmically driven media ecology, where bias is inbuilt and reproducing at an unprecedented speed and scale. Might the virtues of anthropology (the long-term grounded work of ethnography and the critical inquiry) counter this and produce stories and images otherwise that circulate and have effects in the world? How might we craft and circulate anthropological knowledge in an algorithmic age drawing on multimodal registers and by articulating with actors within film-, gaming-, and museums? What are the opportunities and what are the inherent dangers? With a starting point in the joint efforts of the Afghan/Danish ARTlife Film Collective, this paper will discuss recent experiments in XR towards emerging forms of multimodal collaborations at DOX:LAB (https://cphdox.dk/cphlab/letter-to-bibijan/ ).