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- Convenors:
-
Caroline Spitzner
(Radboud University)
Joaquim Almeida Neto (University of São Paulo)
Airin Farahmand (Radboud University)
Juliana Boldrin
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 4 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract
For this panel, we invite contributions that engage with multispecies collaborations and critically address their ethical, practical, methodological, and theoretical challenges as well as potentialities for the production of knowledge through multimodal anthropological approaches.
Long Abstract
For this panel, we invite contributions that engage with multispecies collaborations and critically address their challenges and potentialities for multimodal anthropological approaches.
Collaboration is a contested term in anthropology. What it means to do collaborative ethnographic work raises practical and methodological questions about conducting fieldwork and it also sheds light on ethical problems and the historically colonial asymmetrical power relations of anthropological knowledge production. Although much has been written about the difficulties and benefits of collaborative ethnographic work, there is still much to be explored when it comes to collaborations between humans and more-than-humans in anthropological research and the particular questions it poses. Therefore, we are interested in exploring the specific challenges and potentialities that arise from multispecies and more-than-human collaborations in the production of multimodal anthropological knowledge (Henare et al. 2006, Matsutake Worlds Research Group 2009, van Dooren et al. 2016, Ingold 2017, Tsing 2017, Woodward 2019, Latour & Weibel 2020).
Considering that these unexpected collaborations demand equally unexpected and creative methodological engagements, we are looking for presentations that speak to questions such as: How can more-than-human collaborations enrich anthropological knowledge? What are the ethical, practical, methodological, and theoretical challenges of collaborations that de-center the human? How can multimodal approaches help or hinder these collaborations? How can more-than-human agencies help us challenge the dominance of vision and the hierarchy of the senses in knowledge production? What are the different kinds of affectivities, sensorialities, and corporealities when collaborating cross-species through multimodal approaches?
Accepted papers
Session 1 Friday 4 July, 2025, -Paper short abstract
With the aim of problematising and situating the ideas of plant agency and more-than-human collaboration in contemporary art, I analyse works created by two contemporary Brazilian artists who work with plants in an intimate dialogue with the field of plant electrophysiology.
Paper long abstract
In this paper, I discuss some intersections between art, science, and technology in the context of climate change and environmental crisis, and I explore the idea of more-than-human collaboration being developed by artists and theorists. To do so, I analyse works created by two contemporary Brazilian artists who work with plants: Guto Nóbrega and Ivan Henriques. More specifically, I focus on these two artists' experiments with the vegetal world—experiments mediated by technological devices that give life to hybrid beings produced through the hybridisation of plants with robotic systems—and the dialogues they establish with the field of Plant Electrophysiology. Through both convergences and divergences, I compare the plant considered as a sensor in a symbiotic relationship between artist, work, and spectator, a position defended by Nóbrega, with the empowerment of plant species proposed by Henriques, which allows plants to acquire additional abilities, such as using a machine that enables them to move in space. I argue that the intersection of art, science, and technology not only helps to produce responses to current crises by offering new perspectives, but also questions, problematizes, and situate the ideas of plant agency and more-than-human collaboration in contemporary artistic practices.
Paper short abstract
Taking as a starting point my fieldwork experience with healthcare professionals, I discuss how breathing depends on collaboration with both human and non-human beings, showing how technoscientific worlds are vitally intertwined with worlds of care.
Paper long abstract
In this paper, I discuss how breathing depends on collaboration with both human and non-human beings. I take as a starting point my fieldwork experience in a clinical emergency ward, located in a large Brazilian Teaching Hospital, where I observed healthcare professionals — doctors, physiotherapists, nurses, and nursing technicians — treating patients with severe respiratory failure. From this ethnographic context, I examine how breathing is produced through the entanglement of bodies with mechanical ventilators. More specifically, I seek to show how producing, maintaining, and sustaining breath depend not only on machines and networks of oxygen but also on an immense care work that is repetitive, visceral, and often disturbing. In this sense, I aim to demonstrate that in a hospital, technoscientific worlds are vitally intertwined with worlds of care. I argue, ultimately, that what ensures breathing are vital entanglements that are always in the process of composition. They are becoming-with (Haraway, 2016) processes that rely on more-than-human collaborations that entangle bodies, machines, procedures, care, morphine, dogs, family presences, and bonds. All of these collaborations are vital; they help weave the meanings of life and death amidst the painful processes of illness.
Paper short abstract
Based on Walter Murch reflections and Lambros Malafouris’MET, the study analyses the editor-editing programme-raw footage material relationship, comparing it to that between potter, potter’s wheel and clay: showing how technology constantly redefines creative interaction between different agencies.
Paper long abstract
The relationship between film editor and raw footage material has undergone a significant transformation with the transition from analogue to digital editing. This study, based on the reflections of film editor Walter Murch (Murch [2001]) and Lambros Malafouris’ MET, proposes an analysis of the triadic relationship editor-editing programme-raw footage material by comparing it to the triadic relationship potter-potter’s wheel-clay analysed by Malafouris in his ethnographic research (Malafouris [2013]: 207-226).
In digital editing the editor’s approach is no longer characterized by a “direct” connection to the footage, physically manipulated by hand; but, instead, by a deeply technology-mediated interaction. This interaction, thanks to the technological mediation it enacts, offers a privileged place for observing how different “agencies” (human and non-human) interact with each other: and, because of the constant technological progress to which the editing process is subjected (Caballero, J., & Sora-Domenjó, C. [2024]), it also offers the possibility of observing the way in which this type of interaction constantly evolves by reshaping the three poles of the relationship.
Tim Ingold suggests that we don’t need a theory of agency but, instead, a “theory of life” capable of including the “vitality of matter” (Ingold [2013]:97); but which kind of matter is the raw footage material? Which kind the editing programme? The parallelism with the potter’s activity, who dynamically interacts with the clay and the potter’s wheel, allows editing to be redefined as a situated process where creativity emerges from the interaction between mind, material and technology and from their mutual constitution.
Paper short abstract
Through sound-based surveys with "bat detectors," volunteer conservationists navigate shared landscapes with local wildlife. This research examines how these sound-based survey methods shape multispecies conservation and allow a more-than-human "conversation" surrounding urban ecosystems.
Paper long abstract
Conservation is often framed as a human-led process, yet ecological resilience relies on multispecies collaboration. This research explores the multivocal process of bat conservation in Greater Manchester, made in collaboration with local conservation non-profits who work to protect bat roosting sites from urban development. Through sound-based methods, volunteers and conservationists “listen” to bats via bat detectors, converting echolocation into data audible for human "listening."
This paper examines how acoustic ecology and multispecies anthropology intersect—how listening becomes an act of conservation, and how bats, through their sonic participation in the "conversation," shape human environmental practices. Drawing on field recordings, interviews with conservationists, and sensory ethnography, this project interrogates how conservation knowledge is produced through technological mediation, embodied listening, and human-wildlife interactions.
By positioning bats not just as subjects of conservation but as co-agents shaping urban ecologies, this research rethinks traditional conservation frameworks. It argues for multimodal methodologies, blending sound, film, and participatory ethnography, as tools for rethinking environmental stewardship and ecopolitical sovereignty beyond human-centered paradigms.