Paper short abstract:

Based on a project in Austria, where a valley was contaminated by an environmental scandal, this contribution discusses how the cooperation of art and ethnography in the form of a co-production can expand both the increase in knowledge compared to classical fieldwork and formats of representation.

Paper long abstract:

In the course of the emergence of the research format of "artistic research", the merging of art and ethnography in concrete research projects has further advanced the debate on the possibility of transdisciplinarity.

In the project SELFIES IM GÖRTSCHITZTAL (EU-Creative Europe) sound artists, ethnographers, and a photographer explored the Görtschitztal valley in the south of Austria, which had become famous due to an environmental scandal. One of the research concerns was to eliminate the invisibility of the poison HCB and to make audible the voices of the valley's inhabitants regarding the ecological disaster. Firstly, classical ethnographic methods such as field surveys, participant observations, and a form of photo interview via selfies developed specifically for the project context were used, which significantly contributed to the self-empowerment of the interviewees. Secondly, the participating artists worked with photography or created sound collages based on ethnographically collected audio materials.

The surveys were linked in a dialogical process and the results of the co-production were presented in a joint exhibition. The arrangement of the objects and photographs reproduced the valley in miniature. In this way, the so-called 'Poison Valley' could be "imagined" and experienced in a new way. This contribution reflects the cognitive potential of this form of convergence of art and ethnography and shows how an expanded knowledge of social (everyday) worlds can be generated, represented, and imparted by means of experimental procedures - which transcend disciplinary boundaries and are interconnected at different levels (data collection, evaluation, and representation).