Martha-Cecilia Dietrich

This course introduces students to explore social worlds through audio-visual media. With a practical focus on ethnographic filmmaking, the aim is for students to learn approaches to experience-led research at the threshold between science and art.

While creative expressions have often been understood to merely represent anthropological findings, plenty of examples suggest that artistic research interventions can, in fact, generate theoretical knowledge. ‘Empirical art’ is a term coined by anthropologist and filmmaker David MacDougall (2020) who argued that by doing research with a camera and microphone, we side-step the logic–driven process in research and commit to creatively exploring people’s life-worlds through the art of image and sound making.

Considering what images and sounds can do for the social sciences, we look at research practices that investigate lived experience and their manifold narrations contributing to anthropological theory-making. By engaging theoretically and practically with image-making and sound recording, we will test if and how empirical art offers embodied perspectives on situated practices and social relations as well as critical reflections on anthropological knowledge-making.

We begin by asking how experience-led research has been understood in anthropology, asking questions like, how different media can evoke experience and critical thought. What are the social and ethical dimensions to consider, and how can these be meaningfully incorporated into the research? To answer these, students will be asked to produce several film assignments and one complete film piece for assessment.