Abstract

OMRANI, Arjang  and  RUTTEN, Kris. Collaborative audio-visual rhetoric: A self-reflexive review of collaboration in anthropological film projects. IT [online]. 2020, n.34, pp.1-17. ISSN 2617-3255.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2020/n34a24.

Through a self-reflexive review of collaboration in two anthropological film projects conducted during the period from 2013 to 2018, we address the dilemmas that are at stake when producing and distributing audio-visual images of vulnerable subjects (for example, refugees), and the consumption of so-called "subject-generated" imagery. The poetical and political strategies of audio-visual forms of anthropological (re)presentation as well as the existing shortcomings related to those topics, such as the 'refugee crisis', which is caught in the current context of our media-saturated society is explored. We suggest the notion of "shared anthropology" as a framework for exploring the critical potential of collaborative audio-visual rhetoric. From this perspective, we discuss the films Unless the water is safer than the land, in which performers re-enact the narratives of refugees; and Passager, a collaborative film project between an audio-visual anthropologist and a young Afghan refugee who left his country in search of safer living conditions. We explore how these films can be conceptualised as distinctive forms of "collaborative audio-visual rhetoric".

Keywords : Audio-visual rhetoric; sensory turn; audio-visual anthropology; ethnographic representation; art practice; shared anthropology.

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