Ethnographic Landscapes

The pair will show clips from films and talk about topics such as interdisciplinary collaboration; the possibilities and impossibilities of anthropological and ethnographic cinema; how makers and researchers deal with the relationship between stories and images; what to do with the huge array of media available to you: analogue and digital recordings and audio documentation.

J.P. Sniadecki, an alumnus of Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) set up by Lucien Castaing-Taylor whose films have screened at many festivals and prestigious (retrospective) exhibitions at MoMA, the Guggenheim and The Museum of Natural History, will be in conversation with anthropologist Cristiana Strava (ReCNTR / Leiden University). The presentation will include film and audio extracts.

Cristiana Strava is a social anthropologist who studied at Harvard University and obtained her PhD from the University of London. Her work includes the study of changing urban spaces and the forces that operate within these.

Discussing both El Mar la Mar (co-directed with Joshua Bonnetta, 2017, about life in the Sonoran Desert on the border of Mexico and the United States) and Foreign Parts (co-directed with Véréna Paravel, 2010, about plans for undesired new buildings in the Queens borough of New York), both of which also screen on 12 March, Sniadecki and Strava will explore collaboration, the relationships between stories and images, and the materiality of different media from analogue to digital and audio documentation.

Co-presented with ReCNTR, Leiden University.