Visual & Multimodal Anthropology
Trained in visual anthropology at the University of Vienna (analogue photography) and the University of British Columbia (ethnographic film), my work has explored creative ways of combining the visual with the textual. It is based on my strong conviction that academic knowledge production and circulation needs to move beyond its institutional walls, where heavily text-b(i)ased information is not the primary form of communication.
One of the first projects includes the short film hidden practices which I created based on thousands of photographs I took of a demolished house in Vienna in 2009. The film addresses the many subtle tasks and practices needed to finish a knowledge artefact, like an essay, drawing an analogy to demolishing and building a house. I approach the profession of an anthropologist as a split identity between architect, whose final product, a cohesive, static masterpiece of a house receives accolades, while the tasks and techniques of a construction worker that go into it remain hidden.
FILM
The short film was featured in Anthropology News (with a still as cover image), and shown at the Regard Bleu #7 Festival for Ethnographic Student and Film Media (2011), the Ljubljana International Short Film Festival (2012), and the Contro-Sguardi International Anthropological Film Festival (2012). I later turned the short film into a visual vignette that you can see here.
Another ethnographic short film, Break & Bakers, I co-produced with Steven Breckon and Jacob Slosberg (primarily doing editing and filming) as part of the Ethnographic Film Unit at the University of British Columbia (UBC). It explores the textile dimensions and motivations of bread baking at a medium-scale bakery, and in the household of a couple in Vancouver. It was aired at the Anthropology Film Festival at UBC in April 2011.
As part of my doctoral ethnographic research at the Hawaiian-focused charter school Kanuikapono, I co-organized a high school trip to Vancouver, and co-produced the short film Kuʻu Home ma ka ʻĀina Ē -- A Home away from Home as a result (film, sound, editing). The trip involved students' presentation of their school at the "Living our Indigenous Languages in a Multimedia Technology Enhanced World" conference at UBC First Nations Longhouse, and learning about the history of Kānaka Maoli settling along the Pacific Northwest coast.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Another part of my ethnographic research on Kaua'i involved volunteering work with the Kauai Food Forest whose practitioners follow regenerative agriculture and permaculture practices. Among them is the use of cardboard which has multiple functions, including the suppression of weed growth, moisture retainment, thus creating an ideal climate and home for microorganisms, fungi and worms. In effect, the idea is to recreate a forest surface layer that eventually decomposes into dirt.
One of the issues that frequently emerged during my research on land relations and food production on Kaua'i was the large amount of food that gets shipped to the Hawaiian Islands, about 85-90%. One day I took several photographs (that later became part of an exhibition, see below) and realized that the reused cardboards in the Food Forest was a visual statistic of imported food (through these cardboard boxes). In other words, the recreated forest surface was also a transformation of the mode of transportation for food import (boxes) into eventual local food production.
This image, Hawai'i Cardboard, was voted the 2015 Cover Image for Anthropology & Environment Society of the American Anthropology Association.