SIEF2017 13th Congress: Göttingen, Germany
26-30 March 2017
Audiovisual programme
Convenors: Sandra Eckardt (University of Göttingen), Torsten Näser (University of Göttingen), Frauke Paech (University of Göttingen)
This panel shows an impressive variety of audiovisual works relevant to the SIEF2017 conference theme. The conveners have selected films, photographs, video installations and oral presentations from a large number of proposals. These different forms of audiovisual ethnography call for different types of venues that will be used for presentations and screenings throughout the congress: an exhibition room, the well-known cinema Lumière in the centre of Göttingen, and a lecture hall. The film programme is structured according to the subjects Crisis, Fluidity, Alternative Housing, Objects of Memory, Architectures, Migration and Craft. Many of the contributors will be present for a Q&A in the panel sessions.
Film screenings at the main venue
ZHG 003, ZHG (Zentrales Hörsaalgebäude), located at Platz der Göttinger Sieben 5
MONDAY 27 MARCH
08:30-10:15, Crisis
Warning! Karapinar – Voices from an Urban Regeneration (29 min). Cansu Civelek (University of Vienna)
The film is about an urban regeneration project implemented on a slums zone in Eskisehir, Turkey.
Our Missionaries (8 min). Martin Gruber (University of Bremen)
A small village on the coast of Guinea, West Africa. Missionaries settled here in their effort to bring Christianity to this Muslim dominated area. The film tells the story of a misconceived transcultural encounter through the villagers' memories and images of the missionaries' material legacy.
Altimir (18 min). Kathryn Hannahan (New York)
Since the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, Bulgaria has experienced the most extreme population decline in the world. The film explores life in one of Bulgaria's disappearing villages, haunted by the promises of both communism and capitalism.
Sonitus (9 min). Magdalena Reichinger/Lennart Haneklaus (University of Göttingen)
All humans dwell in acoustic spaces, in which we constantly create, perceive and negotiate the many sounds that embrace us. The periodic ringing of church bells provides an audible example of institutionalized sound and acoustic territory amidst a city.
10:45-12:30, Fluidity
Flâneurs – Street Rambles (80 min). Matthew Lancit (Toronto)
An unemployed father tries to escape the boredom of his apartment by taking his newborn daughter on a series of poetic strolls around the margins of Paris.
13:00-14:15, Alternative Housing
Off the Cut (21 min). Wendy Zakiewicz
The film follows a family living on their pedal powered boat as they embark on a journey in which their way of life, and that of the boating community, comes under threat.
Einfach leben (People in Boxes) (36 min). Matthias Werner (Leipzig)
The film portraits people living on a „Wagenplatz" and on a camping site. The film investigates the reasons of people living this way and searches for the differences and similarities of the sites. It also gives insights in the different mobile homes.
16:00-17:45, Objects of Memory
These Objects, Those Memories (30 min). Roger Horn (University of Cape Town)
A split-screen film on long-term Zimbabwean female migrants, their objects and associated memories in Cape Town, South Africa.
What remains – an obituary on Wilhelmine and Bernard (40 min). Judith Schein (University of Göttingen)
Hermann lived in his parents’ house since he was born in 1946. He conserves and archives the objects from the past. Up to this day he could not separate himself from these things because they have great nostalgic value.
TUESDAY 28 MARCH
8:30-10:15, Migration I
A inceput ploaia (64 min). Michele Lancione (Cardiff University)
A movie about the forced eviction of Roma people in Bucharest, Romania.
Persisting Dreams (25 min). Côme Ledésert (University of Westminster)
Toni is a fisherman in Lampedusa. He sees men, women and children arriving from other continents. Through his testimony, intercut by animation that take him on a journey as forced witness, this documentary invites us to question our perception of migrants in Europe – between our tenacious fantasies, Toni's reality and the persisting dreams of migrants.
10:45-12:30, Migration II
We are in it (110 min). Yehuda Sharim (Rice University)
The film features visceral scenes from the everyday lives of Karla, Serges, Hussein, Nancy and Tutu. For all of them, Houston is their common space of struggle, pleasure, and shelter.
16:00-17:45, Architectures
Kraków in miniature (9 min). Magdalena Kwiecińska (The Historical Museum of the City of Kraków)
Making Nativity scenes is a Cracovian craft based on knowledge and skills passed from generation to generation. For decades, it's re-created by members of the community in the local context of Kraków. The film based on interviews with craftsmen and their identity with an urban tradition.
Concrete Utopia (18 min). Anna Ilin
A film about the restructuring of Skopje, Macedonia and what this means to the people of the city.
The Block: negotiating the maintenance of a block of flats in Piatra-Neamt, Romania (61 min). Maria Salaru (University of Oxford)
The film explores the rich social and material universe of a Romanian apartment building, captured in an observational documentary.
WEDNESDAY 29 MARCH
08:30-10:15, Craft I
The Huisman – on craftsmanship, insight and authenticity (88 min). Wendy van Wilgenburg (Amsterdam)
The film documents the complete restoration of one of the Zaanse Schans' finest windmills: 'De Huisman'. The whole process has resulted in a unique film that pays homage to traditional craftsmanship and offers a critical view on restoring cultural heritage.
10:45-12:30, Craft II
The Intelligent Hand (33 min). Trevor Marchand (SOAS)
The film introduces a first-year cohort of fine woodwork trainees at the Building Crafts College in East London. Through the narratives of the course tutor and individual trainees, the film explores learning and skills, and investigates the synergy between brain, hand and the tools of our trades.
The Art of Andrew Omoding (9 min). Trevor Marchand (SOAS)
The Ugandan-British artist enters into partner-ship with his materials, allowing their sensible properties to guide his exploratory gestures and fingerwork. In stitching and suturing multiple layers of cloth, cord, ribbon and other found items, he transforms flat canvases into undulating topographies of colour and texture.
Le vacher Marcel Taillé (Marcel Taillé, Herdsman and Dairyman) (25 min). Martin Büdel (University of Freiburg)
Together with his sister Aline and his brother Joseph, Marcel is running a cattle farm in the mountainous French departement Cantal. In early summer, with the transhumance to the mountain pastures, his favoured way of working and living begins: the daily routine of a herdsman and dairyman.
Keynote: Films on craft: between filmic traditions and contemporary negotiations (10 min). Sandra Eckardt (University of Göttingen)
Film screenings at the Cinema Lumière
Geismar Landstraße 19, 37083 Göttingen
MONDAY 27 MARCH
20:00, One Long Journey (86 min). Kieran Hanson (University of Manchester)
One man’s dream to build a boat and sail it home: The film is at once a closely observed family drama, a subversive hero's tale and a sensory demonstration of how experience becomes narrative. It aims to engage the audience in their own experience of his difficult journey and it intends to evoke a sense of place, to extend an anthropological discussion into embodied understanding.
TUESDAY 28 MARCH
18:00, Highway Rest Stop (81 min). Isabel Ingold (Perspective Films, Paris)
Picturing a highway rest stop in France, this film traces out the portrait of Europe today. Through the lives of travelers and workers, this rest stop shows the violence of the free competition of a single market, the nostalgia carried by uprooted lives and the solitude in our modern world.
Exhibition room programme: presentations, permanent film screening, photographs and audiovisual installations
KWZ 0.602/0.603 at the KWZ building (Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum), Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14
Presentations
The creators of some of the works listed will make presentations as below.
MONDAY 27 MARCH
10:45-12:30, Nosso Morro – an experience of collaborative filming to represent ways of dwelling in Rocinha and Gávea, Rio de Janeiro. Paloma Yanez Serrano (University of Manchester)
How can people represent their own dwelling experience? Nosso Morro explores the collaborative making of a film by a group of young dwellers of Rocinha and Gávea in Rio de Janeiro. Discussion on how an experimental film can reveal the vacuum of stereotypes, offering new attitudes for both communities, and the city.
TUESDAY 28 MARCH
10:45-12:30, Three Art Probes – between Art Practice and Cultural Analysis. Robert Willim (Lund University)
The three video works Close to Nature, Fieldnotes and Possible Worlds are Art Probes. They combine art and cultural analysis as companion pieces of an evolving set of provisional renditions. The works approach how mediation interplay with imaginaries and how technology is entangled with ways of living.
WEDNESDAY 29 MARCH
10:45-12:30, Filming migration in the digital age – an interactive exhibition. Michael Westrich (Humboldt University Berlin) and student protagonists (University of Göttingen)
In a group exhibition-like atmosphere and together with the protagonists, we would like to publicly screen and discuss film clips that emerged from a practice-led research seminar about migration and housing.
Photography
Longing for return and resisting displacement – making a home under occupation in the West Bank, Palestine. Anika Machura (University of Göttingen)
This ethnographic photo essay should shed light on making a home under occupation in the West Bank, Palestine, in two very different settings: in the refugee camps of the cities and in the rural communities of the Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills.
Houses/Homes – the material demarcation of the middle-class. Thera Mjaaland (University of Bergen)
In my photographic art work, I focus on the material demarcation of the middle-class dwelling. From the point of view of standing outside the fencing looking in, I see the handling of privacy and protection as visually contained in a globalised idea of the middle-class home.
Behind the Fences. Nelli Stavropoulou (Durham University)
A photo-narrative comprised of photographs and field notes, exploring notions of belonging, dwelling, and resistance through a visual exploration of the landscape of 'Calais Jungle' refugee camp. This installation is informed by participant observation, walking methodologies and documentary photography.
Video installations
Domestic homeless – a study of the home as experienced in domestic violence. Mara Bertoni (University of Lisbon)
Art-based ethnography installation on spatial-acoustic perspective applied to home as perceived in domestic violence. Visual/sound elaboration of space and voices expand "domestic body" and "domestication" dwelling into the house space, for an immersive listening experience.
The Cave Mouth and the Giant Voice – sound, text and voice in Okinawan war memory. Rupert Cox (University of Manchester)
This experimental film explores the evidential value of oral testimony and documentary images in the particular dwelling spaces of the Okinawan environment where memories of the Pacific war are stirred up by the sounds made by the activities of US military bases on the island.
Permanent film screenings: “Senses and Sensibilities”
Solaris (25 min). Pavel Borecky (Tallinn)
Through soundscape and camera gazes, this dialogue-free sensory enthnography exposes the closing hours and the nighttime of a Tallinn shopping mall, revealing a transforming atmosphere.
If this Rain can fall (18 min). Suneeta Gill (Sunken Bank Collective)
"If This Rain Can Fall", through a split-screen sound film and three field-based audio recordings, explores how farming families of northwestern Kansas, where it rarely rains enough to support the kind of water-intensive crop growing that many participate in, cope with the rapidly changing landscape.
For my Art (21 min). Mariangela Mihai Jordan (Cornell University)
The film follows five women performance artists as they venture into the streets, markets, and mega-malls of Yangon, Burma, transforming the quotidian into unexpected performance spaces. As people and objects are swept into their art, boundaries between performance and everyday life disappear.
