Workshop 2: Led by the visual anthropologist-filmmaker Alexandra D'Onofrio
Research Program Coordinator: Elpida Karaba
Information at the office of the Centre, Department of Architecture, 1st Floor
On Thursday 21ST and Friday 22ND of March 2019, in the Centre of New Media & Feminist Public Practice, the second seminar/workshop of the programme will focus on the Methodologies and Politics of Narratives. Experience_Public Space_New Geographies. Cyber-fiction, multimodal narratives, micro-narratives, micro-fiction, sensorial production of knowledge will be some of the concepts that will be analysed through this session. Under the new conditions of critical dislocations (immigration, refugee crisis, class restructurings, economic relocations, gender transformations) we ask upon the construction of new subjects, new identities and their claims. The theoretical framework of this seminar reflects on the use of audiovisual media in social sciences research and particularly on the dynamic development of the field of Visual Anthropology, through a historical perspective on its attachment with Ethnographic Cinema.
Workshop:Ethnography is first of all a practice of storytelling and anthropologists are more and more accompanying their social analysis with narrative techniques and forms they borrow from literary, audio-visual and performative arts. But beyond providing a more engaging way to represent our findings, a variety of creative storytelling practices are more effective ways to carry out fieldwork and to involve participants more collaboratively in our research. By showcasing some practical examples, this workshop will invite participants to think about the following questions: What are the politics and ethics of storytelling? In what ways can we engage research participants in the representation of their stories? How may we include what doesn’t fit into a story? Is there and end to the story?
Italian and Greek with a foot in England, Alexandra D’Onofrio is a visual anthropologist, a filmmaker and a community arts facilitator. She has been using documentary filmmaking, animation, theatre and storytelling as collaborative methods of research on the topics of migration and parenthood. In 2017 she completed her PhD in Anthropology, Media and Performance at the University of Manchester (UK).
The workshop participants, under the appropriate guidance (individually and in groups) by the Centre’s research team and in collaboration with the workshop coordinator, will have the opportunity to create their own projects to be presented in relevant exhibitions, festivals and cultural events, along with works by artists who work in this field. The participants will also receive a certificate of attendance, upon completion.